Root MD5 checksum help

[barefootpilot]

Wonder if someone can help explain what md5 checksum is and how to use it? Just downloaded leedroid 2.3d and want to check it's OK before I flash - think this is what md5 is for but I don't really understand what I need to do with the md5 checksum files that are also provided for leedroid 2.3d.

Can anyone explain (in laymans terms) what to do with them?

 

[SUroot]

You run the files through an app and compare the number it outputs to the number on the site.

If they match, the zip is complete and safe to use. If they don't match, don't use.

There's a link to one of these apps in completely hatstand's sig

 

[InfernalByte]

Roght here.

 

[barefootpilot]

Sorry, still being a bit of an idiot obviously. I've got the application that calculates the md5 checksum, so I load the rom zip file and get the checksum value. This bit I understand.

The trouble is the md5 checksum files supplied on the leedroid site don't make any sense. They're called (leedroid version number).zip.md5, I cant unzip, run or open them, in fact I can't do anything with them. I've tried renaming them to just .zip but they are, apparently, invalid like this. What am I supposed to do with this file to get the correct md5 value to compare with the generated one?

Edited to add

Ok, got it now, it's just a text file, so I renamed it .txt and opened it, thanks for the help guys.