[NCLUG] uncompress error - corrupt file

[S. Luke Jones]

Michael Dwyer wrote:
> Uhhh... were these compressed on a machine of different endianess or
> maybe a different character set (EBSDIC or whatever)?  Is it possible
> that cpio didn't store in a platform-neutral format?
> Are the files themselves probably undamaged? That is, is the data safe,
> just encoded strangely?
> I understand that one of the problems with GZip as opposed to bzip2 is
> that bzip2 is recoverable, whereas gzip will just die. I'm not sure
> about cpio and COMPRESS, though, so I'm just throwing out ideas, here...

Well, the archives are from an AT&T UNIX PC 7300 (3B1) and the
68K has the opposite endianism as the Lintel box I'm using now.

But I don't think it's an endian problem because some of this
same collection of files do uncompress (via gunzip) properly
(which is where the cpio problems come in). I suspect it's just
bit rot, or possibly a CR LF => LF or vice versa.

As it happens, cpio has many platform neutral formats, starting
with the POSIX one and superceded by other even better ones.
It didn't actually fix my problem, but I'm sure that wrangling
over them did help keep UNIX vendors preoccupied in the late
1980s and so assist MSFT in obtaining world domination. So if
I'm not properly grateful, at least Bill Gates is.

-- 
Luke Jones = luke/vortex/frii/fullstop/com