saving .bz2 files

ZIYAD A. M. AL-BATLY zamb at saudi.net.sa
Fri Aug 26 13:24:23 UTC 2005


On Thu, 2005-08-25 at 21:19 +0100, david wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I've noticed that often when I right click and "save as" a file ending
> in .bz2, that the firefox downloader (?) adds an extra ".tar"  on the
> end. If missed, the file then won't open in Archive Manager unless I
> rename it and remove the extra .tar. I understand this bit, what I don't
> understand is why the extra .tar gets added in the first place.
> Is this a common thing ?
> 
> regards
> 
> nux
> 
> 
Here's a guess:  Maybe the server is badly configured and sending any
"*.bz2" file with a "application/x-tar" MIME.  When you choose to save
this file from Firefox, it tries to be smart and useful (which is the
Right Thing) and suggest to add the "*.tar" postfix (the postfix
associated with the "application/x-tar" MIME type).

To find out, try running the following from a terminal:
        wget --save-headers "http://server/path/file.bz2"
(Change "http://server/path/file.bz2" to the real URL, of course.)

After that, check the MIME that the server sends to you by running:
        grep -a -i '^Content-Type' file.bz2
and see what it tells you.  If my guess is correct, it should give you
something like "Content-Type: application/x-tar".

As usual, I hope this helps.
Ziyad.





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