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From: greg@mobius.Viewlogic.COM (Gregory Larkin)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: The continuing saga of Minix 'ar' on the SPARC
Keywords: Almost there....
Message-ID: <1991Jan9.151828@mobius.Viewlogic.COM>
Date: 9 Jan 91 20:18:28 GMT
Sender: news@viewlogic.com (News Administrator)
Reply-To: greg@mobius.Viewlogic.COM (Gregory Larkin)
Organization: Viewlogic Systems, Inc., Marlboro, MA
Lines: 49

Well, the fight continues to get a SPARC executable to read a Minix
.a file.

Thanks to all Minixers who replied to my original post!  I now get the
little-endian vs. big-endian concept.

So, once I got that down, I thought "all I have to do is swap bytes
when I read from the .a file".  Well, yes and no.

I am able to swap the bytes containing the magic number, so the file
will be recognized correctly.

However, when the first header structure is read out of the .a file,
most everything in it does not come in correctly.
Here's the struct for .a header:

	struct ar_hdr {
		char ar_name[14];
		long ar_date;
		char ar_uid;
		char ar_gid;
		int ar_mode;
		long ar_size;
	};

ar_name seems to be Ok.  In this case, I am trying to unarchive h.a
in the src/h directory.  The first file is "callnr.h".  This comes 
out fine.  The problem is, ar_size is set to some huge number (much
more than the 1683 bytes it should be).  So, when ar(1) tries to
seek to the next header, it runs off the end of the file.

The other structure elements seem to be corrupted, as well.  Is there
some sort of special swapping of bytes I should do within the structure
or should I swap the bytes of the structure as a whole??

This is close enough to working (I think) that I really don't want to
go back to Minix and unarchive all of the .a files and then tar the
contents.  It would work, but hey, it's more fun trying to get this
to work.

If anyone has any more hints for me, I would love to hear them!
--
Greg Larkin (ASIC Engineer)
Viewlogic Systems, Inc. (The CAE Company)
293 Boston Post Road West ____________________________________________
Marlboro, MA 01752        |"This is a fragile ball we are living on; |
508 480 0881 x321         |it's a miracle and we are destroying it.."|
Email: greg@Viewlogic.COM |Peter Garrett, Midnight Oil               |
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