Definition: Checksum: An acronym for SUMmation CHECK. In data communications, an error-checking technique in which the number of bits in a unit of data is summed, transmitted along with the data, and checked by the receiving computer. If the sum differs, an error probably occurred in transmission and the transmission is repeated. A commonly used personal computer communications protocol called XMODEM uses the checksum technique. In some virus scanning and file integrity software checksums are calculted for every file in a directory and the results are stoed in the directory. When the program is scanningm it compares the checksum information stored in the directory with the current checksum for each scanned file. A difference in the sum may indicate that the file has been infected by a virus that doesn't leave a recognised signature.
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Source: QUECID / Linux Dictionary V 0.16
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Dictionary/html/index.html
Author: Binh Nguyen linuxfilesystem(at)yahoo(dot)com(dot)au
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