Corrupted binary files

Question: [UNIX]

gzip says "stdin not in gzip format".

This means that the input piped to gzip has been corrupted in some way. Consider the command line:

     % cat file.tar.gz.crypt | crypt password | gzip -cd > file.tar
     

There are two common reasons this occurs. Either the password is incorrect, whereby gzip gets a corrupt .gz file as input. Or, the original file file.tar.gz.crypt was downloaded incorrectly, typically in ASCII mode instead of binary mode.