• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

StuffIt 5.5 doesn't always extract .sit files fully

fluxsmoke

Member
I've got my SE/30 running pretty nicely, but I've run across a few .sit files which StuffIt simply won't fully extract. For instance, if I try https://www.emaculation.com/basilisk/Public Address Stripped.sit it will extract a directory named "Read Me Files", which contains a single file named ".DS_Store", with a ripped page icon.

I checked the SHA1 sum and that file is the same one on macintoshrepository, so if the file is broken, it's widely broken. Anyone know what's going on here? Can somebody else try that file?
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Not sure on that one. It extracts fine for me here on 11.4 with the Unarchiver. Perhaps the version of Stuffit is too old for the archive?
 

fluxsmoke

Member
Possibly... it also extracts fine using 'unar' on Linux, well, as fine as you can expect on a system without resource forks. But why distribute an archive for 68k systems that no 68k system can extract?
 

dcr

Well-known member
Are you using StuffIt or StuffIt Expander? Try using the opposite of what you've been using to see if it makes a difference. Or, try an older version of StuffIt Expander, like 3.x.

I remember keeping multiple versions on hand because some versions could open files the others could not, and sometimes the older versions opened files the newer ones could not.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
Its a great question....and it hppens ALL the time. I stick with making 1.5.1 archives for System 7 and newer.
 

fluxsmoke

Member
Are you using StuffIt or StuffIt Expander? Try using the opposite of what you've been using to see if it makes a difference. Or, try an older version of StuffIt Expander, like 3.x.

I remember keeping multiple versions on hand because some versions could open files the others could not, and sometimes the older versions opened files the newer ones could not.

Stuffit Expander versions 5.5 and 4.0.1 both fail. 5.5 gets part-way into the file, 4.0.1 just silently exits without even displaying a progress window. I've got 3.something on my FloppyEmu card, I'll try that.
 

dcr

Well-known member
After re-reading . . . Since you're getting a .DS_Store file, I bet it might have been created with a Mac OS X version of StuffIt and the classic StuffIt versions maybe don't understand it.
 

fluxsmoke

Member
Without access to an OS X system, do I have any options for repacking/repairing the archive, short of begging someone here to unpack & repack it?
 

Spidey01

Well-known member
Looking before I post about practically the same thing, I guess I should add my curiosity to this thread for what value it may be.

For some .sit files attempting to extract on 7.5.x with StuffIt Expander 5.5 /w and w/o DropStuff only extracts some files. Like the virtual-cd-dvd-ute-10d3.sit off Macintosh Garden or tattletech-284.sit off Macintosh Repository. Like extracting a readme file but not the application image kind of partial extraction. Seems consistent across 7.5.0 and 7.5.5, my Duo 230 and BasilliskII on various systems. I've tried both Mac and DOS floppies, not that StuffIt should care. Even a bigger file like MacAmp2 of MR, will just putter about unstuffing a few hundred files and spontaneously finish with almost nothing extracted. Most .sit files I've tried to load work fine, only a handful have exhibited this behavior and those that do have been vary consistent about it.

Extracting the same archives under MacOS 9.2.2 and its bundled StuffIt (I believe, Expander 6.0) seems to work fine. After which they can be copied from my 9.x machine's HFS Extended partition to HFS standard formatted floppies or zip disks and sent over to the older machine as is.

Attempts to archive by other means such as MacZip and then send over to the old machine either meet with similar results or crashes extracting the zip.

@fluxsmoke might not have the option of something like the above 9.x->disks->7.x ringamorole, but someone might find that useful. I mostly find it annoying, but effective.
 

Crutch

Well-known member
Sorry no substantive help here but clearly it’s time to repeat my periodic anti-StuffIt rant I have been repeating since about 1992:

StuffIt 1.5.1 was a great tool. Basically every version after that is horrible bloatware that turned into an explosion of sometimes-randomly-incompatible versions and tools and apps and system extensions with far too many features and an absurdly overcomplicated UI that felt like someone just wanted to show off their knowledge of random chapters of Inside Macintosh (a floating palette? really??). They couldn’t even be bothered to add a magic number or something or just change the damn file type for the love of Pete when they changed the archive format to a non-backward-compatible thing.

We would all do our vintage Mac community a big favor if permanently hereafter we could all just use Compact Pro (.cpt) archives or, if StuffIt absolutely must be used, please please please follow @LaPorta ’s as-always great advice and check that little “1.5.1 archive” box when saving the StuffIt archive for posterity. 1.5.1 archives (and ONLY those) are readable by every later version of StuffIt.

Sorry, I’ll calm down now.

Ughhhhh, StuffIt.
 

Spidey01

Well-known member
For what it’s worth, as someone who was‘t exposed to StuffIt when it was in widespread use, I mostly find it bothersome if effective format.

or more specifically my StuffIt Expander 5.5 floppy both has the write protection tab set and a note on the label not to lose it, because it was a pain in the ass trying to make a diskette until I bought an old Mac to help fix an older Mac.

Last time I encountered a .cpt file, I think I ended up searching for a way to load a segmented StuffIt archive in order to get tools loaded to extract and making nasty hand gestures in the process of handling both.
 
Sorry no substantive help here but clearly it’s time to repeat my periodic anti-StuffIt rant I have been repeating since about 1992:

StuffIt 1.5.1 was a great tool. Basically every version after that is horrible bloatware that turned into an explosion of sometimes-randomly-incompatible versions and tools and apps and system extensions with far too many features and an absurdly overcomplicated UI that felt like someone just wanted to show off their knowledge of random chapters of Inside Macintosh (a floating palette? really??). They couldn’t even be bothered to add a magic number or something or just change the damn file type for the love of Pete when they changed the archive format to a non-backward-compatible thing.

We would all do our vintage Mac community a big favor if permanently hereafter we could all just use Compact Pro (.cpt) archives or, if StuffIt absolutely must be used, please please please follow @LaPorta ’s as-always great advice and check that little “1.5.1 archive” box when saving the StuffIt archive for posterity. 1.5.1 archives (and ONLY those) are readable by every later version of StuffIt.

Sorry, I’ll calm down now.

Ughhhhh, StuffIt.
No it’s justified.

it’s extremely frustrating for arbitrary changes to have so much version incompatibility in comparison to say Winrar.
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
I've moved to Disk Doubler. It uses STAC compression. Not as efficient as Stuffit, but it's practically a standard, and with the right card is even hardware accelerated. Some day I hope to own one of those cards. I think it can also be expanded by all versions of Expander, so it's super compatible.
 

Crutch

Well-known member
Last time I encountered a .cpt file, I think I ended up searching for a way to load a segmented StuffIt archive in order to get tools loaded to extract and making nasty hand gestures in the process of handling both.
StuffIt Expander can expand .cpt files too.

We are stuck with the multitudes of StuffIt files all over the Garden and elsewhere …. But there is no reason to ever, ever make any more of them!
 

olePigeon

Well-known member
@Crutch Yeah, there really needs to be a consensus on an official archival compression format. Not only that, but it needs to be enforced.
 
@Crutch Yeah, there really needs to be a consensus on an official archival compression format. Not only that, but it needs to be enforced.

100%! In some cases I've started to go back and extract .SIT images and converting the entire image to .DSK files. It's absurd that something like Word 1.05 is in a .SIT that can only be unpacked by a Mac running 8.1
 
Top