MD5 Checksum

I came across a neat program that calculates MD5 Sums and you can also use it to verify programs that you downloaded. They must provide you with a pre-calculated MD5 Key. The program is called MD5sums 1.2 and you can download on the following website pc-tools.net - MD5sums 1.2.

Every IOS/NXOS image that you download from the Cisco website has an MD5 key associated with it. It is crucial that you validate the key before you upload the image onto a device and after you upload the image onto the device.  I will explain how to do this.

You will need the MD5 Key from the Cisco website before you download the image, below you can see how the Cisco website clearly displays the MD5 key. In our case the key -is eb7d5b53ca697b82ea68e33ddc0462a7.(See figure 1)  Once you download the MD5 program and the Cisco image, you need to drag and drop the image onto the executable file and it will display the MD5 key that should match the one from the Cisco website. In our case it does (See figure 2)




Figure 1





Figure 2

 

Now we can upload this image onto our cisco router or switch. One the file is uploaded, you can perform the same check within the device.

Verifying the image on the switch/router:

3750Device#verify /md5 flash:c3750-ipservicesk9-mz.122-55.SE5.bin eb7d5b53ca697b82ea68e33ddc0462a7
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verify /md5 (flash:c3750-ipservicesk9-mz.122-55.SE5.bin) = eb7d5b53ca697b82ea68e33ddc0462a7



The = sign confirms the MD5 Hash matches.