Verify your download using md5sum

The situation: Often I found the md5sum term everytime I want to download softwares. At first I didn't even care what md5sum is. Ok, forget about it for a while...and talking of download, which there is one thing that annoys me regarding download and corrupted download file =.=

The Problem: How ? Eg I want to download ISO image for Knoppix Linux. After I download it, then (of course) without any question i will burn it. But it is only after burning and verifying the download, I realized it is a corrupted ISO file. There goes $1.00 of my CD-R.

The Solution: Up until now, I appreciate the md5sum, or MD5 checksum or MD hash . It is a command that can be used in terminal to verify download either it is the exact same copy (not corrupted) as in the mirror server... or it is already somehow corrupted during download process.

Open the terminal and navigate to the directory where the downloaded file is located. Type in the following command:

me@localhost:~#: md5um downloadedfile.tar.gz

...where downloadedfile.tar.gz is the file you've downloaded. Later the terminal will display the md5 hash number. verify whether it is the same as the one provided in download page. Good luck. =)