Comparing Md5 Of Downloaded Files Against Files On An Sftp Server In Python

Here I am trying to list all the MD5's of the files I downloaded and compare them to the original to see if they are the same Files. I can't access a server to test this code right

Solution 1:

It's an overkill to launch an external console application (ssh) to execute md5sum on the server (and open a new connection for each and every file on top of that), if you already have a native Python SSH connection to the same server.

Instead use SSHClient.exec_command:

stdin, stdout, stderr = c.exec_command('md5sum '+ files1)
checksum = stdout.read()

Note that MD5 is obsolete, use SHA-256 (sha256sum).

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Though question is whether the whole checksum check isn't an overkill, see: How to perform checksums during a SFTP file transfer for data integrity?

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Obligatory warning: Do not use AutoAddPolicy – You are losing a protection against MITM attacks by doing so. For a correct solution, see Paramiko "Unknown Server".