*BSD News Article 13971


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!bogus.sura.net!jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu!jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu!not-for-mail
From: andy@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Andy Poling)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: any chance of...
Followup-To: comp.os.386bsd.development
Date: 3 Apr 1993 22:01:40 -0500
Organization: Homewood Academic Computing, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md, USA
Lines: 28
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1plj2kINN8d9@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
References: <matthew.733339478@femto.engr.mun.ca> <1p84lbINN1j1@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca>
NNTP-Posting-Host: jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
Summary: BSD cpio works
Keywords: cpio, distribution

In article <1p84lbINN1j1@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> felawka@sitka.triumf.ca (Larry Felawka) writes:
[...]
>The unpacking of the 386BSD distribution files doesn't work on some systems
>because the cpio file headers are binary (thus making the disributions non-
>portable to other systems).  I have written a quick-'n-dirty filter which
>does byte swapping in the cpio headers, thereby allowing me to explode the
>386BSD distributions on an IRIX system.  I will make it available upon
>request on condition that you do not tell anyone where you got it from (I am
>not a programmer).

I just discovered today that the cpio from the BSD 4.3 RENO distribution has
a few extra lines that will automatically recognize byte-swapped headers in
an archive and will un-byte-swap the headers.  I don't know about older
versions of BSD cpio...

It built with almost no work for me on our IRIX machine, but may not be
terribly portable.  The source code for this cpio is available numerous
places, including anonymous FTP and gopher from jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu in
public_domain_software/bsd_sources/usr.bin/cpio

Have fun unpacking.

-Andy

Andy Poling                              Internet: andy@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
UNIX Systems Programmer                  Bitnet: ANDY@JHUNIX
Homewood Academic Computing              Voice: (410)516-8096    
Johns Hopkins University                 UUCP: uunet!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!andy