Fingerprint Documentation

  1. Introduction
  2. Installation
  3. Generating Fingerprints
  4. Comparing Fingerprints
  5. Archival Usage
  6. Data Preservation
  7. Data Transmission
  8. Backup Integrity
  9. Security Tripwire
  10. Cryptographic Sealing
  11. Notarizing
  12. Final Words

Fingerprint can compare two fingerprints and tell you the difference. Specifically, fingerprint is interested in files that have been tampered with or gone missing:

$ echo "Hello World" > /tmp/foobar
$ fingerprint /tmp/ > /tmp/before.fingerprint

$ echo "Hello World." > /tmp/foobar
$ fingerprint /tmp/ > /tmp/after.fingerprint

-- Compare the two fingerprints
$ fingerprint -c /tmp/before.fingerprint /tmp/after.fingerprint 
W ./foobar
	changes.file.size.new 13
	changes.file.size.old 12
	changes.key.MD5.new 770b95bb61d5b0406c135b6e42260580
	changes.key.MD5.old e59ff97941044f85df5297e1c302d260
	changes.key.SHA2.256.new bf059f3112049d7299f9dc39397fe721c560e790611bfdc163adadbebb4e9ca9
	changes.key.SHA2.256.old d2a84f4b8b650937ec8f73cd8be2c74add5a911ba64df27458ed8229da804a26
	error.code keys_different
	error.message Key SHA2.256 does not match
W ./before.fingerprint
	changes.file.size.new 1049
	changes.file.size.old 0
	changes.key.MD5.new ed5593682c6ac6bb63bee56ceb471fa1
	changes.key.MD5.old d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
	changes.key.SHA2.256.new 9e0cb06c72f2e1842252c57e2afdf4d7eb2b09d6cf75dcc3892e66b68e2ca91d
	changes.key.SHA2.256.old e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855
	error.code keys_different
	error.message Key SHA2.256 does not match
S 
	error.count 2

As before, you can use the --progress option to print progress percentage information to $stderr.