cpio Out of phase -- get help

[Allott P]

In article <1178 at msa3b.UUCP> 
>For most of these files, cpio has worked quite nicely.
>On one, it aborts with:
>	Out of phase -- get help.
>What does this mean,

All cpio "tape" blocks start with a "Magic number", I think this is 0707
but don't take my word for that. If the "Magic number" is not there on read
back you get the error message. This can be caused by one (or more) of the 
following.
(1)	The "tape" was written with the "c" option and read back without it.
(2)	The "tape" was written without the "c" option and read back with it.
(3)	The tape was written on a machine with the bytes stored internally
	in a different order to that on the machine on which is is being read.
	AND the "c" option was not used.
(4)	The "tape" has suffered a hardware read (or write) error.
(5)	The tape was written in "c" mode and contains file(s) with a negative
	uid (or gid) (ie. "Nobody")

> and what can I do about it?
Find the cause of the problem.
if (1) or (2)	-	Use the correct option.
if (3)		-	Read the tape on a machine with the correct byte order.
			I think the later versions of cpio sort this problem out
			for you - reading tapes writen on machines with 
			diffent byte orders even if in non-"c" mode.
if (4)		-	Try again. We have source and spent some time, trying
			to get a version which would recover, I would need
			some proof of licence status before I send our mods
			to the source. (These are based on quite an old version
			of cpio)
if (5)		-	Panic.  Well not quite. I cannot see a way of recoving
			this sort of dump. (It bit us some months ago). I have
			a version which will write readable tapes in "c" mode
			even if -ve uids exist on your machine.