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byjove01

Member

From: Alps, France

Registered: 2021-02-15

Posts: 223

[SOLVED] cabextract doesn't recognize my games' CAB archives

Hi, I'm trying to extract the contents of CAB archives I can find in my old game folders (notably Age of Empires II).
But weirdly, I just can't, no matter the parameter I use : cabextract outputs "no valid cabinets found".
I looked at the AUR package page in order to know if there was known issues with the most recent releases, but there's no comments. Nothing related to the problem on the creator's website. Then, I used gdb and enabled debuginfod (because why not?) and I could only get this line :

"/path/GAME/EMPIRES2.CAB" is not a core dump: file format not recognized"

Does anyone have a clue about why it happens? Thanks in advance.

Last edited by byjove01 (2023-09-02 15:27:46)

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,615

Website

Re: [SOLVED] cabextract doesn't recognize my games' CAB archives

What is your reason to believe these are Microsoft Cabinet files? File names do not determine or limit the content type.

What are the first four octets?

head -c 4 EMPIRES2.CAB | hexdump -C

What is the file type reported by file utility?

file EMPIRES2.CAB
file -i EMPIRES2.CAB

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Paperclips in avatars?

byjove01

Member

From: Alps, France

Registered: 2021-02-15

Posts: 223

Re: [SOLVED] cabextract doesn't recognize my games' CAB archives

What is your reason to believe these are Microsoft Cabinet files? File names do not determine or limit the content type.

Welp... the example game is Age of Empires II. I highly doubt Ensemble Studios would use .CAB files that aren't from Microsoft's specification.
I'm less sure for the other games but I don't think these are exceptions. I'm gonna check.

What are the first four octets?

> head -c 4 EMPIRES2.CAB | hexdump -C
00000000  00 00 00 00                                       |....|
00000004

What is the file type reported by file utility?

> file EMPIRES2.CAB
EMPIRES2.CAB: data
> file -i EMPIRES2.CAB
EMPIRES2.CAB: application/octet-stream; charset=binary

Hmm. Maybe you're right.

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,615

Website

Re: [SOLVED] cabextract doesn't recognize my games' CAB archives

I highly doubt Ensemble Studios would use .CAB files that aren't from Microsoft's specification.

It is exactly opposite. Games are most likely to use uncommon or custom data formats.

> head -c 4 EMPIRES2.CAB | hexdump -C
00000000  00 00 00 00                                       |....|
00000004

Therefore this is certainly not a Microsoft Cabinet file.⁽¹⁾ These start with `4D 53 43 46` magic number (“MSCF” in ASCII).
____
⁽¹⁾ It may be a derived format, but quite possibly something unrelated.

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Paperclips in avatars?

byjove01

Member

From: Alps, France

Registered: 2021-02-15

Posts: 223

Re: [SOLVED] cabextract doesn't recognize my games' CAB archives

Ok then. Thanks for the help.