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2.6.1. Verifying the MD5 Checksum

After you have downloaded a MySQL package, you should make sure that its MD5 checksum matches the one provided on the MySQL download pages. Each package has an individual checksum that you can verify with the following command, where package_name is the name of the package you downloaded: 

shell> md5sum package_name

Example: 

shell> md5sum mysql-standard-5.0.91-linux-i686.tar.gz
aaab65abbec64d5e907dcd41b8699945  mysql-standard-5.0.91-linux-i686.tar.gz

You should verify that the resulting checksum (the string of hexadecimal digits) matches the one displayed on the download page immediately below the respective package.

Note

Make sure to verify the checksum of the archive file (for example, the .zip or .tar.gz file) and not of the files that are contained inside of the archive.

Note that not all operating systems support the md5sum command. On some, it is simply called md5, and others do not ship it at all. On Linux, it is part of the GNU Text Utilities package, which is available for a wide range of platforms. You can download the source code from http://www.gnu.org/software/textutils/ as well. If you have OpenSSL installed, you can use the command openssl md5 package_name instead. A Windows implementation of the md5 command line utility is available from http://www.fourmilab.ch/md5/. winMd5Sum is a graphical MD5 checking tool that can be obtained from http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/winmd5sum.


User Comments

Posted by Scott Ziegler on June 8 2005 2:26am[Delete] [Edit]

OS X is one of the aforementioned OSes that is among the 'md5' command group, i.e. it ain't 'md5sum'. (Kinda obvious but you'd be surprised... yes "ain't" is a word.)

Posted by Moby Dick on December 28 2007 7:43pm[Delete] [Edit]

In OS X with tcsh shell md5 works like this:

shell> openssl md5 package_name

Of course, this is assuming that you already are in the directory where the package has been downloaded. Otherwise you should include the corresponding path to the package_name.

MD

Posted by MySQL User on August 24 2008 4:58am[Delete] [Edit]

Microsoft's File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV) is another free checksum utility for Windows operating systems. The fciv.exe download file is named 'Windows-KB841290-x86-ENU.exe'.

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