Install

Installing Jacksum

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System requirements

• GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, or macOS
• a JRE/JDK that is compatible with Java 21 LTS or later (OpenJDK 25 LTS or later is recommended)
• 2 MiB disk space

Details

• To download a JDK, you can go to any vendor that provides OpenJDK compatible builds. LTS (long term support) releases are recommended, examples are
  • https://adoptium.net
  • https://openjdk.org
  • https://www.azul.com/downloads/?package=jdk
  • https://bell-sw.com/pages/downloads/
  • https://www.microsoft.com/openjdk/
  • https://aws.amazon.com/corretto/
  • https://sapmachine.io
  • https://dragonwell-jdk.io
• Supported architectures depend on the OS and the JDK vendor:
  • x86 64 bit (x64)
  • x86 32 bit (x86)
  • ARM 64 bit (AArch64, resp. Apple silicon)
  • ARM 32 bit (AArch32)
  • PPC 64 bit (ppc64)
• A GitHub user has had success running Jacksum without modification even on a smartphone running Android on ARM 64 bit, see also https://github.com/jonelo/jacksum/issues/7
• GNU/Linux is the correct term to refer to "Linux", see also https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.en.html
• The actual RAM requirement depends on the OS, the architecture, the JDK, the JRE's (default) garbage collector settings, and on usage. Tests have shown that Jacksum feels pretty comfortable with 512 MiB Java heap on an x64 Windows 10 system, for example, while verifying millions of files of all sizes (0 bytes to several GiB).

Where to download

The latest released .jar file can be found at https://github.com/jonelo/jacksum/releases/latest

The .zip file also contains simple scripts to call Jacksum on Windows, GNU/Linux, and macOS from the command line.

How to install and configure it

Download the .jar (or .zip) file as described above, open a terminal (on Microsoft Windows it is known as the "Command Prompt") and start Jacksum by typing

java -jar jacksum-4.0.0.jar

I recommend adjusting the Windows batch file (jacksum.bat) resp. the bash script (jacksum) for GNU/Linux and Unix operating systems (e.g. macOS), and putting the script in a folder that is reachable by your PATH environment variable, in order to launch Jacksum easily just by typing

jacksum

Setup on GNU/Linux

The following snippet could help you to set up Jacksum on GNU/Linux. In the example below, the launch script will be stored in $HOME/bin/, which will also be added to your PATH. The jar file will be stored in /opt/java/apps/jacksum/, so other users on the computer have access to it as well.

$ echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin"' >> $HOME/.profile
$ export VERSION=4.0.0
$ unzip jacksum-$VERSION.zip
$ cp jacksum-$VERSION/unix/jacksum ~/bin && chmod +x ~/bin/jacksum
$ sudo mkdir -p /opt/java/apps/jacksum && cp jacksum-$VERSION/jacksum-$VERSION.jar /opt/java/apps/jacksum/
$ rm -R jacksum-$VERSION/

Alternatives

Instead of installing Jacksum manually, you can use one of the platform installers or the Docker image, see Integrations.