deb-md5sums(5)

💅 deb-md5sums — the package's MD5 file digests ✨

okay bestie, this is a page from the dpkg suite — deb-md5sums(5), no cap. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

deb-md5sums — package MD5 file digests. that's it, that's the vibe check.

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

DEBIAN/md5sums

literally the whole synopsis. iconic behavior honestly 👑

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so a package declares the MD5 digests for the package file contents by including an md5sums file in its control archive — like, that's DEBIAN/md5sums during package creation, iykyk. ✨

and like, what is this file for? it's used for integrity verification and deduplication purposes — and not for any kind of security purpose. 🚨 read that again, bestie. do not come for this file's security life, it is not that girl. it's just here for integrity checks and dedup, periodt.

this file contains a list of MD5 digests — as 32 case-insensitive hexadecimal characters — followed by two spaces (U+0020 SPACE) and the absolute pathname of a plain file, one per line. 🎀

trailing slashes (U+002F /) in the pathname will be trimmed. and heads up, neither trailing whitespace nor empty or whitespace-only lines are accepted. 🙈 the file is picky, and honestly? same.

lowkey important: if the control file does not exist in the binary package, dpkg(1) will generate the matching information at unpack time — since dpkg 1.16.3. so it's giving self-sufficient 👑

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🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

 53c0d4afe4bc4eccb5cb234d2e06ef4d  usr/bin/dpkg
f8da2bc74cdcad8b81c48a4f0d7bb0a8  usr/bin/dpkg-deb
70b913132de56e95e75de504979309b4  usr/bin/dpkg-divert
[…]

the […] at the end is literally the file going "and the rest of the list, you get it" 💀

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• md5sum(1)
• dpkg-deb(1)
• dpkg(1)

go read those if you're obsessed with the pipeline, which… same 🫶

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💀 one final reminder because I love you: this is not for any kind of security purpose. integrity verification and deduplication only, no cap. don't make it something it's not.

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aaand that's the page, bestie! 🎀 this one's from the dpkg suite, version 1.23.11-dirty, dated 2026-09-09 — and it's deb-md5sums(5) forever and always. slay, stay cursed, keep your digests lowercase (or don't, it's case-insensitive 💅). 💜