Hi, the hashsum check files like sha256sum would be quite usefull (and improve security), if they could easily be used within shellscripts to verify downloads. E.g. Ubuntu provides signed hash files like
http://releases.ubuntu.com/precise/SHA256SUMS http://releases.ubuntu.com/precise/SHA256SUMS.gpg But one rarely downloads all files, only the needed ones. Unfortunately, sha256sum prints warnings and exits with exit status 1 when files are missing, even when the present files are correct. This makes checking the files more difficult in shellscripts and might keep most script authors from checking downloads. It would be significantly more usefull and thus more secure if the *sum commands had an additional option to not report missing files as an error and to verify just the present files. regards Hadmut
