Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!mmdf From: "Volker A. Brandt" Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: RE: Problems with Mini-x (Yes already!) Message-ID: <51840@nigel.ee.udel.edu> Date: 25 Apr 91 09:31:22 GMT Sender: mmdf@ee.udel.edu Lines: 37 Hello! brian writes: >I, too, am having problems with MINI-X. I received the nine shell archive >files, transfered them to the Minix machine, put them in their own >directory and tried the command sh . It started working just >fine. All the directories were created that were needed and some of the >files began to be unpacked. A few files got the length incorrect error (can't >remember the exact wording) ... ... >Can anyone help? What am I doing wrong? You are not doing anything wrong. Your only problem is that you are on BITNET. The second I saw that Mini-X was distributed in un-encoded shar files, I threw it away and ftp'ed it from Cologne (ftp.tph.uni-koeln.de). The particular problem here was that long lines were split. It simply isn't possible to get un-encoded shar files through BITNET. What most Non-BITNETters don't understand is that there are two distinct file tyes in BITNET: Binary, and EBCDIC text. Binary is recognized throughout BITNET, which is why multi-megabyte gif pictures and .lzh files traverse the entire BITNET unscathed (so to speak :-). Mail from The Outside, on the other hand, is considered to be EBCDIC text (AFTER the incoming conversion, of course :-). EBCDIC text is broken up to contain no lines longer than 80 chars (are you listening, Dr. T. ?) so that you can read it on your terminal .... The preferred distribution means is tar -> compress -> uue. This works just fine. Another point for unsing tar: it preserves file attributes and the date/time info of the files, whereas sh just leaves the file the way it is when you unshar it ... Enough for now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bitnet: UNM409@DBNRHRZ1 Volker A. Brandt UUCP: ...!unido!DBNRHRZ1.bitnet!unm409 Angewandte Mathematik ARPAnet: UNM409%DBNRHRZ1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Bonn, Germany)