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Re: old (1990) cpio archive reporting the error: unknown file type


From: Alice Lecinski
Subject: Re: old (1990) cpio archive reporting the error: unknown file type
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2022 10:39:22 -0700

Fabulous!   I don't have bsdtar installed yet -- but will do that and then certainly try it out.
Thank you,
--Alice


On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 10:31 AM Tim Kientzle <tim@kientzle.com> wrote:
Checking the sources, it looks like bsdtar can read this using a command such as:

$ bsdtar xf archive.cpio  —option=cpio:pwb

bsdtar automatically recognizes and supports most modern cpio formats; the `cpio:pwb` option prompts it to use PWB file modes when extracting.

Tim


On Dec 16, 2022, at 9:25 AM, Alice Lecinski <alice@ucar.edu> wrote:

Thanks Tim.  It'll be a fun afternoon. :-)
Thanks for your help,
--Alice

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 10:21 AM Tim Kientzle <tim@kientzle.com> wrote:
This appears to be a CPIO archive stored in the original cpio format introduced as part of Programmer’s Work Bench (PWB), a variant of 6th Edition UNIX.

The PWB format differed from that used in 7th Edition Unix in how it represented file types.

The first file in this archive, for example, is stored with a file type of octal 110644.  In the PWB format, this indicated a regular file with IALLOC and ILARG flags set (neither of which is relevant for cpio purposes).  In later 7th Edition, this is nonsense (a “regular file” that is also a “named pipe”), which explains the errors you are seeing.

In short, you’ll need to find or write a program that can extract the PWB format.  I’m not sure if GNU cpio can do this — it probably assumes “bin” format is the 7th Edition Format.  I don’t recall if bsdcpio can extract this or not — I’d have to check the sources.

Fortunately, cpio format is very easy to read.  It has a fixed-layout header for each entry, followed by the filename and file contents.  So if you know how to read binary data from one file and write it to another, you can probably cobble up something workable in an afternoon.  The header details can be found online: https://man.archlinux.org/man/cpio.5.en

Tim






On Dec 15, 2022, at 10:16 AM, Alice Lecinski <alice@ucar.edu> wrote:

Thank you so very much for your response.

Please find attached the results of:
od -xv --address-radix=d FILE_001 > V00063_hexdump.txt

Thank you,
Alice


On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 7:10 PM Tim Kientzle <tim@kientzle.com> wrote:
Can you  provide a hex dump of the first 128 or so bytes of the archive?

Tim


On Dec 14, 2022, at 12:40 PM, Alice Lecinski <alice@ucar.edu> wrote:

I have a very old cpio archive written in approximately 1990.
It was most likely written on a VAX VMS (~linux) system.
This is historical data and fairly important...

When I attempt to get the files using:
cpio -iv --no-absolute-filenames --force-local --format='bin' < FILE_001 

I get the following output:
cpio: ecl9w2: unknown file type
ecl9w2
cpio: g: unknown file type
g
cpio: ssss: unknown file type
ssss
cpio: t: unknown file type
t
wwww
5480 blocks

When I then do an 'ls', the 'wwww' file has been created.   But none of the other files:
'ecl9w2', 'g', 't'
exist.   
The 'wwww' file is ascii and readable.   I know the 'ecl9w2' file is binary.

Any suggestions?
Thank you,
Alice

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Alice Lecinski                                
Associate Scientist IV                    
High Altitude Observatory            www2.hao.ucar.edu

HAO is a division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research,
which is operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric
Research under sponsorship of the National Science Foundation.
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<V00063_hexdump.txt>



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