Using the MD5 check sum

Mon Mar 7 03:03:45 UTC 2005

On 03/06/2005 06:03:26 PM, Brad D wrote:
> I would like a quick explanation on how to use the md5sum program to
> check the ISO downloads with.
> 
> The intructions on the redhat site state, "After downloading the ISO
> images, check the MD5 checksums for the ISO images to ensure that  
> your
> download was successful. Do this by running the md5sum program from a
> shell prompt against your ISO images and comparing the values  
> returned
> against the ones published by Red Hat."
> 
> How do I use the "shell prompt" to do this?

What I do is put the download and the md5sum file into the same  
directory.

then I cd into that directory and run

md5sum -c file.md5sum

where file.md5sum is the name of the file containing the md5sums.
Often the md5sum file will have more files in it then you downloaded -  
those will fail as missing, but the files that you have should pass  
with an OK mark. For iso's, it could take a little while to compute the  
sums.

[mpeters at devel heidelberg-binary-i386]$ ls -1
FC3-i386-disc1.iso
FC3-i386-disc2.iso
FC3-i386-disc3.iso
FC3-i386-disc4.iso
FC3-i386-DVD.iso
FC3-i386-rescuecd.iso
MD5SUM

That's listing the files - here is the check:

[mpeters at devel heidelberg-binary-i386]$ md5sum -c MD5SUM
FC3-i386-DVD.iso: OK
FC3-i386-disc1.iso: OK
FC3-i386-disc2.iso: OK
FC3-i386-disc3.iso: OK
FC3-i386-disc4.iso: OK
FC3-i386-rescuecd.iso: OK
[mpeters at devel heidelberg-binary-i386]$

-- 
Michael A. Peters
http://mpeters.us/