In reviewing the few recent notes on tar-mode problems, I thought that I'd try a few experiments and post the results. I'm using XEmacs 21.0-b63 on an SGI O2 running IRIX 6.5 under X11R6.3, having built using SGI's cc. Regardless of whether '-vanilla' is used or not, or whether I specifically (require 'crypt) and (require 'tar-mode) the following sequence of events occurs: 1) parsing tar file ... (gets through a few percent) 2) File mode specification error: (error "<long binary garbage> OR <binary garbage> I'm prepared to dig a deeper into this, but can't make any guarantees as to when I'll get to it. Any suggestions in the meantime would be appreciated. As a start, I'll probably step through some of the following alternative build choices in a grey-code ordering: 1) optimizations on/off (this build: on) 2) --gung-ho on/off (this build: on) 3) gcc instead of cc (this build: SGI cc) More information as it becomes available. (FWIW, I'm using the Feb 2 xemacs-sumo packages distribution.) -- John