Introduction

Use this md5sum recipe to confirm the that two directories are exactly the same.

As of 2025 there’s more efficient tools that have less chance of collision. I’ll update once I check.

Usage

Verify directory copy by md5 summing each file and then creating a single md5sum from the list.

If you see the error, "find: md5sum: No such file or directory", then you've not installed md5sum properly,

find -s "source directory" -type f -exec md5sum {} \; | md5sum > source.md5.txt
find -s "target directory" -type f -exec md5sum {} \; | md5sum > target.md5.txt
diff source.md5.txt target.md5.txt

Note this script can be improved to detect failed directory listing.

Another way of doing the same thing,

find -s "source directory" -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} > source.md5.txt
find -s "target directory" -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} > target.md5.txt
diff source.md5.txt target.md5.txt

References

md5 entire folder - http://www.cnet.com/news/how-to-manually-verify-copied-files-in-os-x/

www.bonsaiframework.com

md5sum

Introduction

Usage

References

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