Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!aplcen!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: cpio of AT&T Source Tape under 4.3bsd
Message-ID: <10608@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 25 Jul 89 21:12:34 GMT
References: <219@loligo.cc.fsu.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 26

In article <219@loligo.cc.fsu.edu> nall@nu.cs.fsu.edu (John Nall) writes:
>We have never had a need to acess our source code tape
>from AT&T, although we have had it for awhile.  Now that
>the need has come up, there seems to be a phase error in
>reading it using 4.3bsd.  Apparently the way AT&T writes
>their tape is incompatible with the way cpio works under
>4.3bsd.

I don't think 4.3BSD even HAS a "cpio" utility.

In any event, you don't say exactly which release of what AT&T software
you're having problems with, which makes it difficult to give a simple
answer.  Many earlier releases of UNIX System V, also UNIX System III,
were written in the default machine-specific binary cpio format rather
than the "portable ASCII header" format used for recent releases.  If
you have a tape written in binary cpio format from a machine of opposite
"Endianness", it is unreadable by a stock "cpio" utility on your system.
This is typically reported as "out of phase -- get help" or some other
such useless diagnostic.

Most AT&T cpio tapes use 5120-byte blocking, for which you must specify
the -B option when reading via cpio.  In case it's a "portable ASCII
header" format tape, you also need to specify the -c option.  Also note
that some older releases were actually multi-file tapes, with each tape
file being a separate cpio archive, and on the binary distribution tapes
some of the tape files are just executable binaries or raw disk images.