gzip and old files Partly Solved

["Martin McCormick" <martin.m@suddenlink.net>]

Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> writes:
> Sounds unlikely.
> 
> > $ gzip -d rc.custom.gz
> >
> > gzip: rc.custom.gz: not in gzip format
> 
> Where did you get this file?

tomsrtbt-2.0.103

	Here's what happened:

	The rc.custom.gz file you posted is 961 bytes long.  My
corrupt copy is also 961 bytes long and file describes it as
data.

>  What does file(1) say about it?

$ file rc.custom.gz
rc.custom.gz: data

>  How about
> gzip --test?

$ gzip --test rc.custom.gz
gzip: rc.custom.gz: not in gzip format

> I think it's more likely that your file is corrupt, than that gzip has
> decided to become incompatible with itself.

	Fortunately, this turns out to be correct.

	The file you posted unzipped with gzip -d on my system
with no issue at all.

The good file has a checksum of
10349     1

The bad version of the same file's checksum is

13550     1.

	I mounted tomsrtbt.raw with 
    mount -o loop tomsrtbt.raw  /mnt
and that rc.custom.gz also has a checksum of
10349     1

	The install.s script has one to put a blank floppy in to
the drive and does dd if=tomsrtbt.raw of=/dev/fd0 with a record
count and somehow, that original diskette passed all the tests,
seems to boot right up and let me start a serial console on it
without so much as a single error.

	There is enough of this that is enough different from
today's world that I thought things were much worse than they
turned out to be.  I am amazed that the corrupted disk worked at
all.

	Thanks for clearing up the confusion.

Martin McCormick