When you attempt to alter the contents of the file by removing the first line, root:x:0: and then run the command for a second time, try to observe the hash value: $ md5sum groups.csv 46798b5cfca45c46a84b7419f8b74735 groups.csv The md5sums command below will generate a hash value for the file as follows: $ md5sum groups.csv bc527343c7ffc103111f3a694b004e2f groups.csv Take a look at the contents of /etc/group saved as groups.cvs below.
It is a constituent of GNU Core Utilities package, therefore comes pre-installed on most, if not all Linux distributions. In Linux, the md5sum program computes and checks MD5 hash values of a file. Suggested Read: Progress – Monitor Progress for (cp, mv, dd, tar, etc.) Commands in Linux
#How to check file hash iso
Therefore, you can use md5sum to check digital data integrity by determining that a file or ISO you downloaded is a bit-for-bit copy of the remote file or ISO. It is normally very difficult to find two distinct files that results in same strings. The MD5 algorithm is a popular hash function that generates 128-bit message digest referred to as a hash value, and when you generate one for a particular file, it is precisely unchanged on any machine no matter the number of times it is generated. MD5 Sums are 128-bit character strings (numerals and letters) resulting from running the MD5 algorithm against a specific file. MD5 ( Message Digest 5) sums can be used as a checksum to verify files or strings in a Linux file system.
A checksum is a digit which serves as a sum of correct digits in data, which can be used later to detect errors in the data during storage or transmission.