Fingerprints support

[rejetto]

fingerprint were requested here
http://www.rejetto.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1016814#1016814

how fingerprints are supported in HFS 2.1:
when right click on a file, HFS try to load any file .md5 located in the same physical folder of the file, and extract the hash from there.

let say test.txt
if test.txt.md5 exists, it has higher priority.

if a file "test.md5" contains on a line just an hash e no filename, then "test" is assumed as filename.
so test.txt.md5 can contain just the hash, and it's all right.

when browsing a real folder page, *.md5 files are loaded.
when browsing a virtual folder, if that has been created from a physical folder (not by clicking on "new folder"), then *.md5 files are loaded from that physical folder.

copy url with fingerprint is supported also for multiselection.

did i miss something?

[ledufe]

step1

in the main menu do like this



now download the free md5 creator from here

http://www.etree.org/cgi-bin/counter.cgi/software/md5sum.exe

save it on the right folder

#  Windows 95/98/Me: Download md5sum.exe to c:\windows\command

# Windows NT/2000/XP: Download md5sum.exe to your c:\winnt\system32


to create a md5 file do a bat or inside a prompt window type


 

Code: [Select]

md5sum [file-name.extension] > [filename].md5

NOTE: You must insert the name of the .md5 file [without the brackets]. Example:

Code: [Select]

md5sum *.mp3 > nightwish-once.md5





then just copy the url with fingerprints(md5) by doing rightclick on the file in the VFS Tree like this

and copy it to any chat window or weblink


so
the file added is

Openwave_SDK_622.exe

his url in my VFS is

http://ie-ipanema.no-ip.info:2222/file-with-md5/Openwave_SDK_622.exe

and his url with md5 is

http://ie-ipanema.no-ip.info:2222/file-with-md5/Openwave_SDK_622.exe#!md5!05c7c8417a1b71af69a0ae307f6e93ca

hope it helps

[ants]

Can someone please explain to me what exatly md5 is and what it is meant to do?

Thankyou.

[rejetto]

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Md5

In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a widely-used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value. As an Internet standard (RFC 1321), MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check the integrity of files.

[rejetto]

i didn't forget... it is unrelevant since we are not using MD5 for security but for checksum

[Anonymous]

It's great to see that my suggestion was taken seriously and also implemented. I think the fingerprints feature of HFS will be of help to a lot of people.

I have to say, great work rejetto! You truly do listen to people's suggestions (if i come to think of it, you implemented all my suggestions I had for HFS 2.1!)

I'll download the new beta and post back any feedback. Thanks again

[mastabog]

That was me in the message above.

I've tested the new beta with support for link fingerprints. Thanks again for implementing it.

However, I was talking about a full support for link fingerprints, where HFS would compute the MD5/SHA1 hashes on the fly when instructed to copy the link with MD5/SHA1 fingerprint. Maybe you are implementing this in the future beta version, I'm not sure.

Using a 3rd party tool like md5sum to create md5 files and place them next to the shared files is ok but it is a cumbersome job nonetheless. Most users would probably avoid using it as it involves a lot of manual work for each file.

It would be a whole lot better if the "Copy URL with fingerprint" was always visible and when clicked, HFS would parse the file in question and compute the MD5 hash, adding it to the URL and forming the full link with fingerprint. This way, everything can be done in one simple click without needing to run 3rd party tools and creating aditional files. I am sorry if I have not been clear regarding this in my initial request. Let me know if i was clear now.

MD5 is a public alghorithm so you will easily find functions or libraries for Delphi (if HFS is coded in delphi).

Thanks

[rejetto]

it takes too much time, it can't be done on-the-fly.
most files swapped with HFS are big (10-100-1000 MB), and any fingerprint require reading the whole file before.
all i can do is to add a command to create md5 files.

[maverick]

all i can do is to add a command to create md5 files.

That might be a good idea.  Would there be a way to create md5 files in batch mode?  One at a time is a pain in the a$$.

