Section 1: md5sum
This page was been converted automatically, from Debian GNU/Linux
man pages.
MD5SUM(1) Debian GNU/Linux MD5SUM(1)
NAME
md5sum - generates or checks MD5 message digests
SYNOPSIS
md5sum [-bv] [-c [file]] | [file...]
DESCRIPTION
md5sum generates or checks MD5 checksums. The algorithm to
generate the checksum is reasonably fast and strong enough
for most cases. Exact specification of the algorithm is in
RFC 1321.
Normally md5sum generates checksums of all files given to
it as a parameter and prints the checksums followed by the
filenames. If, however, -c is specified, only one filename
parameter is allowed. This file should contain checksums
and filenames to which these checksums refer to, and the
files listed in that file are checked against the check-
sums listed there. See option -c for more information.
OPTIONS
-b Use binary mode. In unix environment, only differ-
ence between this and the normal mode is an asterix
preceding the filename in the output.
-c Check md5sum of all files listed in file against
the checksum listed in the same file. The actual
format of that file is the same as output of
md5sum. That is, each line in the file describes a
file. A line looks like:
So, for example, if a file was created and its mes-
sage digest calculated like so:
echo foo > md5-test-file; md5sum md5-test-file
md5sum would report:
d3b07384d113edec49eaa6238ad5ff00 md5-test-file
-v Be more verbose. Print filenames when checking
(with -c).
BUGS
The related MD4 message digest algorithm was broken in
October 1995. MD5 isn't looking as secure as it used to.
Lankester et al 29th November 1995 1
MD5SUM(1) Debian GNU/Linux MD5SUM(1)
This manpage is not quite accurate and has formatting
inconsistent with other manpages.
md5sum does not accept standard options like --help.
AUTHOR
md5sum was originally written by Branko Lankester, and
modified afterwards by Colin Plumb and Ian Jackson (ijack-
son@gnu.ai.mit.edu). Manual page was added by Juho Vuori
(javuori@cc.helsinki.fi)
Lankester et al 29th November 1995 2