[Flac] Rather serious flac problem

[Free Lunch]

Okay.. I love flac but just had a rather serious failure that really
shakes my confidence.  It resulted in the near loss of a master audio
recording.  Fortunately, I have a backup.  Though there may have been
other cases where I have lost original material because I have been
compressing a lot of originals and deleting them after doing a 'flac
-t' on them.

Basically, flac failed with a 'warning' but still created flac
archives which tested ok.

Here's the scoop:

% flac *wav

flac 1.1.1, Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002,2003,2004 Josh Coalson
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  Type `flac' for details.

options: -P 4096 -b 4608 -m -l 8 -q 0 -r 3,3
umb.1.wav: WARNING: skipping unknown sub-chunk 'p9'
umb.2.wav: WARNING: skipping unknown sub-chunk 'c=¶'
% flac -t *flac

flac 1.1.1, Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002,2003,2004 Josh Coalson
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  Type `flac' for details.

umb.1.flac: ok                    
umb.2.flac: ok                    
% ls -lt
total 3105736
-r--r--r--  1 root root       4186 Jun  5 00:43 umb.2.flac
-r--r--r--  1 b    b    1933467692 Jun  5 00:43 umb.2.wav
-r--r--r--  1 root root       4186 Jun  4 22:37 umb.1.flac
-r--r--r--  1 b    b    1243668524 Jun  4 22:37 umb.1.wav

% file *
umb.1.flac: FLAC audio bitstream data, 24 bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz, length unknown
umb.1.wav:  RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 24
bit, stereo 44100 Hz
umb.2.flac: FLAC audio bitstream data, 24 bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz, length unknown
umb.2.wav:  RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 24
bit, stereo 44100 Hz


% flac -v
flac 1.1.1
% uname -a
Linux foobar 2.6.7-gentoo-r11 #12 Fri Aug 12 19:40:17 EDT 2005 x86_64
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux


My guess is that in this case, the wav file header may not correctly
reflect the length of the wav file.  I would think that flac could be
coded to handle these cases correctly.



Thank you!

  Brian