---
name: "deb-md5sums"
section: "5"
platform: "linux"
package: "dpkg"
version: "1.23.11-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/deb-md5sums"
---

# deb-md5sums(5)

package MD5 file digests

## NAME

deb-md5sums - package MD5 file digests

## SYNOPSIS

**DEBIAN/md5sums**

## DESCRIPTION

A package declares the MD5 digests for the package file contents by including an *md5sums* file in its control archive (i.e. *DEBIAN/md5sums* during package creation). This file is used for integrity verification and deduplication purposes, and not for any kind of security purpose.

This file contains a list of MD5 digests (as 32 case-insensitive hexadecimal characters) followed by two spaces (U+0020 **SPACE**) and the absolute pathname of a plain file, one per line.

Trailing slashes (U+002F **/**) in the pathname will be trimmed. Neither trailing whitespace nor empty or whitespace-only lines are accepted.

If the control file does not exist in the binary package, [**dpkg**(1)](/dpkg/1.md) will generate the matching information at unpack time (since **dpkg** 1.16.3).

## EXAMPLE

```
 53c0d4afe4bc4eccb5cb234d2e06ef4d  usr/bin/dpkg
 f8da2bc74cdcad8b81c48a4f0d7bb0a8  usr/bin/dpkg-deb
 70b913132de56e95e75de504979309b4  usr/bin/dpkg-divert
 […]
```

## SEE ALSO

[**md5sum**(1)](/md5sum/1.md), [**dpkg-deb**(1)](/dpkg-deb/1.md), [**dpkg**(1)](/dpkg/1.md).