How to Check MD5SUM of Downloads – Reader Questions

Steve emailed asking:

“…because all the DVDs I was burning were useless. Thanks for helping with that, only thing, how do I check the md5sum stuff? Should there be a separate file showing what it is? Where do I find what it’s supposed to be? Thanks for…”

This is a common occurrence, we download a CD or DVD, only to find that it’s not working properly. I learned the hard way, ALWAYS check the md5sum BEFORE burning the iso!

1) The MD5SUM of any downloads (from Ubuntu) can be seen in the directory you download from: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/

Using Steve’s example (he was downloading Ubuntu 9.04 AMD64 Bit version), he’d surf to: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/release/ On that page will be a link to a file that says “MD5SUMS”. Clicking on that file (link) will display the following:

87babeda6724c3ea583534b53a9255c5 *ubuntu-9.04-dvd-amd64.iso
cca45d814048b5b322773561ad7c75d8 *ubuntu-9.04-dvd-i386.iso
60136ddda63d9e4c342013d5a71f4c9c *ubuntu-9.04-mid-lpia.img

So, the correct md5sum for the AMD64 iso is 87babeda6724c3ea583534b53a9255c5

That’s the first step.

2) To check the md5sum of the iso you just downloaded, open a terminal and “cd” to the directory that contains your iso file (or include the full path to the file in your command). Once in the directory containing the iso (using the above example of the AMD64 iso), run your command using the following syntax:

md5sum ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso

There will be a long pause, then your terminal will look something like below:

roger@ubuntubox:~$ cd iso
roger@ubuntubox:~/iso$ md5sum ubuntu-9.04-dvd-amd64.iso
87babeda6724c3ea583534b53a9255c5  ubuntu-9.04-dvd-amd64.iso
roger@ubuntubox:~/iso$

If the returned md5sum does not match the one listed on the Ubuntu site, then do not burn the iso and download a new one again. Sometimes funny things happen during transmission of data.

Hope this helps some of you out!