Issue with DROID signature file v101

[Dclipsham]

With thanks to Somaya of the Science Museum, we have been made aware of an issue with DROID signature file v101 that certainly affects DROID 6.4 and may affect other versions.

It is possible to fix this issue manually:

The signature file includes non-standard space characters on line 54990, visible on the above image which s a screenshot of the file from Notepad++. By replacing the first character following 'XBIN' and deleting the second character after 'BIN)' then saving the file, DROID should then behave as intended.

We will issue a new signature file that fixes this issue on 21st February.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

David

[Dclipsham]

The signature file can normally be found at c:\users\<your_username>\.droid6\signature_files - Linux users will find it at ~/.droid6/signature_files

David

[ross-spencer]

Hi David,

There seems to be a problem with fmt/1579 as well. In this case it is resulting in PRONOM being unable to return that record. 

• https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/fmt/1579
• https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/fmt/1579.xml

Both are returning (at time of writing):

    The following errors were reported:The File Format report could not be completed

    Information for System Administrators:

    Error Description: Root element is missing.
    Error Source: System.Xml

    Location: proFormatSearch.aspx

I'm not seeing any other debug information I'm afraid, the console log seems to echo the above.

Best,

Ross

[Dclipsham]

Thanks Ross. It never rains....

The signature file seems fine so I wonder if a different property has an issue. I'll have a look at the database shortly. Plase bear with me.

David

[Dclipsham]

Ok, I've fixed it on devtest - I believe there was something in the format description that the web rendering didnt like. I've applied to same fix to LIVE so this should also be fine after Monday's formal update. Thank you once again for raising this! Usefully shows up a gap in our testing too...

David

[Dclipsham]

Yup got it. Same issue with the signature file - character 0xA0 - the Non-Breaking space. It had been used in to the format description and it subtlely broke the XML. Tricky one to spot!

David

[Jack O'Sullivan]

Hi David,

I found another issue, not sure whether it affects other people, but for fmt/95, internal signature 1954, byte sequence 2266, the ByteSequenceValue has a whitespace around character 228 of line 142. It looks like a normal space, but it's somewhere we aren't expecting to find one. I can workaround it from my end for now.

Thanks,

Jack

[Dclipsham]

Cheers Jack. This appears to have produced a valid container sequence so I'm hopeful this one won't cause any issues with identification, but we'll certainly fix it in the next release (v103) also. v102 that fixes the above issues is just undergoing testing before the formal announcement.

[Dclipsham]

The fmt/95 issue is affecting FIDO too (https://github.com/openpreserve/fido/issues/203), so we'll bring the fix forward for v103 and credit both Preservica and Vanderbilt University with reporting the problem. Should hopefully be early-mid next week. Still can't officially announce v102 as waiting in internal queue for the web page update but the sig file itself can already be downloaded via DROID, as can the XML from PRONOM directly.

David