"Rustom Mody" wrote in message
news:4f25d0a9-64a5-4d36-b072-97e293a7c...@googlegroups.com...
<anecdote>
I was sending some files to some students.
Since it was more than one, the natural choice was a tarball.
[I believe that since it was a very tiny total space I did not compress the
tarball… but I dont remember this part exactly]
The point is that instead of sending a stuff.tgz or stuff.tar file I sent a
file
called just stuff; ie I must have done:
$ tar xvf stuff directory
rather than the more normal
$ tar xvf stuff.tar directory
I got a return mail soon enough: “Your file is corrupt; it wont open”
(in file-roller or whatever tar-GUI the kids nowadays use)
I could have given them the answer: There are no associations in
Linux. Just
$ mv stuff stuff.tar
and it will work
As it happens I am lazy; easier to believe that my file was "wrongly" named;
did the mv myself, and resent the now "correct" tarball; problem solved.
</anecdote>
I had a similar experience a few years ago, but the recipient was not a
student, but a bank's IT department!
I had to send them an encrypted document, and their spec specified PGP. I
used GPG instead, which produces exactly the same result, but with a .gpg
file extension.
I was told that my file did not work. After much time trying to figure out
what was wrong, I spoke to one of their staff over the phone, and asked him
to right-click on the file, select 'rename', and change '.gpg' to '.pgp'. He
did so, tried again, and said 'Ah, now it works'.
Frank Millman
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