Subject: Re: why doesn't NetBSD ship with md5sum or sha1sum?
To: Jukka Salmi <j+nbsd@2006.salmi.ch>
From: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 04/20/2006 09:45:48
On Thu, 20 Apr 2006, Jukka Salmi wrote:

> I wonder why the BSD checksum tools don't offer an option similar
> to the `-c <file>' option the coreutils tools have to check files
> against a list of filename-checksum tuples. I think this is quite
> useful...

Yes, it is useful.

As a similar feature, mtree(1) can do the same thing.

The format of the "list of filename-checksum tuples" is different, but 
works the same.

In fact, mtree is a lot better because it can check multiple checksums, 
hashes, and various other attributes.

For example to build a specification:

  mtree -c -p /etc -k md5 > etc.mtree.list

(Note that mtree will stop if it doesn't have permissions so the list will 
be incomplete if you run as a normal user. Maybe there is an option or 
could be an option to continue on errors -- such as no permission.)

Then to check:

  mtree -f etc.mtree.list -p /etc

Have a look at the -k and -K  flags...

 Jeremy C. Reed

echo '9,J8HD,fDGG8B@?:536FC5=8@I;C5?@H5B0D@5GBIELD54DL>@8L?:5GDEJ8LDG1' |\
sed ss,s50EBsg | tr 0-M 'p.wBt SgiIlxmLhan:o,erDsduv/cyP'