Manage checksums for a directory structure

A shell script around sha256sum, tested Linux and Windows. On Windows, in a Miniforge environment, it needs to be run by a shell interpreter (sh or bash), like this:

sh checksum-dir [<path to create checksums for> | <checksum file>]

Usage

Run checksum-dir [<path to create checksums for> | <checksum file>]

1. Calculates checksums of all files in the given path recursively. The checksums are stored with relative paths in a file 'check_<datetimestamp>.sha256' in the given directory.
2. When verifying checksums, it works with relative paths based on the checksum file location and absolute paths.

Change to the directory to checksum and run the script there ('$' indicates the shell prompt, it's not part of the command):

$ cd .dawn/
$ checksum-dir .
Creating '/home/ingo/.dawn/check_250206144142.sha256':
64c53a48d36274e052885fb4d8c04f51e3f45edda6d08d596b3aa23b4f666537 *./org.eclipse.osgi/.manager/.fileTable.2
d5ee4cb634e5381df0678d0e6628e82c7915b8c508b307f0864ff42b23502f64 *./org.eclipse.osgi/.manager/.fileTable.1
5901e6933874c7b8f3ff032eefb0f7ead8c0794eb7135d74d3b4413eb170d9d4 *./org.eclipse.osgi/framework.info.1
4c2fddf5208b747d0a1a4c808efc1fa662a57751f3c589ab6e9fe238ca6c730d *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.table.1
b0912c3816220a45077e651f4b18f477f562a262be4e67719582338389edb3d8 *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.manager/.fileTable.8
00810eba738b4ff11f442b6e6de9ca5714b8f13d789b04633b4590938410ca55 *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.manager/.fileTable.7
a346de00c1e4d756dddab897fa58c83859fe58bc964b8119160e0ee20df3218d *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.extraData.1
7a3c8416f5442595a3d470336eaa95d01336867ac390f1225b7af905a204bcd0 *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.contributions.1
b65e15a186b2f3450a2ade3ac0f223483ca696d87668f09c9837dc54b53ff82a *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.namespaces.1
d70677954e00d5256809e003a3f08842feb233a6e9e43899c3a2afe105437f51 *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.mainData.1
c1c29e104bb2102ae714bbdd68c1171682ec31beb0fae136c04c3c78abbef9bc *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.contributors.1
96a19174d3246c958053b5eb62ab594350cfba7ba97553e1f7a528744bd1a051 *./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.orphans.1
a2f678a4f4fd38ff2afd483ed9227f7f86f7f71fb979979965d2c666db0f7bc9 *./config.ini
526b190306b08b9869c458d20d8f258913686319f1ab5871866cc20ecf015374 *./org.eclipse.update/platform.xml
$ ls -la
total 32K
drwxrwx---  6 ingo ingo 4,0K Feb  6 14:41 .
drwxr-x--- 28 ingo ingo 4,0K Feb  6 14:19 ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 ingo ingo 1,5K Feb  6 14:41 check_250206144142.sha256
-rw-rw----  1 ingo ingo  104 Jul 28  2022 config.ini
drwxrwx---  3 ingo ingo 4,0K Jul 28  2022 org.eclipse.core.runtime
drwxrwx---  3 ingo ingo 4,0K Jul 28  2022 org.eclipse.equinox.app
drwxrwx---  3 ingo ingo 4,0K Jul 28  2022 org.eclipse.osgi
drwxrwx---  2 ingo ingo 4,0K Jul 28  2022 org.eclipse.update

Check the directory and all its files by calling the script with the checksum file as argument from anywhere:

$ cd /
$ checksum-dir ~/.dawn/check_250206144142.sha256
Verifying checksums from '/home/ingo/.dawn/check_250206144142.sha256':
All good!

If there was an error:

$ checksum-dir ~/.dawn/check_250206144142.sha256
Verifying checksums from '/home/ingo/.dawn/check_250206144142.sha256':
./org.eclipse.core.runtime/.extraData.1: FAILED
sha256sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match

Install (on Linux)

Clone this repo first, to get the file:

cd $HOME
mkdir -p code && cd code # or another source code directory
git clone https://github.com/BAMresearch/checksum-dir.git

Link to the script in a directory which is in your $PATH, /usr/local/bin for system-wide availablity here:

cd /usr/local/bin
sudo ln -s $HOME/code/checksum-dir/checksum-dir .