The link in my sig answers that question. Down around the part about flashing radios and the such. Basically, it's a method, one of MANY, used for checking data integrity. The file is run through a mathematical formula and the output is a string of letters and numbers; what the dev provides. And device with busybox can check an MD5 through terminal or ADB. Apps are also available. I tend to recommend ADB/terminal because it's just faster.Nick.Tbolt said:
What are you talking about? Seems like every time I turn around you're posting some jibberish that makes no sense whatsoever.DeTard said:
Well, I think everyone and their mamma knows if you open up a file, screw with a character or two, and save it, that you'll end up with a different MD5. That's kinda the point of an MD5!!! You don't make any sense because type o's would be factored into an MD5 run on ANY file. Where else would you get an MD5 if not from the file with the type o? I can absolutely promise you EVERY dev knows what an MD5 is and how to properly generate one for his finished work. Any dev worth his salt knows if you edit so much as a single character, a new MD5 is required. You make it sound like if it's wrong it's probably some sloppy dev out there fat-fingering his keyboard. That's RARELY the case. I'm serious because this can mean the difference between bricking your device or not if you're flashing a radio. You're example was nonsensical, unless your point was to illustrate what a corrupted file MD5 might look like.DeTard said:
Never seen a dev post the wrong MD5.DeTard said:The point has been missed. My point wasn't that devs are sloppy and make clumsy mistakes all the time. My point was that if you ever do see an MD5 that is incredibly close to what you were expecting to see, it's more likely a typo than a corrupt download and that you should inquire with the dev and/or others that have downloaded the file. My reasoning for talking about modifying a single character in a large file that was >400MB was to demonstrate that even with something as minuscule as one character off, the whole MD5 will be altered and that if you have a very very close MD5 but not identical, it was a human error, not a bad download. Yes, I agree, you can brick your phone with a bad download. But I also am trying to point out that sometimes it's best to inquire with others than to assume you were the only one receiving a "bad" MD5 hash.
Also, this wasn't an effort to say someone else was wrong. This was to add to understanding that MD5s are calculated on the whole file (or to be more accurate, the whole data). I didn't mean this to turn into a pissing contest. I fully accept that my peen is the smallest.
You have a higher chance of winning a Power Ball lottery than producing the same MD5 from two files, one of which has been randomly corrupted. For the purposes of checking file integrity, MD5 bares no statistically significant shortfalls that would disqualify it from being a highly accurate method of file integrity verification. You make it sound like identical MD5's pop out all the time and it's reliability ought to be questioned. I'm not disputing what you say. I'm saying your information is of such an abstract nature it has no application here. You're talking about issues that are so improbable they don't even deserve consideration for the used at hand.hille141 said:
