Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!cass.ma02.bull.com!mips2!thed.uk22.bull.com!kelvin
From: kelvin@thed.uk22.bull.com (Kelvin Hill)
Subject: Re: Bad files from info-server?
Organization: Bull HN Informations Systems Inc.
Date: 30 Jun 91 11:38:20 GMT
Message-ID: <kelvin.678281900@thed.uk22.bull.com>
References: <kelvin.678222954@thed.uk22.bull.com> <11369@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Usenet News Manager)

In <11369@castle.ed.ac.uk> gtoal@castle.ed.ac.uk (G Toal) writes:

>Albert has already posted once saying that if he gets files sent
>to him which are not already compressed, he .tar.Z's them.  So feed
>your file through compress -d and tar xv in that order.

The files *are* Spark archives. I ran them both thru a visual check and 
!Sparkinfo. They are just damaged archives. What I am trying to figure
out is wether they were damaged before Albert got them, or if it's the
info server damaging them.

>The delays aren't from Newcastle -- they're from Britains extremely
>damp piece of wet string at nsfnet-relay which goes down more often
>than Linda Lovelace :-(

Aha, I thought it might be that... thanks for the confirmation.

>G
>PS Why would you expect CR's?  This isn't DOS, you know...

In any Sparkive I would expect to see a fairly even spread of all binary
values present, otherwise the compression is not doing the full job.
If there is one particular binary value missing, then it's a reasonable
assumption that somewhere, something has selectively stripped that value out.
For example, a DOS to UNIX file conversion/file transfer could have done it.
There are lots of LFs in the files, but not one single CR... comments?

Kelvin.
--
Kelvin J. Hill - BULL HN Information System Ltd, Hounslow, England, UK.
Internet - kelvin@thed.uk22.bull.com   | UUCP - kelvin@cix.compulink.co.uk
   ""      kelvin@kelvin.uk22.bull.com | AMPRnet - kelvin@g1emm.ampr.org
