mscompress creates files with wrong header on amd64

[zapman]

When I compress a file with mscompress on Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS amd64, the compressed file is indeed created with "_" appended to the file name; but when I try to decompress that file with msexpand I get the following error message: "This is not a MS-compressed file" -- and the file is expanded correctly. A file command on the compressed item returns only "data", whereas it should be "MS Compress archive data".

I tried with an Ubuntu 10.04.3 i386 LiveCD with which the file command returned the correct answer and msexpand didn't return any error messages, so it's probably an architecture problem. Many thanks to Stefan Handschuh, the developer of jAOLT, who advised to use the file command and suggested that the header could be incorrect.

A terminal output would probably be more explanatory:

zapman@ubuntu:~/mscompress_test$ mscompress -V
mscompress version 0.3 (yellow) Mar 7 2010
zapman@ubuntu:~/mscompress_test$ mscompress TODO.txt
zapman@ubuntu:~/mscompress_test$ dir
TODO.txt TODO.txt_
zapman@ubuntu:~/mscompress_test$ file TODO.txt_
TODO.txt_: data
zapman@ubuntu:~/mscompress_test$ mv TODO.txt .. #so that msexpand doesn't say "File exists"
zapman@ubuntu:~/mscompress_test$ msexpand TODO.txt_
TODO.txt_: This is not a MS-compressed file
zapman@ubuntu:~/mscompress_test$ dir
TODO.txt TODO.txt_

You can see the reply of the file command which should have been "MS Compress archive data" instead of just "data", and the error message from msexpand which says "This is not a MS-compressed file" and which shouldn't have appeared.

Additional information: lsb_release -rd returns:
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS
Release: 10.04
uname -a returns:
Linux ubuntu 2.6.32-38-generic #83-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jan 4 11:12:07 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
apt-cache policy mscompress returns:
mscompress:
  Installed: 0.3-3build1
  Candidate: 0.3-3build1
  Version table:
 *** 0.3-3build1 0
        500 ftp://ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/pub/mirror/linux/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

PS: You may also want to take a look at the Debian bug n° 600549 for this package on <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=600549>. It even includes a patch :)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: mscompress 0.3-3build1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-38.83-generic 2.6.32.52+drm33.21
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-38-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: 3b8b1e94677feb8b107502acb9f14c2c
CheckboxSystem: 4ed15c40009aa6f7770f606350a390a2
Date: Thu Feb 16 11:00:48 2012
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_AU:en_GB:en
 LANG=en_AU.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: mscompress

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.