Emeraude Tar

File Format
Name	Emeraude Tar
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Archiving Emeraude Tar
Extension(s)	.etar
Spec Availability	Commercial?
Released	1988?

Emeraude Tar, commonly uses the extension .etar, is likely an archive format that was used in a proprietary software known as "GIE Emeraude", which was available on a number of Unix platforms, and implements the PCTE 1.5 specification plus additional service. Details of the format is scarce, as are samples using it.

Discussion

EMERAUDE is a project undertaken by a French consortium of three companies, to produce an industrial quality implementation of the PCTE interfaces.

Earlier citings of Emeraude PCTE appeared in May 1987, "EMERAUDE has been ported to the SUN. A first version of a SUN-based PCTE was shown at the Stockholm conference in May 1987." This does not appear to specify which version of EMERAUDE, or the PCTE specification.

The format is considered to be belonging to category "Archiving" based on the few evidence that indicates as such;

• There are ASCII strings "archiving-extern_obj", along with strings that are similar to what one may find familiar in Tar:- "sys-mdate", "sys-adate", "sys-mode", "sys-owner", "sys-group", with the dates likely using seconds since Epoch, and "sys-owner"/"sys-group" contains numbers that are typical for user/group ID.
• When running binwalk, several discrete files could be extracted, ranging from graphic files to audio files.
• The extension .etar contains the word .tar which may signify the file is some sort of tape archive, even though it cannot be accessed through conventional means. That is, it is not a regular GNU or BSD tarball, and star which supports a wide range of typical archive formats under various Unices, fails to open the file.

Identification

.etar file begins with bytes 20 20 20 followed by a Unix timestamp (seconds since Epoch) in hexadecimal format, then 20 as a separator followed by 45 4d 45 52 41 55 44 45, then 5F, the version in hexadecimal format, e.g. 31 32 2E 32 2E 31 00 34, and finally terminating it with 20

In ASCII representation of the above but with Unix timestamp "1993-11-29 12:59:36", "754541976", or 37 35 34 35 34 31 39 37 36, it would be " 754541976 EMERAUDE_12.2.1.4 "