[Lzip-bug] Lziprecover 1.20-rc1 released

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Lziprecover 1.20-rc1 is ready for testing here
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lzip/lziprecover/lziprecover-1.20-rc1.tar.lz
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lzip/lziprecover/lziprecover-1.20-rc1.tar.gz

The sha256sums are:
281b52cd2d8ee8e549440c07b590251d8cec2aced7fdd3add9a4be35bedcfb2c 
lziprecover-1.20-rc1.tar.lz
6a1299e6349c82cc12be062d6bc1afd24c8f262fe57416312beb4de253cafa52 
lziprecover-1.20-rc1.tar.gz

Please, test it and report any bugs you find.

Lziprecover is a data recovery tool and decompressor for files in the 
lzip compressed data format (.lz). Lziprecover is able to repair 
slightly damaged files, produce a correct file by merging the good parts 
of two or more damaged copies, extract data from damaged files, 
decompress files and test integrity of files.

Lziprecover provides random access to the data in multimember files; it 
only decompresses the members containing the desired data.

Lziprecover facilitates the management of metadata stored as trailing 
data in lzip files.

Lziprecover is not a replacement for regular backups, but a last line of 
defense for the case where the backups are also damaged.

Lziprecover is able to recover or decompress files produced by any of 
the compressors in the lzip family; lzip, plzip, minilzip/lzlib, clzip 
and pdlzip.

The lzip file format is designed for data sharing and long-term 
archiving, taking into account both data integrity and decoder availability.

A nice feature of the lzip format is that a corrupt byte is easier to 
repair the nearer it is from the beginning of the file. Therefore, with 
the help of lziprecover, losing an entire archive just because of a 
corrupt byte near the beginning is a thing of the past.

If the cause of file corruption is damaged media, the combination GNU 
ddrescue[1] + lziprecover is the best option for recovering data from 
multiple damaged copies.

The homepage is at http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lziprecover.html


Changes in this version:

  * The option '--loose-trailing', has been added.

  * The test used by lziprecover to discriminate trailing data from a 
corrupt header in multimember or concatenated files has been improved to 
a Hamming distance (HD) of 3, and the 3 bit flips must happen in 
different magic bytes for the test to fail. As a consequence some kinds 
of files no longer can be appended to a lzip file as trailing data 
unless the '--loose-trailing' option is used when decompressing.
Lziprecover can be used to remove conflicting trailing data from a file.

  * The contents of a corrupt or truncated header found in a 
multimember file is now shown, after the error message, in the same 
format as trailing data.

  * The 'bits/byte' ratio has been replaced with the inverse 
compression ratio in the output.

  * The progress of decompression is now shown at verbosity level 2 
(-vv) or higher.

  * Progress of decompression is only shown if stderr is a terminal.

  * A final diagnostic is now shown at verbosity level 1 (-v) or higher 
if any file fails the test when testing multiple files.

  * In case of (de)compressed size mismatch, the stored size is now 
also shown in hexadecimal to ease visual comparison.

  * The dictionary size is now shown at verbosity level 4 (-vvvv) when 
decompressing or testing.


[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html


Regards,
Antonio Diaz, lziprecover author and maintainer.

--
If you are distributing software in xz format, please consider using 
lzip instead. See http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip_benchmark.html#xz1 and 
http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/xz_inadequate.html