flimm@thp.uni-koeln.de (Oliver Flimm) (05/16/91)
Hello there,
perhaps someone can help me with !extract. Everytime I try to drag a prog
on the !extract-window, soon a message like `unexpected error: end of file`
appears. I already tried to eliminate spaces or add or remove a newline, but
till now I haven`t solved the problem.
Does anybody have a similar problem? Is there anyone who can help me?
I hope so...
Thanx, Oliver
e-mail: flimm@ph-cip.uni-koeln.de (new address) or perhaps still available
flimm@thp.uni-koeln.de (old address)mre@ukc.ac.uk (M.R.Ellis) (05/17/91)
In article <FLIMM.91May15170653@vax.thp.uni-koeln.de> Oliver Flimm > perhaps someone can help me with !extract. Everytime I try to drag a prog > on the !extract-window, soon a message like `unexpected error: end of file` > appears. I already tried to eliminate spaces or add or remove a newline, but > till now I haven`t solved the problem. Well...I've had similar problems. I have had messages similar to (sorry, I can't remember exactly) 'Tar error 2...unexpected error: end of file' and other equally unhelpful messages (what is Tar error 2????). I know a few people who do have !Extract working successfully, but they all have hard discs fitted to A300 or A400 series machines....my floppy based A3000 just gives up every time. In the short term, I have taken to using !Edit to modify the 'extract' files and have then passed them to a standard version of Sparkplug (2). This seems to work, but has the annoying side effect of leaving me with a directory of data files and a single data file containing a list of *SETTYPEs. Never mind. C'est la vie. etc... Michael Ellis, Host Mike at University of Kent, Canterbury (ukc)
spt1@ukc.ac.uk (Stephen Thomas) (05/17/91)
In article <1578@mike.ukc.ac.uk> mre@ukc.ac.uk (M.R.Ellis) writes: >Well...I've had similar problems. I have had messages similar to (sorry, >I can't remember exactly) 'Tar error 2...unexpected error: end of file' and >other equally unhelpful messages (what is Tar error 2????). I know a few >people who do have !Extract working successfully, but they all have hard >discs fitted to A300 or A400 series machines....my floppy based A3000 just >gives up every time. This sounds like a problem I've been having. You could drop the parts into !Extract OK, but when you tried to actually DO the extraction, there would be a bit of activity, then all would go quiet until I pressed Escape, whereupon an error box appeared with the message above. The funny thing is, if I tried it again immediately after (loading the parts, everything), *without changing anything*, everything worked OK. Since it uses Graham Toal's tar program, I thought that maybe it was something to do with tar$scrap not being defined. I don't know. As a matter of interest, I have a rather elderly A440. Stephen -- | "You've been having a nightmare. | Stephen Thomas -------------------------| | And it's not over yet." | Email: spt1@ukc.ac.uk; Smail: Computing | | -- Roger Waters, "The Pros and | Lab, University of Kent, CT2 7NZ, UK; | | Cons of Hitchhiking" | Tel: +44 (0)227 764000 x 3824 |
gtoal@castle.ed.ac.uk (G Toal) (05/17/91)
>everything), *without changing anything*, everything worked OK. Since it >uses Graham Toal's tar program, I thought that maybe it was something to do >with tar$scrap not being defined. I don't know. Pardon???!!! - I think I must have been programming in my sleep again :-) [Frank Lancaster's tar I suspect - you probably got us confused since we both hack TeX] Graham
dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk (Denis Howe) (05/17/91)
Two hints concerning extracting stuff from uuencoded, compressed tar archives (as used by !Extract): 1. Tar seems to hang up or fall over if there isn't enough free RAM to run compress. 2. The last line before the final "end" should start with a space. This sometimes gets lost in the mailing or editting. I'm glad to see that Alan is using a uuencode which puts trailing characters on the end of each line - that should help protect (otherwise) trailing spaces. -- Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk> C-C H558A Imperial College London C-C-C +44 (71) 589 5111 x5064 N=N
spt1@ukc.ac.uk (Stephen Thomas) (05/18/91)
