md5?

[jay]

Hi, I'm new to Linux. I'm currently downloading Mandrake 10.1 (the iso images). Now in the download directory I found a file called Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD.md5 with the following lines in it:

7833f17c3fbe95581c48cf3848792d21  Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD1.i586.iso
5850545e8fa3f63323a90b1403ec5064  Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD2.i586.iso
029f660c78e29427f775a54284fb7085  Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD3.i586.iso

What is it good for?

Thanks,

Jay

[joe]

MD5 hashes are a way of verifying the integrity of a file and that no one has changed or messed with the file in any way.

You can use the tool md5sum (installed by default on Debian) to create a hash. So for example,

joe@terrarum:~$ md5sum /bin/ls
ce1243c8b432abc494b01ff36ea909ef  /bin/ls

Now if I were to transfer /bin/ls to another computer, I could run the command again. If the md5sum matches, that means the file has not been tampered with and everything is fine.

[jay]

Ah, I see. So after the download is finished, I type

md5sum Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD1.i586.iso

to see if the downloaded file is an exact copy of the iso on the server, right?

Jay

[joe]

You got it

[jay]

Ok, thanks!