What is an MD5-Sum?
An md5 checksum is like the fingerprint of a file, with which you can verify that the file being checked is in its original state, that is, without errors or tampering.
- Windows users may need to download this program, available from here: md5com info∞
and copy the program into the windows directory, normally: C:\Windows
- Linux users have this program in their distribution already (in 99% of all cases)
To use this program: open a shell (Linux) or a Windows prompt, go to the directory where the file you want to check is located, and type the following (for example you want to check Kanotix 2005-03)
md5sum KANOTIX-2005-03.iso
It may take some time calculating the md5sum, it varies from computer to computer. As output you will get the md5sum. Now you should check if the generated md5sum and the Kanotix-md5sum are the same. If the md5's are the same your file is ok; otherwise, it could be erroneous.
Here are the md5sums for the Kanotix releases:
c85b7c58fdea95dd127fef9db7e12806 *KANOTIX-2005-01.iso
fa61a6e51b46db07184f69dc4fc6d323 *KANOTIX-2005-02.iso
4382c5fc84d1f0ee477dca29b46d097c *KANOTIX-2005-03.iso
c10e91895ad111553a6ad765c16f17a1 *KANOTIX-2006-Easter-RC4.iso
187045288e0108a38e09642b78583c0d *KANOTIX-2006-VDR-RC6.iso
If you download the .md5 file, you can test the ISO easily with
this works only if both files are in the same directory
:de: Md5Sum