Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!uwvax!tank!mimsy!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!smoke!w8sdz
From: w8sdz@smoke.BRL.MIL (Keith B. Petersen )
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Source ARCs are inappropriate!
Summary: What about error checking?
Keywords: ARCs sources
Message-ID: <8749@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 26 Oct 88 03:44:38 GMT
References: <7119@dasys1.UUCP> <823@uwovax.uwo.ca> <5247@ritcsh.UUCP>
Reply-To: w8sdz@brl.arpa (Keith B. Petersen (WSMR|towson) <w8sdz>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 20

When the network can transmit newsgroups without errors and truncations
we should consider posting clear text.  Until then, ARC files are the
only way to know if the posting arrived intact.  The Unix compress
program does not have any checksum or CRC to go with the file.  If it
did, we wouldn't see any munged postings because the receiving system
would tell the sender to try again until it got a good copy.  It's a
basic flow in the way Usenet operates with no error checking of the file
integrity.  True, uucp has error checking, but that doesn't solve the
problem of other system errors such as a system that truncates a posting
simply because there is no more room in the /usr/spool directory.  It
should delete the file when that happens and then later ask for a
retransmission when there is disk space available.  If Usenet used
Zmodem instead of Uucp for moving the net mail and newsgroups this
wouldn't happen.  Zmodem sends the file size info before sending the
file and the receiver can reject it if there is not enough space.
-- 
Keith Petersen
Maintainer of the CP/M and MSDOS archives at SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL [26.0.0.74]
Arpa: W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL
Uucp: {ames,decwrl,harvard,rutgers,ucbvax,uunet}!simtel20.army.mil!w8sdz