Subject: Allegedly corrupt packages 7. ***** Q: I have received your programs but the package is corrupt. When I try to unpack them with my unpacking program (pkunzip or unzip) the unpacking fails or produces files that lock my PC. A: The files with the .zip extension are binary packages and you have to use the correct transfer mode when you transfer the programs from the remote FTP site to our host, and when you transfer the files from our main frame to your PC. Most frequently the problems the users report are due to failing to set the binary mode when transferring the files from the user's host to the users PC. Please see Appendix B for more information. In 1993 there was been over four million successful downloads from Garbo. Thus it is very unlikely that the original file at Garbo really is corrupt. It is not impossible, but first check all the other possibilities. There is another common cause for allegedly corrupt packages besides failing to use the correct mode in the file transfer from the FTP site to one's own host, or in the file transfer from one's own host to one's PC. This is failing to use the correct version of the relevant archiver for archived packages. Unfortunately some of the PKUNZIP error messages are quite misleading, like "CRC error", "use pkzip 3.8 (or whatever)", "use PkZipFix". Just assure that you have transferred correctly and that are using the current version: 202574 Feb 1 1993 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/arcers/pkz204g.exe pkz204g.exe PKWARE's pkzip, pkunzip, pkzipfix, zip2exe for .zip or 247148 Nov 29 1998 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/arcers/unz540x3.exe unz540x3.exe Info-ZIP's self-extracting unzipper (with 386 version) For the Windows 3.1x environment use e.g. 629038 Sep 26 1997 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/windows/arcers/wz16v63.exe wz16v63.exe WinZip for Win 3.1 w/Built-in ZIP, TAR, gzip, compress The World Wide Web has added the possibility of getting the files from the archive sites also with the WWW browser programs. It appears that (at least with some of the browser versions) in a long session the browser gets confused and cannot get the files in the proper format. If you are experiencing such problems, exit your browser, reload it, and then try to get the target file anew. --------------------------------------------------------------------