[Kstars-devel] Kstars v1.5.0 problem loading USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat catalog

[Mark Curtis]

Hello,

I've tried to load USNO 100M star catalog four times using the
<file><Download New Data> menu, each time it fails, after downloading
1.4GB of data.  This is a huge waste of bandwidth and time (a couple
of hours each download.)

Kstars v1.5.0, included with RedHat Fedora 10 on x86_64.  RPM file
kdeedu-kstars-4.2.4-1.fc10.x86_64 Linux (x86_64) release
2.6.27.21-170.2.56.fc10.x86_64

Looking at the files involved I found the following in the directory
/tmp/kde-username/:
kzUnXJZCc8 (random name per download) - size 1450631611
ktar-e17746.tar (random name per download) - size 2173122560

kzUnXJZCc8 is a gzip file:
$ file kzUnXJZCc8
kzUnXJZCc8: gzip compressed data, from Unix

ktar-e17746.tar is a tar file:
$ file ktar-e17746.tar
ktar-e17746.tar: POSIX tar archive (GNU)

The tar file appears to have valid contents:
$ tar -tvf ktar-e17746.tar
-rw-r--r-- kde-devel/kde-devel 2173117930 2008-09-08 03:39 USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat

File md5sums:
15df6409dd875c8223758ccf02e4aae6  USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat
0ffd1d74d52d9a8072b420125c54435b  kzUnXJZCc8
760b59c55b5597accbe3c35f436208e7  ktar-e17746.tar

All four sets of download attempt files are the same size, plus their
m5sums match.

This error was logged in .xsession-errors:
QFile::at: Cannot set file position -2121848832
kstars(17746)/KTar KTar::openArchive: skipping -2121849344 failed
kstars(17746)/KTar KTar::KTarPrivate::readRawHeader: KTar: invalid TAR
file. Header is: "Ú<^F
kstars(17746)/knewstuff (api): Cannot open archive file '
"/tmp/kde-username/kzUnXJZCc8" '

Placing the file USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat in
~username/.kde/shared/apps/kstars where the other downloaded .dat
files end up doesn't seem to enable the catalog.

Manually attempting to import or load the catalog file
USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat causes kstars to core dump.

I give up, what's the secret procedure to use this star catalog?

Thanks,

Mark