herb1@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Eric Pearce) (09/16/87)
I have been ftp'ing a number of files from archive sites of comp.sources.*
(j.cc.purdue.edu mostly) and I have been having problems uncompressing
the '.Z' files. Uncompress core-dumps or just sits and does nothing when
I try to use it on the files. I've tried this using the system's uncompress
on a Sun-3/180, Encore Multimax, and a VAX 11/750 with the same results.
I even copied the version of 'compress' stored on the archive site and
compiled this on each machine with no luck. Some of the files that would
uncompress without complaint would be only partially uncompressed (only the
mail header?) ... Any suggestions?
-thanks in advance
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*******************************************************************************acm@bu-cs.BU.EDU (ACM) (09/16/87)
In article <13006@bu-cs.BU.EDU> herb1@bu-cs.UUCP (Eric Pearce) writes: >I have been ftp'ing a number of files from archive sites of comp.sources.* >(j.cc.purdue.edu mostly) and I have been having problems uncompressing >the '.Z' files. Uncompress core-dumps or just sits and does nothing when >I try to use it on the files. I've tried this using the system's uncompress >on a Sun-3/180, Encore Multimax, and a VAX 11/750 with the same results. >I even copied the version of 'compress' stored on the archive site and >compiled this on each machine with no luck. Some of the files that would >uncompress without complaint would be only partially uncompressed (only the >mail header?) ... Any suggestions? Yea, I can explain it. If you forget to set ftp into binary transfer mode, compressed/binary/archive/tar (usually)/compacted/crypted files will not necesarily transfer correctly. The default ftp mode is ascii, which assumes 7 bit chars and not 8 bit. 8 bit chars are used in compressing files (at least in almost all of the schemes I have used, although it is possible to do it without), so if you forget to set ftp to binary mode you'll lose the top bit of each char, which really scrambles things. Solution: % ftp ftp> open bucsf Connected to bucsf.bu.edu. 220 bucsf FTP server (Version 4.108 Mon May 25 03:07:29 EDT 1987) ready. Name (bucsf.bu.edu:madd): madd Password (bucsf.bu.edu:madd): [mumble mumble] 331 Password required for madd. 230 User madd logged in. ftp> binary 200 Type set to I. ftp> close 221 Goodbye. ftp> bye % This ought to work. I only know this because I tried zapping crypted files across machine and they invariably died if I forgot to set it to binary mode. jim Let not users take precedence over skiing. "F*ck 'em."
rick@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams) (09/16/87)
You probably did not ftp the file in image or binary mode, resulting in a corrupted file that you fed to compress.