md5sum - Man Page
compute and check MD5 message digest
Examples (TL;DR)
- Calculate the MD5 checksum for one or more files:
md5sum path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ... - Calculate and save the list of MD5 checksums to a file:
md5sum path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ... > path/to/file.md5 - Calculate an MD5 checksum from
stdin:command | md5sum - Read a file of MD5 checksums and filenames and verify all files have matching checksums:
md5sum --check path/to/file.md5 - Only show a message for missing files or when verification fails:
md5sum --check --quiet path/to/file.md5 - Only show a message when verification fails, ignoring missing files:
md5sum --ignore-missing --check --quiet path/to/file.md5 - Check a known MD5 checksum of a file:
echo known_md5_checksum_of_the_file path/to/file | md5sum --check
Synopsis
md5sum [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Description
Print or check MD5 (128-bit) checksums.
With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.
- -b, --binary
read in binary mode
- -c, --check
read checksums from the FILEs and check them
- --tag
create a BSD-style checksum
- -t, --text
read in text mode (default)
- -z, --zero
end each output line with NUL, not newline, and disable file name escaping
The following five options are useful only when verifying checksums
- --ignore-missing
don't fail or report status for missing files
- --quiet
don't print OK for each successfully verified file
- --status
don't output anything, status code shows success
- --strict
exit non-zero for improperly formatted checksum lines
- -w, --warn
warn about improperly formatted checksum lines
- --help
display this help and exit
- --version
output version information and exit
The sums are computed as described in RFC 1321. When checking, the input should be a former output of this program. The default mode is to print a line with: checksum, a space, a character indicating input mode ('*' for binary, ' ' for text or where binary is insignificant), and name for each FILE.
There is no difference between binary mode and text mode on GNU systems.
Bugs
Do not use the MD5 algorithm for security related purposes. Instead, use an SHA-2 algorithm, implemented in the programs sha224sum(1), sha256sum(1), sha384sum(1), sha512sum(1), or the BLAKE2 algorithm, implemented in b2sum(1)
Author
Written by Ulrich Drepper, Scott Miller, and David Madore.
Reporting Bugs
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>
Copyright
Copyright © 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
See Also
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/md5sum>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) md5sum invocation'
Referenced By
arxunpak(1), changestool(1), cksfv(1), deb-md5sums(5), debsign(1), guestfish(1), guestfs(3), jigdo-file(1), mcookie(1), monit(1), perl5140delta(1), pmlogmv(1), rhash(1), xorriso(1), xorrisofs(1), xxhsum(1).