Go2Linux | Linux Operating System

This week I had to move a big .tar.gz file from an ftp server to another one, and I had to bring it first to my PC before sending it to the other server, and when I uploaded there it has errors, the same error it has in my Desktop, so I could have avoided the waste of time of sending it to the second server if I could have checked its integrity when it has arrived to my Desktop.

Well the second time I did that and this time was all OK, here is how to check the integrity of files

First creat an MD5 file of the file to move.

md5sum file > file.md5.txt

You will have to take both files with you, or move them anyway you can or prefer, once in its final destination, you can check the md5 again.

md5sum -c file.md5.txt

Now if you want to make it recursively into directory, you may use this.

find . -name ‘*’ -exec md5sum {} >file.md5.txt \;

This will create a file of two columns like this:

bce4769e984bcb13961eb7a149038c50  ./xp15.png
b9a474939619ce6717fc87b1d5873f7d  ./office6.png
e3e202d0be6e4bd4b449537c0819b851  ./xp10.png
19eb11c9a24fd08b194f5a494f5fdebe  ./office1.png
5f298a05a16e20367ac8b35054e6883d  ./xp16.png
63ffe1ad007e03f8f453eea82c43e21d  ./office7.png
c02828d6aefd4933cc301049bd0ea96a  ./office4.png
27018941f05a1ac35181f6ac65fe20c2  ./ubuntu9.png
712a0b02dce62150abe951695dfc1045  ./vista12.png
d0d67fba12d931353602d6272756a127  ./office5.png
a3c37a6459fd2d878cd79dbefcbb01cd  ./ubuntu7.png
462476e1871a7f8d2685d999e9fa6ce8  ./xp2.png
7896b477aaa2d78624954adf7664d806  ./office3.png
f9f82d3de48bacef46daa263334c30a9  ./xp20.png
4a1a3f9b8d28658d7c6943e72280fd6a  ./ubuntu1.png
0a9e024cb0832600b5dad95a56ee8726  ./ubuntu5.png
27ef5890cf81f190839f78f93b3d4117  ./xp13.png
d7534122e4f2277369f69cb0720f817e  ./vista10.png
e19b7b08f3e16ce555a9fa3a44f07721  ./vista14.png

And to check if all is OK run this

md5sum -c file.md5.txt

The first command is finding all files in this directory, and then run md5sum on each of the found files, then stores the output to the file.