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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.bugs.4bsd,net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: cpio(1) under Sun 3.0; or, does System V write filenames backwards?
Message-ID: <3587@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 6-Sep-86 03:17:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.3587
Posted: Sat Sep  6 03:17:01 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Sep-86 07:54:02 EDT
References: <760@smeagol.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 21
Keywords: cpio  byteswap  header
Xref: mnetor net.bugs.4bsd:915 net.unix-wizards:7790

In article <760@smeagol.UUCP> earle@smeagol.UUCP (Greg Earle) writes:
>Any clarification would be appreciated.

There are actually two "cpio" modes.  The "old original" one
works with archives that are machine-specific ("binary headers").
As you discovered, it is an oversimplification to analyze the
machine architecture dependency in terms of "byte swapping".  The
"new" cpio mode works with a machine-independent "ASCII header"
format.  AT&T ships add-on software such as DWB in the portable
format, but older distributions were in machine-specific CPIO format.

Unfortunately the "cpio" default is binary header (for efficiency
in the typical use of "cpio" to copy directories, I suppose, as
well as for backward-compatibility reasons).  One should be careful
to specify the "-c" option when writing archives for export to other
sites.  (There is a "-ncpio" option to find that makes ASCII-header
CPIO archives, by the way.)

Our version of "cpio" adds to the "out of phase" error a suggestion
that perhaps the "-c" option should be used, since this is often
the cause of that error.