rthurlow@van-bc.UUCP (Rob Thurlow) (06/19/88)
Well, time for one of my infrequent postings again. I just had a look
at Jwahar Bammi's ZMDM binaries posted to the comp.binaries.st group, and
I'm afraid it didn't make it here in very good shape. The sequence of
events for this stuff is as follows:
1) The binaries came into the UUCP node I connect to, and got batched
to me as if I were just another UUCP site. The articles get put
in files not much larger than 100K as a rule, with all newsgroups
mixed randomly and the sequence within a group not guaranteed.
2) I stuck my UUPC boot disk into my machine one day and let all the
stuff come in that wanted to. Because of some (timing?) problems
with the current UUPC software, I had to restart the transmission
several times. This goes on for quite some time, and the days
files took up a sizable part of an 800K disk, say 450K. That's
quite a bit at 1200 baud with uucp g-protocol.
3) I file the disk for a few days until I get time to work on the
stuff. In the interim, the binaries of course expire on the Unix
machine.
4) When I finally have some spare time, I sit down with Gulam and start
being an article processor. Anything interesting gets saved to RAM
disk with Gulam's cut and paste. I find that the binaries are in
parts too large to do easily, since Gulam can only handle 32K in its
paste buffer. But it gets done.
5) I run out of RAM disk space twice while decoding, but eventually the
decode works fine. Then I try to get ARC to tell me the contents of
the package, and the program shows me lots of funny numbers and
characters after it tells me the archive is bad.
So now I have no way to fix the thing. There was no sequence checking
for any of the parts. The uuencoded binary was just chopped up by hand
into 40K pieces. There is no way to detect a missing line so that I can
ask for just one piece, and there is no hope of getting them all again
from my Unix connection. I can try cut-and-paste again, but without the
I-didn't-think-they-were-that-useful multi-part lines, I don't think it
will work any better. We're pretty remote from the rest of the world up
here in Vancouver in terms of net topology, and it is more of a pain
than usual for me to post to the net, so I'm really reluctant to ask
people to send replacements by mail. So I lose. I pay for connect time,
too; usually my luck is *much* better.
My plea: if you are going to post to comp.binaries.st, PLEASE get hold
of Dumas' multi-part uuencoder, and let it chop your postings into nice
tame ~30K pieces that will go through most mailers, and let it do the
sequence checking and add the chaining lines so that people like me
have a better chance at uudecoding correctly when it gets here properly
and have a better idea of what to fix or when to give up when the group
loses or mangles things. I think it is a little too much to ask the
moderator to rearrange it, but I'm sure he would make happy noises if
you asked him for the sources/binaries to the Dumas uu?code. And if
that doesn't work, I think I can get it to you, too. The source was
supposed to run great on Unix or the ST.
BTW: Jwahar, I *liked* the earlier ZMDM a lot, and used it quite
regularly before I went over to getting my stuff over UUCP. Thanks from
all of us for the posting, even if it didn't quite make it for me. And
thanks to Howard Chu for a new ARC: I can't beleive what a handicap
it was before to have an ARC that bombed when its output was redirected.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There was something fishy about the butler. I think he was a Pisces, |
probably working for scale." - Nick Danger |
uunet-----\ |
Robert Thurlow !van-bc!rthurlow |
ubc-cs----/ |
------------------------------------------------------------------------sreeb@pnet01.cts.com (Ed Beers) (06/23/88)
rthurlow@van-bc.UUCP (Rob Thurlow) writes: > > Well, time for one of my infrequent postings again. I just had a look >at Jwahar Bammi's ZMDM binaries posted to the comp.binaries.st group, and >I'm afraid it didn't make it here in very good shape. The sequence of >events for this stuff is as follows: > >1) The binaries came into the UUCP node I connect to, and got batched > to me as if I were just another UUCP site. The articles get put > in files not much larger than 100K as a rule, with all newsgroups > mixed randomly and the sequence within a group not guaranteed. > This brought to mind a problem I have. Several of the last posting have required a unix shell to decode. I have only limited access to to a unix machine which doesn't seem able to unpack these anyway. Is there a program that allows unpacking these on my ST? Is there a real need to use these rather than just arcing and uuencoding? UUCP: {cbosgd hplabs!hp-sdd sdcsvax nosc}!crash!pnet01!sreeb ARPA: crash!pnet01!sreeb@nosc.mil INET: sreeb@pnet01.cts.com
jeff@polyof.UUCP (A1 jeff giordano ) (06/24/88)
In article <3144@crash.cts.com>, sreeb@pnet01.cts.com (Ed Beers) writes: > rthurlow@van-bc.UUCP (Rob Thurlow) writes: > > [stuff about a munged file deleted] > This brought to mind a problem I have. Several of the last posting have > required a unix shell to decode. I have only limited access to to a unix > machine which doesn't seem able to unpack these anyway. Is there a program > that allows unpacking these on my ST? Is there a real need to use these > rather than just arcing and uuencoding? Yes, there is a program to take apart shell archives. It was posted to the net about a year ago, it is called shar.ttp. You can get it fron you favorit st archive. If that doesnot work drop me a note and i will e-mail it to you. geoffrey giordano UUCP: ...!iguana!polyof!jeff internet: jeff@polyof or jeff@128.238.10.100
kbad@atari.UUCP (Ken Badertscher) (06/26/88)
in article <3144@crash.cts.com>, sreeb@pnet01.cts.com (Ed Beers) says: > [stuff deleted] Is there a program > that allows unpacking these [shell archives] on my ST? Is there a real > need to use these rather than just arcing and uuencoding? > > UUCP: {cbosgd hplabs!hp-sdd sdcsvax nosc}!crash!pnet01!sreeb > ARPA: crash!pnet01!sreeb@nosc.mil > INET: sreeb@pnet01.cts.com I have seen a shar and unshar for the ST on BIX, but don't remember their origin. If your access to a machine that runs sh is limited, shar and unshar are a godsend for shell archives. -- Ken Badertscher | Hey, umm, the stuff I said up there Atari Software Test/Support | is, like, what _I_ think, okay? {portal,ames,imagen}!atari!kbad | So, y'know, don't bug Atari about it.