tar directory checksum error

[John Coolidge]

weier at twolf4.CE.YALE.EDU (Richard Weier) writes:
>I have been trying to installing John Coolidge's X11 binary files on a mac2fx.  tar -tvf fails with a directory checksum error.  Here is the procedure used:

>binary ftp to DECstation 5000 via internet
>binary ncsa telenet ftp to local mac (mac binary off)
>mac to floppy disk
>floppy disk to AUX partition on another mac

This is probably where things are going wrong.

>uncompress files
>attempted tar fails

>Perhaps on of the above steps is corrupting the file?  Does anyone have a clue?

A/UX has a (usually useful) feature: it converts files that it thinks
are text files into unix text files. Unfortunately, this also kills
binary files. What you need to do is set the file's Type field to
'BIN ' (actually, most anything will work, but 'BIN ' will most likely
leave you something that you won't need to post-process after copying
it). After doing this, A/UX should restrain itself from munging the
file, and you should have a useful tar file. Do a 'file <file>' and
see if the file type looks right. If it's AppleSingle (which you get
with most files that aren't 'BIN ' or 'TEXT') you can produce the
data segment with 'fcnvt -i single -t <file> <name>' and using
name as the data segment.

This really isn't well documented (at least in the default
documentation; I still don't have 2.0 documentation --- don't want to
pay for it myself, and haven't gotten the head of our research group
to order it). Probably a note should go somewhere in the default
manuals about A/UX's file translation features.

Hope you get X11 working well!

--John

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge at cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1991 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.