CKSUM(1)

📦
version 0.12.0 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 CKSUM — no cap, it's giving checksum royalty 💖

okay bestie, welcome to cksum (that's the manual name, the icon, the moment) from the General Commands Manual. sit down, grab a strawberry, and let's get into it ✨

🦋 NAME 🦋

cksum — print CRC and size for each file. that's the whole job. humble. iconic. periodt 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

cksum [OPTIONS] [FILE]...

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Print CRC and size for each file. yeah that's literally it and honestly? she ate. you hand her files, she hands you back a CRC and a size, no drama, no sketchy vibes 🌈

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -a, --algorithm <ALGORITHM> — picks which digest type you're running with. peep DIGEST down below for the whole tea ☕

possible values, all of them, not skipping a single one:

  • sysv
  • bsd
  • crc
  • crc32b
  • md5
  • sha1
  • sha2
  • sha3
  • blake2b
  • sm3
  • sha224
  • sha256
  • sha384
  • sha512
  • blake3
  • shake128
  • shake256
  • --untagged — makes a reversed style checksum, and drops the digest type. no label, just vibes 🫶
  • --tag — makes a BSD style checksum. and bestie, this one is the default 👑
  • -l, --length — digest length in bits. listen closely: it must not exceed the max size, and for blake2b it must be a multiple of 8. for sha2 or sha3 it must be 224, 256, 384, or 512. no improvising 💀
  • --raw — emit a raw binary digest, not hexadecimal. wild energy, honestly 🙈
  • -c, --check — read checksums from the FILEs and check them. the "wait, is this file still the same file?" mode 🔍
  • -w, --warn — warns you about improperly formatted checksum lines. she's looking out for you fr fr 💜
  • --status — doesn't output anything at all; the status code is the whole story, showing success. silent main character energy 🎀
  • --quiet — stops printing OK for every single file that verified successfully. for when the celebrating gets loud 😭
  • --ignore-missing — doesn't fail and doesn't report status for missing files. ghosting, but politely 🦋
  • --strict — exits non-zero for improperly formatted checksum lines. zero tolerance, no crumbs 🌟
  • --base64 — emits base64-encoded digests, not hexadecimal. a whole different lewk 💅
  • -z, --zero — ends each output line with NUL, not newline, and disables file name escaping. chaotic but make it precise 🌈
  • --debug — prints CPU hardware capability detection info used by cksum. nerd mode activated, and I mean that as the highest compliment 🔥
  • -h, --help — print help 🫶
  • -V, --version — print version ⭐

🌈 EXTRA 🌈

so DIGEST is the thing that decides both the digest algorithm and the default output format. here's the full mapping, every single line:

  • sysv: equivalent to sum -s
  • bsd: equivalent to sum -r
  • crc: equivalent to cksum
  • crc32b: only available through cksum
  • md5: equivalent to md5sum
  • sha1: equivalent to sha1sum
  • sha2: equivalent to sha{224,256,384,512}sum
  • sha3: only available through cksum
  • blake2b: equivalent to b2sum
  • sm3: only available through cksum

👑 VERSION 👑

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

💖 EXAMPLES 💖

display a 32-bit checksum, size in bytes and filename:

cksum path/to/file

okay important bestie note 🫶 the examples are provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. and please remember: as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail. we're all growing together 💜

and that's the page!! genuinely obsessed with her. go checksum something, you absolute icon 💅✨

signing off — this was cksum from uutils coreutils, version 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-25. mwah 🎀💖🌟

📦 where this page comes from