hexbin not converting some hqx files properly

Bug #174751 reported by Steven Gauna
10
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
macutils (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: macutils

I have a hex compressed file called StartHere.hqx which was created by Macromedia Flash 8.0 and contains a projector file. This might be a bug with Macromedia, but here is what I have found so far which lead me to believe the bug is in hexbin.

I received a file called StartHere.hqx which has the following MD5 a596175bcd43232c048773fa90059beb and is 3255054 bytes large.
I ran hexbin StartHere.hqx which produced the following output :
1 excess bytes ignored

The file StartHere.bin with MD5 f6700a6656bd5723e10cbe9ad2ad4222 and size 2438272 bytes was created.

I attempted to run this on a Mac OS 10.4.5 which immediately launched the stuff it expander utility and extracted the application from my supposed binary.

I copied this working application file to my linux PC; its MD5 is e206c4740dc3fd361e57c79e28bb9aa9 and size is 2243527 bytes.

I tried binhex to see what it would produce on the working binary file, and it spat out "File is not MacBinary: StartHere". Which was clearly wrong since it was the working executable.

Next, I tried running binhex on the output of hexbin, StartHere.bin. I ran "binhex StartHere.bin > ../StartHere.hqx" (up one dir so I wouldn't overwrite my original). This is what I got

sgauna@80kt891:~/Public$ ls -l ../StartHere.hqx StartHere.hqx
-rw-r--r-- 1 sgauna sgauna 3256707 2007-12-07 12:53 ../StartHere.hqx
-rwxr--r-- 1 sgauna sgauna 3255054 2007-12-07 12:03 StartHere.hqx

The newly compressed is slightly larger than the original and extracts via hexbin without errors to produce the same non-executable file as the original would produce.

I ran an strace against the hexbin utility but was unable to determine what the problem could be. I don't believe this package has been updated in a long time, so its probably just because the standard once used for conversion has been modified since the last update, but I really don't know. As far as I know, this could just be a bug with the Macromedia utility; if it is, I'll re-post this message with their developers.

Revision history for this message
Steven Gauna (smcgauna) wrote :

This is the output of strace when the command "strace -o hexbin.strace hexbin StartHere.hqx" was run.

Revision history for this message
Kirby (usawebbox) wrote :

hexbin failed to extract an xls file encoded with binhex 4.0. I tried installing a newer macutils via alien (macutils-2.0b3-32 instead of macutils-2.0b3-15), but that also failed.

uudeview worked perfectly on the same file.

Revision history for this message
Daniel T Chen (crimsun) wrote :

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10?

Changed in macutils:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

Changed in macutils:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
Revision history for this message
François GUÉRIN (frague) wrote :

Hi all,

I've received by mail a PDF compresssed as an hqx file (prefix "(This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0)").

I've used ZigZag to extract it, I've a good old pdf file, working perfectly.

I've installed macutils, to try to extract it without wine, the file can be extracted, but not read with evince.
File converted with ZigZag : file.pdf
File converted with binhex : file.pdf.bin

I've done
$ less fichier.pdf.bin

^@^RDevis_02N26403.pdf^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@pdf CARO^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^A<83><F9>^@^@
^@^@ǡ<A7>-ǡ<A7>-^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@%PDF-1.3
%<C4><E5><F2><E5><EB><A7><F3><A0><D0><C4><C6>
2 0 obj
<< /Length 1 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >>
... (it's just the file start)

$ var file.pdf | less
%PDF-1.3
%<C4><E5><F2><E5><EB><A7><F3><A0><D0><C4><C6>
2 0 obj
<< /Length 1 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >>

As you can see, the "standart" pdf header is not respected, and some "noise" is added by hexbin on top of the file.

I use actualy a Karmic 64, sorry for my poor english...

François GUÉRIN

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