[comp.bugs.sys5] v05i028: /etc/magic lines for compress

dupuy@douglass.columbia.edu (Alexander Dupuy) (11/18/88)

Just to follow up on the problems with /etc/magic formats: it is currently
possible to cause file(1) to crash on a Sparc (or other strict alignment
machine) by having magic entries which are of type "short" or "long", at
misaligned offsets.  If you have a Sun-2 or Sun-4, you can repeat this by
placing the following entry into /etc/magic:

1	long		0		doesn't matter if it matches or not.

This should crash file with a Bus Error, when you apply it to any file for
which it doesn't have a builtin rule, such as an ordinary ASCII text file.

@alex

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