In article <10346@castle.ed.ac.uk> gtoal@castle.ed.ac.uk (G Toal) writes: >>everything), *without changing anything*, everything worked OK. Since it >>uses Graham Toal's tar program, I thought that maybe it was something to do >>with tar$scrap not being defined. I don't know. > >Pardon???!!! - I think I must have been programming in my sleep again :-) > >[Frank Lancaster's tar I suspect - you probably got us confused since >we both hack TeX] Whoops! Absolutely right, I'm sorry. I think I may be working too hard. Actually, it's a pity that !Extract cannot extract incrementally, as you dropped the parts into the window. This would enable you to unpack archives when disk space is tighter. As I understand !Extract, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do this. I was going to write an archiver that did this, but unfortunately, that is well down my list of Things To Do. Stephen -- | "You've been having a nightmare. | Stephen Thomas -------------------------| | And it's not over yet." | Email: spt1@ukc.ac.uk; Smail: Computing | | -- Roger Waters, "The Pros and | Lab, University of Kent, CT2 7NZ, UK; | | Cons of Hitchhiking" | Tel: +44 (0)227 764000 x 3824 |
pcolmer@acorn.co.uk (Philip Colmer) (05/20/91)
In article <DBH.91May17125617@asun4.doc.ic.ac.uk> dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk (Denis Howe) writes: >Two hints concerning extracting stuff from uuencoded, compressed tar >archives (as used by !Extract): > >1. Tar seems to hang up or fall over if there isn't enough free RAM to >run compress. The current release of !Submit and !Extract actually treat compression as a separate stage from tarring. In addition, !Extract will grab all the memory it can before executing either tar or compress. Unfortunately, the real problem seems to lie in an interaction between tar and the filing systems in that under certain circumstances, tar will try and do something and the filing system will come back with a strange error, at which point tar will sit there asking you if you want to continue. Unfortunately, !Extract will have piped this into a file, so you don't know that :-( The latest version of tar is supposed to support a Q option which causes it to return an error rather than ask the question, but I couldn't get it to work, and timescales are preventing me from looking at it. --Fil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Philip Colmer, OA Project Leader, Acorn Computers Ltd (pcolmer@acorn.co.uk)
zzassgl@mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane) (05/20/91)
In article <1578@mike.ukc.ac.uk> mre@ukc.ac.uk (M.R.Ellis) writes: >In article <FLIMM.91May15170653@vax.thp.uni-koeln.de> Oliver Flimm >> on the !extract-window, soon a message like `unexpected error: end of file` >> appears. I already tried to eliminate spaces or add or remove a newline, but I have found that on an A310 you must clear out everything you can to make sufficient space available for !extract to process the files. Another problem: When I installed !extract the installation did not work quite right and the work.work... directory tree did not get created correctly. If !extract can't find it the program (which program?) goes into a loop with the hourglass set at 97 percent. While on the subject, when running !extract the hourglass does not seem ever to go below about 97%. It slowly steps down to 97% and then the extracted file(s) appear. -- Geoff. Lane. Janet: zzassgl@uk.ac.mcc.cms UTS Sys Admin, Manchester Computing Centre, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M13 9PL
pcolmer@acorn.co.uk (Philip Colmer) (05/22/91)
In article <2547@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> zzassgl@mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane) writes: >While on the subject, when running !extract the hourglass does not seem >ever to go below about 97%. It slowly steps down to 97% and then the >extracted file(s) appear. The percentage is used to show which stage Extract has got to: 99: uudecoding 98: decompressing 97: detarring Note that these numbers only hold if the compress stage is present. If it isn't (normally caused by posting squeezed images, which don't compress further) then the numbers can become arbitrary :-) --Fil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Philip Colmer, OA Project Leader, Acorn Computers Ltd (pcolmer@acorn.co.uk)