Public bug reported:
Copied verbatim from a really old upstream wishlist request on mkisofs. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=338830 Ubuntu CDs presumably pre-calculate the MD5SUMs before putting the file in the iso, but as this feature request states: it is wasteful to have to read all the files once to generate the checksum and then again to generate the iso, it'd be good to support on-the-fly creation. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM#MD5SUM%20on%20CD --- It is very convenient to be able to check that the contents of a CD or DVD are still intact by having an md5sum.txt file at the root of the filesystem. Creating the file can, however, be somewhat cumbersome, and also requires reading all the data twice: once for generating the checksums, then to generate the disk image. It would be wonderful if mkisofs could do it on the fly. Something like this: mkisofs -checksum-file md5sum.txt -checksum-type md5 ... Obviously it would be good to be able to specify other checksum types than MD5, but even just that would be good enough: this feature is meant for checking that there is no disk corruption, not as a safeguard against tampering or counterfeiting, and MD5 is certainly good enough to detect corruption. I would not even be against creating the checksum file automatically, unless there is already a file by that name, but this may be too fancy for many people. To clarify, since someone asked me about this on irc: the point of the checksum file is to make it possible to check that a disk and its files are still working after, say, the disk has been stored for several years in a cabinet or used as the cat's scratching post. If there is a proper md5sum.txt file one can do this: cd /cdrom && md5sum -c md5sum.txt That's quite a convenient way of doing it. ** Affects: cdrkit (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- genisoimage: add feature to create md5sum.txt/sha1sum.txt/other checksum file https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/481866 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
