cpio(1) under Sun 3.0; or, does System V write filenames backwards?

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <760 at smeagol.UUCP> earle at smeagol.UUCP (Greg Earle) writes:
>Any clarification would be appreciated.

There are actually two "cpio" modes.  The "old original" one
works with archives that are machine-specific ("binary headers").
As you discovered, it is an oversimplification to analyze the
machine architecture dependency in terms of "byte swapping".  The
"new" cpio mode works with a machine-independent "ASCII header"
format.  AT&T ships add-on software such as DWB in the portable
format, but older distributions were in machine-specific CPIO format.

Unfortunately the "cpio" default is binary header (for efficiency
in the typical use of "cpio" to copy directories, I suppose, as
well as for backward-compatibility reasons).  One should be careful
to specify the "-c" option when writing archives for export to other
sites.  (There is a "-ncpio" option to find that makes ASCII-header
CPIO archives, by the way.)

Our version of "cpio" adds to the "out of phase" error a suggestion
that perhaps the "-c" option should be used, since this is often
the cause of that error.