GPG Problem - invalid radix64 character

Turbo Fredriksson turbo at bayour.com
Tue May 10 13:30:58 CEST 2011


I needed to move lots of data from one site to another across
europe. I got a huge disk and archived all data onto that using
something like (simplified):

	find | cpio -o | gpg -e | split - /disk/archive.

To extract the data again, it's just as simple:

	cat `find /disk/archive.* | sort` | gpg -d | cpio -i

This have worked perfectly for a number of these data moves
I've done over the last few months...


But this last one gave me a problem when trying to unpack
it:

	gpg: invalid radix64 character D0 skipped
	gpg: invalid radix64 character 00 skipped
	gpg: invalid radix64 character AD skipped
	gpg: invalid radix64 character DE skipped
	[these four lines repeats for a while]
	gpg: [don't know]: invalid packet (ctb=73)
	gpg: mdc_packet with invalid encoding
	gpg: decryption failed: Invalid packet
	gpg: [don't know]: invalid packet (ctb=36)
	gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.
	cpio: premature end of file


There's 1498 4GB files, and I managed to extract 792GB before
this failure. But since the archive files is in ASCII armor,
there's no telling in which file the problem lies!

I'm currently looking for '^-|.*:|^$' in the files, but
so far nothing...


1. What character is D0, 00, AD and DE? What can I look for
    (to try to diagnose the problem/file)

2. Is there ANYTHING I can do to get my data, exept making a
    new archive (which, for various reasons, take about
    two-three weeks)?



I've googled this problem, but most (if not all) get this
when/if receiving an ASCII armor via mail which messes
things up. I doubt very much that's the problem here, since
I'm using the exact, identical file I started with, not a
copy (which is the result of mailing it)...




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