Re: man page md5sum

[Bob Proulx]

> I don't understand the --check option in the manpage
> It reads as:
> 
> md5sum [OPTION] --check [FILE]
> 
> and adds as  a dwscription:
> 
>  -c, --check
>               check MD5 sums against given list
> 
> The question is: How to tell the program where this list is.

The part of that line that says [FILE] signifies that [FILE] is to be
replaced with the name of your check file.

> It is not mentioned in the manpage, so I have to guess.

I think you are looking right at it and not seeing it.

> Indeed ftp-providers provide tarr-balls & bz2-balls with a accompaigning (is 
> that spelled correct?) file with a list of md5sums.

accompanying

> You can only do a visual comparison of the output of 
> md5sum-with-your-downloaded-file & the numbers given on the site of the 
> provider. 
> e.g. 
> http://pan.rebelbase.com/download/0.11.1.93/SOURCE/

The md5sum.txt file provided at that location is in standard form.
You can use md5sum to check them against the downloaded files with the
following command.

  md5sum --check md5sum.txt 
  pan-0.11.1.93.tar.bz2: OK

However, normally you would only download one of the files, either the
tar.bz2 file or the tar.gz file but not both.  They are the same file
just compressed using different compression programs.

[And gratuitous editorial remark is that it is silly for the author to
use bz2 to get smaller compression and then take up more disk space by
proving the gz version as well.  Just pick one or the other!]

> Hope you will provide a better manpage.

As the man page noted you need to look at the 'info md5sum'
documentation for the full documentation on the program.  The man page
is automatically generated from the --help output of the program with
help2man making it a good quick syntax reference.

Bob