SHA-1 checksums provide an assurance that a document downloaded from this
site or others is in fact the original, unmodified document.
All that is necessary is to compare the 40-character checksum given on these
download pages from that generated by a SHA-1 checksum program. If they match,
the file is original and untampered with. If they don't match, the file may have
been modified somewhere.
For
Linux and
Unix systems, the command sha1sum is provided for this purpose.
Simply type
sha1sum -b <filename>
at a command prompt and compare the result to the published value.
For
Windows systems, you'll need to get a program to make the check. A recommended
program is sha1sum.exe, which can be downloaded from our site
sha1sum.exe, or for better security (by using
multiple source), from the gnupg site (
ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/binary/sha1sum.exe). To use the Windows version
of sha1sum.exe, open a command prompt, and type
sha1sum <filename>
at a command prompt and compare the result to the published value.