How can I recursively list Md5sum of all the files in a directory and its subdirectories?

Question

I want to list (and save) Md5 check sum of all the files in a directory and save that list in a text file called md5sum.txt

it would be also nice if I could

• Integrate it within tree command (which creates a tree structure of folders and files)
• Make it work on Folders and Sub folders (this is sort of important)

Solution 1

You could use find (in the directory)

find -type f -exec md5sum '{}' \; > md5sum.txt

If you want to exclude the md5sum.txt file itself, you can do so:

find -type f \( -not -name "md5sum.txt" \) -exec md5sum '{}' \; > md5sum.txt

You can also use a loop: turn on recursive globbing

shopt -s globstar

Then, in the directory:

for i in **; do [[ -f "$i" ]] && md5sum "$i" >> md5sum.txt; done

You can exclude the file itself from this one as well:

for i in **; do 
  [[ -f "$i" ]] && 
  [[ md5sum.txt != "$i" ]] && 
  md5sum "$i" >> md5sum.txt
done

Neither of these produces a tree-like structure. But they do print the relative path to the file from the starting directory. If you want the absolute path, use find /path/to/directory ...

You might want to turn off globstar afterwards (shopt -u globstar)

Solution 2

You can execute the following command:

md5sum /path/to/directory/* > /path_to_result/md5sum.txt

The output in the result file will be something like that:

46684e3891d990acde2e723ee3d4e94a  /var/log/alternatives.log
39cf1ebf93452ed5f8b240b35ae73f9f  /var/log/alternatives.log.1
aa6c09c411d1d0870bca5f401d589332  /var/log/alternatives.log.2.gz

Comments

[mivk]

For separate checksum files for each subfolder, see also this answer

[Anwar]

this also creates md5sum of the md5sum.txt file itself. would be nice it wasn't

[Anwar]

Doesn't work if there is a directory. Says md5sum: /path_to_dir: Is a directory

[Zanna]

@Anwar see edit for slightly cumbersome exclusion ^_^

[Anwar]

Ah! seen it. I better one line in a huge md5sum.txt then extra 5 lines of code. Anyway, thank

[Yaron]

@Anwar running md5sum /path_to_dir/* will execute md5sum on every file in the directory

[Anwar]

What about the other files inside subdirectories?

[Yaron]

@Anwar - it won't work on sub-directories (which was defined as nice to have in the question)

[Anwar]

but I see this added to the edition, this is sort of important

[user1985553]

can always do: "> ../md5sum.txt" to ensure that the file doesn't get included in the result

[SmallChess]

This doesn't answer the question at all.

[Roland Pihlakas]

For binary files don't forget to add -b after the md5sum command.

[george]

this is all wrong.