How to verify your Ubuntu download

While we hope you can usually trust your Ubuntu download, it is definitely reassuring to be able to verify that the image you have downloaded is not corrupted in some way, and also that it is an authentic image that hasn’t been tampered with.

What you’ll learn

• How to use gpg tools to verify the authenticity of a file
• How to use sha256 tools to verify the integrity of a file

What you’ll need

• Access to the command line gpg tools
• Internet access to download the signatures

Originally authored by Canonical Web Team

The key executables you will require are sha256sum, md5sum and gpg.

For Ubuntu

These are part of the coreutils and gnupg packages, which are installed by default.

For Windows

If you are using bash on Windows 10 (why on earth not? See this tutorial), these tools are part of the default install.

For macOS

You can install the latest GnuPG using Homebrew:

brew install gnupg

The sha256sum program and other useful utilities are provided by coreutils:

brew install coreutils

For other versions of Linux

Your mileage may vary, but these are standard tools included and enabled by default in most systems. If you don’t have them, check with your package manager and search for the executable names given above.

All versions - check the commands are working!

You can check the commands work as expected by running the following:

gpg --list-keys

If this is the first time you have run gpg, this will create a trust database for the current user.

md5sum --version
sha256sum --version

Both these commands should output some version information. Now we have the tools we need, we can move on to finding and downloading the files we need

Alongside the actual ISO files containing the Ubuntu image you downloaded, all Ubuntu mirrors publish some extra files. The ones we are interested in are called:

SHA256SUMS                                    
SHA256SUMS.gpg  

It is usually convenient to download these at the same time as downloading the distro. However, if you didn’t, not to worry - the checksums and the signature are consistent for the image, so even if you downloaded your ISO file from a different source, as long as it is fresh and hasn’t been updated in the interim, you can fetch these files from the http://releases.ubuntu.com page for the relevant release. You will usually find the relevant files on the top of the directory listing.

The SHA256SUMS file contains checksums for all the available images (you can check this by opening the file) where a checksum exists - development and beta versions sometimes do not generate new checksums for each release.

The SHA256SUMS.gpg file is the GnuPG signature for that file. In the next step we will use this signature file to verify the checksum file.

Depending on your platform, you may or may not need to download the public key used to authenticate the checksum file (Ubuntu and most variants come with the relevant keys pre-installed). The easiest way to find out if you need the key is to run the authentication command:

gpg --keyid-format long --verify SHA256SUMS.gpg SHA256SUMS

We use GnuPG’s “long” (64-bit) key IDs throughout this tutorial, since “short” (32-bit) key IDs are insecure.

If you don’t have the keys…

If there is no public key for Ubuntu already present, you will get an error message similar to the following:

gpg: Signature made Thu Apr  5 22:19:36 2018 EDT
                    using DSA key ID 46181433FBB75451
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Thu Apr  5 22:19:36 2018 EDT
                    using RSA key ID D94AA3F0EFE21092
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key

This is actually a really useful message, as it tells us which key or keys were used to generate the signature file. Knowing these ID numbers (46181433FBB75451 and D94AA3F0EFE21092 in the example), means we can request them from the Ubuntu key server.

This is done with the following command. Note that the ID numbers are hexadecimal, so we prefix them with 0x:

gpg --keyid-format long --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 0x46181433FBB75451 0xD94AA3F0EFE21092

This command should retrieve the keys we want and add them to your keyring. You should see a message like this:

gpg: requesting key 46181433FBB75451 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: requesting key D94AA3F0EFE21092 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: /root/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key 46181433FBB75451: public key "Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key <cdimage@ubuntu.com>" imported
gpg: key D94AA3F0EFE21092: public key "Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key (2012) <cdimage@ubuntu.com>" imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 2
gpg:               imported: 2  (RSA: 1)

You can now inspect the key fingerprints by running:

gpg --keyid-format long --list-keys --with-fingerprint 0x46181433FBB75451 0xD94AA3F0EFE21092

…which should produce the following output:

pub   dsa1024/46181433FBB75451 2004-12-30 [SC]
      Key fingerprint = C598 6B4F 1257 FFA8 6632  CBA7 4618 1433 FBB7 5451
uid                  Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key <cdimage@ubuntu.com>

pub   rsa4096/D94AA3F0EFE21092 2012-05-11 [SC]
      Key fingerprint = 8439 38DF 228D 22F7 B374  2BC0 D94A A3F0 EFE2 1092
uid                  Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key (2012) <cdimage@ubuntu.com>

Now you can verify the checksum file using the signature.

gpg --keyid-format long --verify SHA256SUMS.gpg SHA256SUMS

This time the command should return something like this:

gpg: Signature made Fri 25 Mar 04:36:20 2016 GMT
                    using DSA key ID 46181433FBB75451
gpg: Good signature from "Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key <cdimage@ubuntu.com>" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: C598 6B4F 1257 FFA8 6632  CBA7 4618 1433 FBB7 5451
gpg: Signature made Fri 25 Mar 04:36:20 2016 GMT
                    using RSA key ID D94AA3F0EFE21092
gpg: Good signature from "Ubuntu CD Image Automatic Signing Key (2012) <cdimage@ubuntu.com>" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 8439 38DF 228D 22F7 B374  2BC0 D94A A3F0 EFE2 1092

A Good signature means that the checked file was definitely signed by the owner of the keyfile stated (if they didn’t match, the signature would be reported as BAD). The warning message is simply there to let you know that you have not countersigned the key and it isn’t in your list of trusted sources. If you want to know more about signing keys and trust, you can check out the Ubuntu community GPG wiki page.

Now that we have verified the checksum file was created by Ubuntu, we can check that the ISO file we downloaded matches the checksum.

Now you need to generate a sha256 checksum for the downloaded ISO and compare it to the one you downloaded in your SHA256SUM file.

Make sure the downloaded the SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.gpg files are in the same directory as the Ubuntu ÌSO file. Then run the following commands in a terminal.

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS 2>&1 | grep OK

The output you want will look similar to the following:

ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso: OK

If you get no results (or any result other than that shown above) then the ISO file does not match the checksum. This could be because the ISO has been altered, or it downloaded incorrectly - either way you should download a fresh ISO from a known good source.

Now you know you have a good ISO image, you can burn it to a DVD or copy it to a bootable USB stick to install or try Ubuntu!

Here are a few more tutorials you may want to look at:

• How to burn a DVD on Ubuntu, Windows or macOS
• How to create a bootable USB stick on Ubuntu, Windows or macOS
• Trying out Ubuntu before you install
• How to install Ubuntu

Finding help

If you get stuck, help is always at hand.

• Ask Ubuntu
• Ubuntu Forums
• IRC-based support