[mastabog]

it takes too much time, it can't be done on-the-fly.
most files swapped with HFS are big (10-100-1000 MB), and any fingerprint require reading the whole file before.
all i can do is to add a command to create md5 files.

Well, I can only say it again . The MD5 hash should be computed only when the user clicks the "copy URL with md5 hash" and not whenever a file is added into HFS or when its URL is copied. Hashing a file takes the same amount of time whether it is being done by HFS or by an external tool - it makes no difference.

So, once more, it is on-demand only and not whenever a file is added in HFS. When I said "on-the-fly" I meant you need only 1 click of a mouse. Only when the user selects the copy url with md5 hash from the context menu (you even rename it to "compute md5 hash and copy url" to make it clear). You can even remember the MD5 hash if the file modification date and size have not change ...

Using an external tool to hash the file seems like too much manual work for this feature to be useful or attractive, kind of defeats its purpose.

[rejetto]

all i can do is to add a command to create md5 files.

That might be a good idea.  Would there be a way to create md5 files in batch mode?  One at a time is a pain in the a$$.

i gues it will work with multiselection

[rejetto]

Well, I can only say it again . The MD5 hash should be computed only when the user clicks the "copy URL with md5 hash"

so, clicking on it would mean to
1. if loaded md5 is older than file or doesn't exists, create md5
2. copy url

this can take minutes. i should display a dialog warning the user for the long waiting.

[mastabog]

Well, I can only say it again . The MD5 hash should be computed only when the user clicks the "copy URL with md5 hash"

so, clicking on it would mean to
1. if loaded md5 is older than file or doesn't exists, create md5
2. copy url

this can take minutes. i should display a dialog warning the user for the long waiting.

Exactly, and I think I got you right

That way you don't need to rely on external tools or external files (an md5 hash is a string of only 32 bytes long and can be stored in HFS' memory). And certainly, if the user is hashing a big file (e.g. 100 Mb) then a small warning box should be displayed. For the time being you could use a simple message box saying something like "Hashing file, this can take a while ...". A progress bar would be nice of course, but not critical at all (after all, md5sum.exe doesn't say anything until it finishes )

You can also dump the md5 hash into a file and use the file for future uses. You can also add an option to force re-hashing the file in case the file has changed but there is an older md5 file sitting there.

Thanks again

[maverick]

I just don't understand it.  You guys are telling us that it can take quit a bit of time to get the md5 fingerprint of a large file.

I just tested a 140 and 170 mb rar archive and I got the md5 fingerprint in much less than a second using md5sum.  I also tested with another md5 utility with the same results and got the same fingerprint.  Just tested on a 300 mb rar archive and took about 4 secs.  Just tested on a 750 mb avi movie file.  Took about 10 secs but still no where near a lot of time.  I can't see no reason why HFS can't do it for selective files (not every file added to HFS).  For the very very big files (>1gb) there should be a time warning/comment indicating that it may take a little time to get the fingerprint for these files (if anyone is sharing such big files).  

Am I missing something?

[mastabog]

I just don't understand it.  You guys are telling us that it can take quit a bit of time to get the md5 fingerprint of a large file.

I just tested a 140 mb rar archive and I got the md5 fingerprint in much less than a second using md5sum.  I also tested with another md5 utility with the same results.  I can't see no reason why HFS can't do it on-the-fly.

Am I missing something?

Well, if you read my message I said HFS could (and should) do it by itself without reading external files generated by 3rd party tools.

however, maybe you have a super machine and/or super HDD but for a 700 MB file on my P4 HT 2.4 GHz the MD5 hashing takes about 10 seconds. For slower machines it might take more.

Regardless of that, it's not a good idea to compute the MD5 hash on-the-fly for all files that you add into HFS as it may generate too much hdd and cpu activity. In my opinion, the best solution would be to have a global option (disabled by default) that computes MD5 hashes of all files when added to HFS and an entry in the context menu of each file where the user can copy the URL with the MD5 hash and that would instruct HFS to compute the md5 hash when clicked.

Cheers