deb-md5sums(5) dpkg suite deb-md5sums(5)

# [NAME](#NAME)

deb-md5sums - package MD5 file digests

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

**DEBIAN/md5sums**

# [DESCRIPTION](#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)](/man/os/dpkg/dpkg.1) will generate the matching information at unpack time (since **dpkg** 1.16.3).

# [EXAMPLE](#EXAMPLE)

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

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

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

2026-09-09 1.23.11-dirty

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Document: deb-md5sums(5) from dpkg 1.23.11-r0 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git