Re: Problems with the mintos distribution

[harmony@tyrell.net (Michael Wray)]

Xav wrote the following:

>Following the replies to my question about sync'ing a minix system, I
>tried again (fifth time now) to decompress my tar of MiNTOS. It's
>version 1.4.1 (or whatever the latest one on the earth.ox web site
>is), and I've downloaded it several times, to no avail.
>
>Basically, i can use gzip on it fine, but I am unable to detar the
>resultant file. I've tried "detar.ttp" (a more tos based tar
>utility), tar from the MiNT archive at Imperial College (src.ic.ac),
>and last night even with tar on the Linux PC upstairs! The best
>results came from detar.ttp, which manages the first few files before
>giving up with an error. The others don't even get that far.
>
>My original tgz has been webbed, ftp'd and even gophered down, and
>the same applies in all cases. Has anyone else had problems? Is there
>another source for it? I now have sync (I hope, if the attachments
>worked!), but I'm sure there's other stuff stuck in there that would
>help me!
>
I have had similar problems and found that detar works even better than tar
as tar seems to be broken and always says access denied...no matter where or
who I am.

I use WinZip and or WinTar.  Winzip will handle the gzip stuff and most Tar
files, although I found that most Tar files that WinZip can't handle can be
handled with WinTar, this is how I have had to untar most of my Mint related
packages, including MiNTOS and MintNET.  Detar gets all the files, but tends
to truncate lots of names, WinTar/Zip does too but are easier to get the
full names from the tar file listing than with detar. (although if you type
detar d tarfile >filename you will get an ascii listing of full paths and
full names without truncations...(Why doesn't it trunc names here as well?
I'm glad it doesn't....)

If someone could state the specifics on getting TAR (in the Mint
Directories, I believe the Gnu Port, 1.11> ) to work with Mint I'd
definitely be interested. I know the command parameters, I just need to know
who and where it is allowed to be used and how do I make it work on
installing Tar'd packages.  Sometimes I get lucky and it'll work....

(The only time I get it to work is to put a copy of tar in the home
directory I'm in and make it belong to that person, and the tar file I'm
untaring must also belong to that person.  However since CHOWN doesn't
change the owner to who I tell it to but rather to the first person in the
GROUP file in that particular group.

i.e. I have 
USERS 1:roger mike amie fred

If I CHOWN a file belonging to amie and tell it to make fred the owner, it
makes roger the owner.

If it were originally owned by someone in another group, it would go to the
first name in that group, or if no one is in that group it gets changed to
group WHEEL with ROOT as the owner.

Ahhh....(Ok, enough with that...I've got more pressing Mint problems..)

Ciao.