md5sum is for printing or checking MD5 (128-bit) checksums. One can download a file on Internet and also download its checksum. The md5sum command can, then, be used to verify whether the file has been correctly received. Also, while putting a file file for download, the checksum is also put in a separate file so that users can download both and check the file using checksum.
The command usage is
md5sum -c <checksum_file>
where checksum_file is a specially formatted text file. Each line of <checksum_file> has the following format
<md5sum_checksum><space><space><file_name>
where,
<md5sum_checksum> is the md5 checksum,
<space> is the space character, 0x20
N.B.: TWO spaces are required, else you get the undeserved error no properly formatted MD5 checksum lines found
There should be exactly two spaces, otherwise error is given.
<file_name> is the file for which this checksum has been given
md5 checksum is generated for a file by the command
md5sum <filename> [ > <checksum_file> ]
where,
<filename> is the file for which md5 checksum is to be computed,
<checksum_file> is the file for in which checksum is to be stored,
Note that the checksum has been redirected to <checksum_file>. If <checksum_file> argument is not given, it is printed on
the standard output.
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