jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) (11/21/90)
I get the files in comp.binaries.mac and move them off to another directory, the idea being to build up an archive of mac stuff. My problem is, what do I do with these files? They all seem to be in BinHex format or some other type of ASCII encoding. Is there a program that runs under UNIX that I can use to convert them to binaries? They're taking up more space when they're encoded, plus people have to find all X parts of the encoded file. It seems like it would be much nicer to deal with one binary file. I don't have a Mac, so I can't download them to a Mac, convert them and then send them back. I don't really want to have anybody else do this (assuming that I could find someone to do it) because the nice thing about cbm is that I know where they came from, and the odds of a virus being in the files seems to be quite small. If someone else converted the file, I wouldn't know where the problem was introduced. Suggestions, please.
wiseman@tellabs.com (Jeff Wiseman) (11/22/90)
In article <1990Nov20.222319.7465@techbook.com> jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) writes: >I get the files in comp.binaries.mac and move them off to another directory, >the idea being to build up an archive of mac stuff. My problem is, what do >I do with these files? They all seem to be in BinHex format or some other >type of ASCII encoding. Is there a program that runs under UNIX that I can >use to convert them to binaries? They're taking up more space when they're >encoded, plus people have to find all X parts of the encoded file. It seems >like it would be much nicer to deal with one binary file. I have been dealing with this for a while. What I do is this: As the different parts of a file comes into my news, I save them to files (in my case mailboxes cause it's easier for me) all with the name of the program and version number with a suffix of the part number. For example, the first part of Disinfectant would be stored in a file called (say) Disinfectant.2.0.p01 (obviously for version 2.0). Note that all these files are stored in a directory not accessable by others. When I get all the parts in, I use the unix utility "mcvert" to convert them all into macbinary by typing mcvert Disinfectant.2.0.* Assuming all the files were named in the same fashion, the sorting of the "*" expansion will set all the files in the correct order to pass to mcvert. Mcvert then creates a .bin file (usually a .sit.bin file for compressed files) that usually has a slightly different name (the original one). If necessary, I may change it to show the version number (eg. Disinfectant.2.0.sit.bin instead of, say, Disinfectant.sit.bin). I then copy the original part 1 (eg Disinfectant.2.0.p01) to a ".txt" file of the same name type as the .bin (eg. Disinfectant.2.0.txt). I then edit this file th remove the binhex and topmost mail header leaving the originating mail header and the moderator's comments on the file. I can then either keep the parts or toss them, what ever seems fit at the time. This leaves me with a macbinary file and a brief .txt file describing it. These two files are then moved into our /mac/archive directories so that they are available for others to access. Since the files have the same beginning to their name, they "cling" to each other when a person does an "ls" on the directories. Also, if a new version of an already collected file is there in the archive, it will "cling" to the newer version so you can see all the different versions of the same program at the same time (sometimes you don't necessarily want to remove an older version eg. Moire had a vesion that worked fine on black and white Macs. A later version with all the color enhancements would still work just as good but it used up MUCH more heap space. For our 1Meg Mac SE people using Excel 1.5, the earlier version would have been a better choice). This technique is good also because all the documentation that the authors of these programs want to go with their work tends to do just that. (Please note, the only reason I do this is because I wanted these binaries for MYSELF. However, I did not have enough disk space of my own and since many Mac users here don't read the net or in some cases, don't even have access, I was given a partition on a company machine to store these files so that others had access to them. This works out well since I put absolute minimal time into maintaining this collection :-) However, it is a problem if someone else on the net needs a copy of something since it has to be broken down into pieces, re bin-hexed and all the pieces mailed) Now that I have wasted far too much bandwidth answering your question...to summarize, see if you can track down a copy of mcvert, I think that that is the tool that can help you. Hope that some of this verbage helps :-) -- Jeff Wiseman: ....uunet!tellab5!wiseman OR wiseman@TELLABS.COM
rfischer@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Raymond C. Fischer) (11/22/90)
In article <1990Nov20.222319.7465@techbook.com> jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) writes: >I do with these files? They all seem to be in BinHex format or some other >type of ASCII encoding. Is there a program that runs under UNIX that I can >use to convert them to binaries? They're taking up more space when they're Available from sumex-aim.stanford.edu in the /info-mac/unix directory is a program called xbin-to-binary.shar that will do just what you're looking for. Ray Fischer rfischer@cs.stanford.edu
warner@scubed.com (Ken Warner) (11/23/90)
In article <1990Nov21.211531.4905@Neon.Stanford.EDU> rfischer@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Raymond C. Fischer) writes: >In article <1990Nov20.222319.7465@techbook.com> jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) writes: >>I do with these files? They all seem to be in BinHex format or some other >>type of ASCII encoding. Is there a program that runs under UNIX [etc.] >Available from sumex-aim.stanford.edu in the /info-mac/unix directory >is a program called xbin-to-binary.shar [etc.] Well, this brings to my mind what must be an often asked question. Is it possible for a virus to get binhexed into a program, and when that program (or whatever) is un-binhexed could the virus come back to life. Or is there something about binhexing that "kills" virus'? I think I read something about sumex and other sources of ftp'able stuff checking for virus'. It that true? Ken Warner
physi-hf@garnet.berkeley.edu (Howard Haruo Fukuda) (11/23/90)
In article <481@scubed.SCUBED.COM> warner@scubed.com (Ken Warner) writes: >Well, this brings to my mind what must be an often asked question. Is it >possible for a virus to get binhexed into a program, and when that program (or >whatever) is un-binhexed could the virus come back to life. Or is there >something about binhexing that "kills" virus'? When a file is binhexed and then unbinhexed, the unbinhexed file is a duplicate of the original. So if a program is infected by a virus, binhexed and uploaded, the downloaded and unbinhexed program will still be infected. >I think I read something about sumex and other sources of ftp'able stuff >checking for virus'. It that true? Not really sure. -Howard