On Mon, 2005-12-12 at 16:15 -0800, Steve Lamb wrote: > Alex Malinovich wrote: > > The same way that RAR does. They tell you whether that discreet part of > > the archive is corrupted or not. If it is corrupted it's just as useless > > whether it's a RAR archive or any other type of archive. > > Bzt, try again. I asked "against what". You create the archives and > they're sitting there on the disc. You use whatever tool you want and it > spits out a value. Against what do you check that value? There is no > reference to check against. RAR, on the other hand, computes the value for > the files inside the archive and stores that value *in the archive itself*. > Later when you ask it to check the validity of the archive it can reference > the stored value. That's why you include a checksums file with the archive set and/or list the sums at the point of origin (web site, FTP site, etc). > > Sorry, but I'm just not seeing it. If RAR had some recovery features > > along the lines of PAR, I might be more impressed. > > Be impressed. Why do you think one of the reasons unrar-free can't deal > with >= 3.00 rar files? From RAR's 3.0 notes: > > 9. Added support of so called recovery volumes (.rev files), which can be used > to reconstruct missing files in a volume set. One .rev file allows to > reconstruct one missing RAR volume, for example, 5 .rev files are able to > reconstruct any 5 volumes. > > > But seeing as how PAR > > works with any type of a multi-part archive I'm just not seeing any > > particular strength to using RAR. > > Combine the above. Again, reference against what? That information needs > to be created and stored at the time of creation. Having an md5sum 3 months > later with nothing to check it against is useless. I don't know, maybe I'm just dense or something, but explain to me why you would WANT to put that information in the archive itself? If an archive is CORRUPTED (which is why we're distributing the sums and the PARs in the first place), what good will it be that the sums and recovery info are IN the file? It's ALREADY corrupt, so what makes you think the recovery data wouldn't be corrupt right along with it?! Or am I just missing something painfully obvious here? -- Alex Malinovich Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY! Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the pgp.net keyservers. Key ID: A6D24837
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