newbie help--gz file corrupted?

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 03:03:10PM -0800, mike wrote:
> hey all, i can't work my way around linux very well, so i want to make sure
> i'm not doing anythign wrong here.  i'm simply trying to unzip a file
> called:
> 
> something.tar.gz
> 
> i'm typing:
> 
> gunzip something.tar.gz
> 
> and i get the following error:
> 
> invalid compressed data--crc error
> invalid compressed data--length error
> 
> this file is a HIGHLY downloaded file that's been around for a while, and
> it's only 54K.  seems unlikely that it's corrupted...
> 
> if it matters, i download it first with a windows machine and ftp it over to
> my linux machine...
> 
> thx!

Windoze is known to change things while downloading it.  For instance,
it might have downloaded it in text mode and interpreted some of the
bytes as newlines that had to be converted.  Or it might have
gunzipped it during the download but not changed the filename.  The
way to see what the file really is, is to

  file something.tar.gz

If it thinks it's really a plain tar file, then just rename it to
something.tar and carry on.

If it thinks it's a gzipped file then it's probably corrupted.

If you download it again with Windoze, make sure you do a binary
download, not ascii.  Or better yet, if you have the URL, either
http://mumble/path/to/something.tar.gz, or
ftp://mumble/path/to/something.tar.gz, you can very easily download it
in linux:

  wget ftp://mumble/path/to/something.tar.gz

If I missed some other possibilities, let us know.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
Peace begins not at a Mideast table, but at a Mideast stable