RMS ECO 4 patch for V8.3 Alpha

[Bradford Hamilton]

I just downloaded and unzipped this patch, and I received the following message, which I have not seen before:

warning [USER4:[patches.083.current]VMS83A_RMS-V0400.ZIPEXE;1]: 88064 extra bytes at beginning or within zipfile

I used a binary FTP transfer to obtain this patch (as I do with all patches). Has anyone else seen this behavior, and is it of concern?

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] I received the following message
> [...]

When you did what?

UnZip may emit such a complaint if you use it
on a self-extracting archive instead of
simply running the thing. I haven't looked
at this file, but I can imagine that you
might also get something like that if someone
appended the UnZip SFX program twice at the
front of a Zip archive instead of once.

I wouldn't worry about it. UnZip should
detect, and complain more loudly about, any
problems with an archive which would affect
data integrity.


"Why use UnZip on a self-extracting
archive?", I hear you ask. One answer is,
"Because it's likely to be faster than
running the thing when it was constructed
using some tired, old, obsolete version of
the UnZip SFX program." (Which is typical
for SFX archives produced by the VMS folks.)

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

> I haven't looked at this file, [...]

Now I have.

ALP $ run VMS83A_RMS-V0400.ZIPEXE
UnZipSFX 5.42 of 14 January 2001, by Info-ZIP (Zip-Bugs@lists.wku.edu).
inflating: dec-axpvms-vms83a_rms-v0400--4.pcsi$compressed
inflating: dec-axpvms-vms83a_rms-v0400--4.pcsi$compressed_esw

While:

ALP $ unzip VMS83A_RMS-V0400.ZIPEXE
Archive: ALP$DKA0:[XXX]VMS83A_RMS-V0400.ZIPEXE;1
warning [ALP$DKA0:[XXX]VMS83A_RMS-V0400.ZIPEXE;1]: 88064 extra bytes at beginni
ng or within zipfile
(attempting to process anyway)
inflating: dec-axpvms-vms83a_rms-v0400--4.pcsi$compressed
inflating: dec-axpvms-vms83a_rms-v0400--4.pcsi$compressed_esw


So, I'd conclude that you used UnZip
explicitly on this SFX archive. (On a file
this small, the time saved by doing this with
an UnZip program more modern than "UnZipSFX
5.42 of 14 January 2001" is probably too
small to be noticed. But that wouldn't stop
me from doing it.) Around here:

ALP $ unzip -v
UnZip 5.52 of 28 February 2005, by Info-ZIP. [...]

[Hoff]

Unzip is also invoked against self-extracting sfx zip archives when the platform necessary for the sfx executable code is not available. If you're unpacking an Alpha sfx archive on an Itanium box, for instance.

A self-extracting zip archive is built by prefixing a variant of the unzip executable image onto the front of the archive itself. Or by concatenating the archive onto the back of the decompression tool, depending on how you look at it.

As for discussions around zip and unzip and the integration of same into the ECO processes and into the tools and into OpenVMS itself, that's a discussion bigger than this text box.

[Bradford Hamilton]

Whoops - SWS is exactly right - and I already had my first cuppa joe this morning before extracting the file.

Thanks!

[Bradford Hamilton]

See my last post in this thread.