18

After downloading a file that has a md5 checksum available I currently check it with

md5 *file* | grep *given_checksum*

e.g.

md5 file.zip | grep -i B4460802B5853B7BB257FBF071EE4AE2

but it seemed funny to me to require grep and the pipe for what is surely a very common task. A stickler for doing things efficiently, I wondered there is a better way of doing this?

Improve this question
2
  • What kind of tool is that md5? From which package it comes?
    – manatwork
    Jun 5, 2013 at 14:48
  • I didn't realise it was any different until I actually asked this question and started looking into the answers, but I'm using bash on OS X and it's Apple's own tool which doesn't have the -c option. Apparently they stopped bundling md5sum in 10.5... I've now installed the original unix md5sum tool.
    – Ben Griffiths
    Jun 5, 2013 at 15:53

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
30

md5sum has a -c option to check an existing set of sums, and its exit status indicates success/failure.

Example:

$ echo "ff9f75d4e7bda792fca1f30fc03a5303  package.deb" | md5sum -c -
package.deb: OK

Find a nice resource here

Improve this answer
4
  • 5
    Thanks. Just for completion, I now use md5sum -c - <<<"b4460802b5853b7bb257fbf071ee4ae2 file_name.ext" which seems cleaner than involving grep!
    – Ben Griffiths
    Jun 5, 2013 at 15:56
  • hmm, not much improvement to the original $ md5 file | grep given_checksum and if you want to use case insensitive string you have to stick with grep -i
    – StandardNerd
    Oct 3, 2017 at 11:50
  • 1
    I was getting no properly formatted MD5 checksum lines found when I was using md5sum -c <file.md5> <file> but this command worked for me.
    – Vishrant
    May 25, 2019 at 17:24
  • I think this is easiest solution compare to writing if conditions in shell. It's good also it works also another sha functions like sha512sum
    – itirazimvar
    Nov 20, 2022 at 11:15
4

The usual bash way would be:

shopt -s nocasematch
if [[ $(md5sum "$file") = 5d40f31729c992b5a0e67490689fe8ff* ]]
Improve this answer
1 
md5sum -c <filename>.zip.md5 <filename>.zip

This will tell you Ok if they are the same.

This works with tar as well.

Improve this answer
0

Inspired by psusi's answer

echo "$(cut -f1 -d' ' your_file.jar.md5) your_file.jar" | md5sum -c -

I used cut as not all the md5 are stored in the same way. Example

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .