Hello everyone!

I have a serious problem.
When i installed Windows on my laptop it overwrote the boot sector,
which is why i couldn't boot Fedora Core 4 anymore.
So i tried some things to fix the boot sector or boot FC4 somehow.
I didn't succeeded, unfortunately. :-(

So i downloaded Fedora Core 5, which just released Monday. I wanted to install it and clear the whole old Linux partition. But of course i needed an Backup of all important data!
So i burned the FC5 rescue disc and bootet it. Unable to rescue "GRUB", the bootmanager, or boot Fedora at all, i started making a backup.

For some reason i couldn't mount anything, "fstab couldnt be found...".
So i put the data into several tar archives and send them vie FTP to my "big" computer to store them as a backup. Unfortunately i forgot to type "binary" at first, so all the data was send in ascii mode!

And now none of the archives can be opened! The data somehow got messed up. Is there any chance to fix the files so that they work again!?

This is very important, since the backup contains some very important data.

Thanks a lot for any help in advance!!

I'm afraid I don't think it's possible, having done some research on google.

Any way you can resend the data in binary mode?

No, that's exactly my problem. :-(

Even after hours of searching i only found people saying it was impossible to recover a binary file, that was destroyed by sending it via FTP ascii mode.

Luckily i'm kind of stubborn.
I just wrote a tiny cpp application myself to fix the files,
and what shall i say - it works!

Now my only problem is to implement a good-looking progress bar for the program in console mode, since it takes quite some minutes to fix files of several hundred megabytes.

You should post the code somewhere, I'm sure someone else will find it equally as useful one day.

I wouldn't bother with a "good-looking" status bar - I'd think the "I'm working" propeller would be just fine {-\|/-\|/-}. Of if you're bothering to calculate completion percentages, provide output or a hook for integration with other utilities.

I ended up doing it very simple.
It just says "repairing... x/y" now. Where y is the total number of chunks (1 MB each),
and x the currenty processed one.
I tried implementing a ETA display as well. But it wasn't very precise, so i let it off.

Where could i post the code, anyway?

Wow, I'm impressed - I didn't think it would be possible, so kudos to you for getting it to fix the files

I'd agree that this is undoubtedly something that others could find useful. As far as where to release it... Have you thought about starting a project at Sourceforge? Even though you've got a working version, I'm sure that some others might suggest some possible improvements. Let us know the name of the project, if you do decide to release this.

I was going to suggest SourceForge as well - but I don't know what is involved in starting a project there and whether or not there is any cost involved.

This would be a good question to ask in the Programming forum.

Thanks.
I posted the project on SourgeForge.
It will take a few days till the project gets rejected...