I know this is more than a little OT here, but it's my best bet to find others
who are doing battle with GCG, so I apologize and beg indulgence:
Has anyone else here been having trouble with the GCG Data DVDs that they send
out every other month with database updates? It seems like every time I get one
that Linux, Solaris, and MacOSX all have trouble reading. When I try and just
read one that has errors with dd or cp, I get nondescript I/O errors. When I
try and make a tarball to take the image elsewhere to work with, I get errors
such as:
tar: ./gcggenbank/gb_pl_001.seq_z: File shrank by 22522503 bytes; padding with zeros
and the resulting tarball is useless. I've called Accelrys tech support and
basically been told that if I have problems I ought to get a windows machine and
use an FTP daemon to install from. Needless to say, this is less than helpful
advice as I don't have a system that I can spare to put windows on (and I am not
about to ask my boss for several hundred dollars for a system that I would use
only once every other month, to run a server for a protocol we have banned
within our organization). Eventually, I get new DVDs, but I get a line about
being the only one complaining and a lot of runaround about it.
So, am I really a freak of nature, or should I stop expecting to get DVDs that
can be read on the same platform the data is to be installed on?
Andy