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- File: UNARCLUX.FIX
- To: RCP/M Sysops
- Subject: Fix to problem using UNARC with LUX52
- Date: September 10, 1986
- Revised: November 21, 1986
-
- It has been brought to my attention that LUX 5.2 has caused some
- RCP/M systems to crash, when using the TYPE command to view the
- contents of a member file in an .ARC archive. This is likely to
- occur only when very large files are viewed by the sysop (i.e.
- when the wheel byte is set).
-
- The problem occurs because LUX relocates a portion of itself
- (5.5K bytes) to high memory before loading and executing
- UNARC.COM, but it does not (apparently) alter the memory limit
- address in locations 006H-007H. Although this is technically a
- bug in LUX (and the solution is not obvious from a cursory
- examination of the LUX source code), a simple fix is possible by
- patching UNARC as described below. (Apparently, UNARC is the
- only transient program invoked by LUX which may require enough
- TPA buffer space to overwrite the high-memory code, under the
- conditions described above.)
-
- Until this problem is corrected in a future release of LUX, the
- solution is to modify location 103H in UNARC.COM to have the byte
- value 16H (default value is 08H). This patch will prevent UNARC
- from overwriting the LUX resident code.
-
- RCP/M sysops are also encouraged at this time to replace their
- on-line UNARC.COM file with the latest version 1.4 (from
- UNARC14.LBR) instead of the earlier version 1.1 which was
- supplied with the LUX52.LBR release. UNARC14 introduces an
- assembly language overlay file, UNARCOVL.ASM, which greatly
- simplifies generation of a secure version of UNARC that allows
- remote callers to view the directory or contents of .ARC files.
- (In particular, the problem described in this note is fixed by
- defining USELUX = YES in the overlay file.)
-
- Bob Freed
- Newton Centre, MA