FreeBSD manual
download PDF document: cksum.1.pdf
CKSUM(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual CKSUM(1)
NAME
cksum, sum - display file checksums and block counts
SYNOPSIS
cksum [-o 1 | 2 | 3] [file ...]
sum [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The cksum utility writes to the standard output three whitespace
separated fields for each input file. These fields are a checksum CRC,
the total number of octets in the file and the file name. If no file
name is specified, the standard input is used and no file name is
written.
The sum utility is identical to the cksum utility, except that it
defaults to using historic algorithm 1, as described below. It is
provided for compatibility only.
The options are as follows:
-o Use historic algorithms instead of the (superior) default one.
Algorithm 1 is the algorithm used by historic BSD systems as the
sum(1) algorithm and by historic AT&T System V UNIX systems as
the sum(1) algorithm when using the -r option. This is a 16-bit
checksum, with a right rotation before each addition; overflow is
discarded.
Algorithm 2 is the algorithm used by historic AT&T System V UNIX
systems as the default sum(1) algorithm. This is a 32-bit
checksum, and is defined as follows:
s = sum of all bytes;
r = s % 2^16 + (s % 2^32) / 2^16;
cksum = (r % 2^16) + r / 2^16;
Algorithm 3 is what is commonly called the `32bit CRC' algorithm.
This is a 32-bit checksum.
Both algorithm 1 and 2 write to the standard output the same
fields as the default algorithm except that the size of the file
in bytes is replaced with the size of the file in blocks. For
historic reasons, the block size is 1024 for algorithm 1 and 512
for algorithm 2. Partial blocks are rounded up.
The default CRC used is based on the polynomial used for CRC error
checking in the networking standard ISO 8802-3: 1989. The CRC checksum
encoding is defined by the generating polynomial:
G(x) = x^32 + x^26 + x^23 + x^22 + x^16 + x^12 +
x^11 + x^10 + x^8 + x^7 + x^5 + x^4 + x^2 + x + 1
Mathematically, the CRC value corresponding to a given file is defined by
the following procedure:
The n bits to be evaluated are considered to be the coefficients of
a mod 2 polynomial M(x) of degree n-1. These n bits are the bits
M(x) is multiplied by x^32 (i.e., shifted left 32 bits) and divided
by G(x) using mod 2 division, producing a remainder R(x) of degree
<= 31.
The coefficients of R(x) are considered to be a 32-bit sequence.
The bit sequence is complemented and the result is the CRC.
EXIT STATUS
The cksum and sum utilities exit 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
md5(1)
The default calculation is identical to that given in pseudo-code in the
following ACM article.
Dilip V. Sarwate, "Computation of Cyclic Redundancy Checks Via Table
Lookup", Communications of the Tn ACM, August 1988.
STANDARDS
The cksum utility is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.2-1992
("POSIX.2").
HISTORY
The cksum utility appeared in 4.4BSD.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 April 28, 1995 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11