who can utar this ?

[Jerome Henry]

A full big and smilling rabbit to who'll be able to get this tar back to its original format, a mail directory in /home/usul.
I keep getting error messages, whereas it's supposed to be a correct file, just done with old version of redhat (6.2 ?).
Good luck all.
J

[Jerome Henry]

I get a 404 even on trying to read it here.
Grunt, only troubles with that file.
Here it is again...

[John Poff]

Hi J,

You are right. Your attachment isn't coming through, but it may not matter. It looks like your file is maybe a gzip file since it has a .gz extension. Have you tried a 'gunzip' on it first and then tried a 'tar tvf file'?

JP

[Bill Douglass]

How about posting:

ls -l filename
file filename

Also, list the error messages your are getting.

[Jerome Henry]

Thanks John and Bill for trying.
The file is actually gziped, as it's slightly more than 1MB (max posting authorized here), I gziped it before posting.
I'll get back to the file's place in a few hours, and post the ls- l from it, along with the error messages on utaring.
tks.
J

[Jerome Henry]

Ok, back to the machine :
ls -l says :
-rwxr-xr-x 1 usul usul 1121397 may 20 16:07 mail.tar.
Usul is the user name, mail.tar the file, tared from mail directory apparently.
file says :
mail.tar gzip compressed data, was "mail.tar" from Unix.

Cool I say, let's run tar -tvf on it, of course shell complains "this is not a tar type archive".
What a dummy I think, file says it's a gzip file, running gunzip directly on it won't do (gunzip mail.tar --unkonwn suffix, package ignored), let's give it back its gz extension :
mv mail.tar mail.tar.gz.
OK.
Back to gunzip mail.tar.gz :
"invalid compressed data --format violated".

I tried then tar -zxvf mail.tar.gz
Cool uncompressing 2 directories (outbox, sentbox, not inbox !) then "gzip stdin : invalid compress data--format violated.
tar : unexpected end of file (EOF).
tar : unexpected end of file (EOF).
tar : unfixable error:end of execution".
outbox is empty (normal), and sentbox is a file, partly readable, but a cat is not very friendly : some letters are missing or replaced in addresses, as if it has been partly MD5ed...
Any clue ?

[Stuart Browne]

when you originally got the file, did you md5sum it on both ends to make sure that all the data had been transferred intact?

It sounds as if the tar file was corrupted in transit.

If it is ok, then something funny is going on.

The man page for 'gzip' states that if you have "Corrupt input" to use 'zcat' to get the working portion into another file (but this obviously doesn't get anything from the broken point onwards).

To help solve your confusion, you might want to rename the file to have a '.gz' suffix incidentally.

[Jerome Henry]

Nope, I got in fact a diskette and that's it... asking the guy, he says that he had no warning on taring and ziping, saying that he should have if it had a problem...
I'll try your tip. Do you think that the rest is corrupted ? Any idea about the sendbox strange appearance ?
Any clue to get something from this file ?
tx
J

[Jerome Henry]

John,
I love this zcat (just knew the name, never tried), works roughly like an authoritative gunzip, but unfortunately stops at the same point with the same 'invalid compressed data, format violated'.
Still have my outbox and sentbox, sounds like the inbox is dead...
Mmm... how can I explain to the guy that the file can be corrupted even if he had no warning on taring without hearing the usual 'it wouldn't happend with winzip' ?
Any last clue to try something on it (I do not want to feed this rabbit for the rest of my life !!)
J

[John Poff]

It sounds like you might have gotten all the data you are going to get out of the tar file. You might try some utility to check the tracks on the floppy disk and see if you can repair any damage, but my guess is that either the file is corrupt or the floppy has a bad track, and either way your data is probably toast.

JP

[James Roper]

I get an error when trying to download the file, but I thought I'd put my 2 cents in, maybe it's a bzip2 file, in which case tar -xjf may work?

[Jerome Henry]

You made my heart beat James ! But bad news 'error : this is not a bzip format'... :[[
Does anyone know a linux tool I can use to physically check the diskette for bad sectors ?
Thanks everybody for trying.
John, do you have an idea about 'how is it that the file went' corrupted whereas I had no warning ?' I'm going to get from the guy ?
J

[Stuart Browne]

fsck and badblock are your friends.

Can you get another copy of this archive from the guy?

[Umapathy S]

Stuart got the answer. I have used badblock to success.

As others suggested, you can get another copy or check the md5sum's on both the sides.

My mind says that its a floppy problem, since I had many flirts with floppies in the past :).

cheers
Umapathy

[Jerome Henry]

Thanks Stuart, fsck and badblocks are shouting out loud that I should have checked before...
Thanks also Umapathy...
Unfortunately, the guy saved o floppy and re-formatted to upgrade to RH9... no copy left nowhere.
Thanks everyone for trying anyway !
J
(friday evening here, wait monay to anounde the good news ! :))