OT: Usenet Binaries and Par Files

  • Thread starter Thread starter Grinder
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G

Grinder

This is definitely not a hardware question, but perhaps you can give me
a boost in the right direction. It's hard enough for me to determine
what group this might be applicable too without having to also find one
that's active.

A large (650MB) StuffIt archive has been split into 66 parts for posting
on the Usenet. Each part is further split into 36 "segments" when it's
binhexed. By binhexed, I mean that an 8-bit binary is stretched out
into a file comprised of only 7-bit (ascii) characters. There's also
some header info attached, It looks like this:

Path: blah blah
From: blah <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.blah
Subject: - blah.sit.57 (29/36)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:15:15 -0500
Organization: NewsGuy - Unlimited Usenet $19.95
Lines: 5433
Message-ID: <blah blah>
NNTP-Posting-Host: blah blah
User-Agent: Magic/2.0.0 (MagicLamp X)
Xref: blah blah


---
'@JY6aC9(8d9aqA(`draa@MCkR)0%ermp,L-U()2L!*!!HVb,%ZXh"G,5`%m44qe
,$MHJ*`NkE[6bML0EaKHmU*DDb(Y%3%#)ci(I5MmjRXkNX434"N88ViC@D['VJ5(
HJjRR34kD*'3PcMa!5TiA%IlcrL0YCa9-E*m)3&A%IH8fR8Z#l8`NjVVkZ55eUBA

.... lots more in between

M2R-4@E,GFFFJNr)B23@LaM22@&Nk-lQq$!H'[6cZb[lLZ+rGqGMSGDkqK2lC`RM
TrE1059ZPUDA@P5AAM5dhE6-6"fcG49&rCc)+Y)LLL-jRh&m8++1lij6+)2$0C9d
$S%XpAfM11E6Hd64$2ESb[a1ShY*Cf(E+*0%"KbIC9&YTb,I!hh3FHF!q#adfSYH
--- end of part 29 ---

I've managed to get almost all of the 2300+ segments, and *all* of the
par files. 57 of the 66 parts have been de-binhexed and reconstituted.
This was accomplished by joining the binhex segments together, for a
given part file, and using Stuffit (on an old Mac.) Stuffit archives,
and their parts, are kept in the data fork, so the notorious resource
fork splitting is not an issue here.

The problem is in getting a part reconstituted when one of the segments
is missing. I've tried just sticking them together without the missing
segment, and faking up the missing segment with a bunch of zeros. Both
cases cause stuffit to bitch about a CRC error.

SmartPar can find all of the parts, but knows there's something wrong
with the 9 corrupted parts, and does not offer a repair.

Surely there is some way to use the PAR files to come fill in the gaps?
 
Have you tried QuickPar?
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/index.htm

But ehm, just curious, how are you downloading those segments?
There are several applications for reading binaries on usenet
like Forté Agent and Newsleecher (if you are using Windows).

regards,
Marcel
 
Grinder said:
This is definitely not a hardware question, but perhaps you can give me a
boost in the right direction. It's hard enough for me to determine what
group this might be applicable too without having to also find one that's
active.

A large (650MB) StuffIt archive has been split into 66 parts for posting
on the Usenet. Each part is further split into 36 "segments" when it's
binhexed. By binhexed, I mean that an 8-bit binary is stretched out into
a file comprised of only 7-bit (ascii) characters. There's also some
header info attached, It looks like this:

Path: blah blah
From: blah <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.blah
Subject: - blah.sit.57 (29/36)
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:15:15 -0500
Organization: NewsGuy - Unlimited Usenet $19.95
Lines: 5433
Message-ID: <blah blah>
NNTP-Posting-Host: blah blah
User-Agent: Magic/2.0.0 (MagicLamp X)
Xref: blah blah


---
'@JY6aC9(8d9aqA(`draa@MCkR)0%ermp,L-U()2L!*!!HVb,%ZXh"G,5`%m44qe
,$MHJ*`NkE[6bML0EaKHmU*DDb(Y%3%#)ci(I5MmjRXkNX434"N88ViC@D['VJ5(
HJjRR34kD*'3PcMa!5TiA%IlcrL0YCa9-E*m)3&A%IH8fR8Z#l8`NjVVkZ55eUBA

... lots more in between

M2R-4@E,GFFFJNr)B23@LaM22@&Nk-lQq$!H'[6cZb[lLZ+rGqGMSGDkqK2lC`RM
TrE1059ZPUDA@P5AAM5dhE6-6"fcG49&rCc)+Y)LLL-jRh&m8++1lij6+)2$0C9d
$S%XpAfM11E6Hd64$2ESb[a1ShY*Cf(E+*0%"KbIC9&YTb,I!hh3FHF!q#adfSYH
--- end of part 29 ---

I've managed to get almost all of the 2300+ segments, and *all* of the par
files. 57 of the 66 parts have been de-binhexed and reconstituted. This
was accomplished by joining the binhex segments together, for a given part
file, and using Stuffit (on an old Mac.) Stuffit archives, and their
parts, are kept in the data fork, so the notorious resource fork splitting
is not an issue here.

The problem is in getting a part reconstituted when one of the segments is
missing. I've tried just sticking them together without the missing
segment, and faking up the missing segment with a bunch of zeros. Both
cases cause stuffit to bitch about a CRC error.

SmartPar can find all of the parts, but knows there's something wrong with
the 9 corrupted parts, and does not offer a repair.

Surely there is some way to use the PAR files to come fill in the gaps?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Marcel said:
Have you tried QuickPar?
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/index.htm
Click to expand...

Grinder wrote:
Oops, yeah when I said "SmartPar," I meant QuickPar. Brain cells must
be dying off in droves these days.

Marcel said:
But ehm, just curious, how are you downloading those segments?
There are several applications for reading binaries on usenet
like Forté Agent and Newsleecher (if you are using Windows).
Click to expand...

Grinder wrote:
I was using XNews, which can typically decode messages. In this case,
though it could not, probably because of the BinHex encoding. It
couldn't even do the parts that had all of the "segments." So, I just
saved all of the messages and performed the concatenation and
de-binhexing myself.
 
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