chris@trantor.umd.edu (Chris Torek) (02/17/88)
>In article <2071@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >>... portability ought to be achieved by making the cpio *format* >>portable, not just by compensating for nonportability in the format.... [I agree] In article <699@mcdsun.UUCP> fnf@mcdsun.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes: >Unfortunately this will not work for one not-so-obvious reason, and that >is because there are systems that when reading the exact same media, >will return bytes ordered differently. Such systems are broken. Yes, there are pieces of hardware that do virtual byteswaps, for whatever reason. If your tape or disk controller returns bytes in the wrong order, your kernel should fix this. (If you worry about efficiency, provide a bit in the minor device number to control this.) You could equally say `unfortunately, this will not always work, because there are systems that when reading the exact same media, sometimes discard all the odd numbered bytes'. The situation is the same, except that in the latter case the breakage is much harder to deny. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Computer Science, +1 301 454 7163 (hiding out on trantor.umd.edu until mimsy is reassembled in its new home) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: not easily reachable