Re: linux gzip flakiness?

[Paul Eggert]

Ken Shih <address@hidden> writes:

> gzip: file.gz: invalid compressed data--crc error 
> gzip: file.gz: invalid compressed data--length error 
> 
> Is there some known issue about this bug creeping in?

It's news to me.

> 3. I am unable to reproduce the problem, even on the same file.  It just
> seems to show up every now and then.  Most of the time it just works.

That's weird.  gzip is pretty much deterministic.  I checked all the
gzip changes between 1.3.3 and 1.3.5 and none of them seem relevant.

It _could_ be a bug in gzip (e.g., it might be accessing uninitialized
data, or something like that).  Can you try running it under your
favorite memory debugger, on an input file that showed the problem?
Valgrind, say.

Another possibility is that it's a hardware or kernel bug.  gzip tends
to stress them a bit.