Sha1sum


' is a computer program that calculates and verifies SHA-1 hashes. It is commonly used to verify the integrity of files. It is installed by default in most Linux distributions. Variants include ', ', ', ' and ', which use a specific SHA-2 hash function, and . Versions for Microsoft Windows also exist, and the ActivePerl distribution includes a Perl implementation of. On FreeBSD and OpenBSD the utilities are called,,, and. These versions offer slightly different options and features. Additionally, FreeBSD offers the "SKEIN" family of message digests.
The SHA-1 variants are proven vulnerable to collision attacks, and users should use, for example, a SHA-2 variant such as instead to prevent tampering by an adversary.
It is included in GNU Core Utilities, Busybox and Toybox.

Examples

To create a file with an sha1 hash in it, if one is not provided:

$ sha1sum filename ... > SHA1SUM

If distributing one file, ".sha1" may be appended to the filename e.g.:

$ sha1sum --binary my-zip.tar.gz > my-zip.tar.gz.sha1

The output contains one line per file of the form " SPACE ". For example:

$ sha1sum -b my-zip.tar.gz
d5db29cd03a2ed055086cef9c31c252b4587d6d0 *my-zip.tar.gz
$ sha1sum -b subdir/filename2
55086cef9c87d6d031cd5db29cd03a2ed0252b45 *subdir/filename2

To verify that a file was downloaded correctly or that it has not been tampered with:

$ sha1sum -c SHA1SUM
filename: OK
filename2: OK
$ sha1sum -c my-zip.tar.gz.sha1
my-zip.tar.gz: OK

Hash file trees

can only create checksums of one or multiple files inside a directory, but not of a directory tree, i.e. of subdirectories, sub-subdirectories, etc. and the files they contain. This is possible by using in combination with the find command with the option, or by piping the output from into xargs. can create checksums of a directory tree.
To use with :

$ find s_* -type f -exec sha1sum '' \;
65c23f142ff6bcfdddeccebc0e5e63c41c9c1721 s_1/file_s11
d3d59905cf5fc930cd4bf5b709d5ffdbaa9443b2 s_2/file_s21
5590e00ea904568199b86aee4b770fb1b5645ab8 s_a/file_02

Likewise, piping the output from into yields the same output:

$ find s_* -type f | xargs sha1sum
65c23f142ff6bcfdddeccebc0e5e63c41c9c1721 s_1/file_s11
d3d59905cf5fc930cd4bf5b709d5ffdbaa9443b2 s_2/file_s21
5590e00ea904568199b86aee4b770fb1b5645ab8 s_a/file_02