The following reply was made to PR bin/30379; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas)
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org, gnats-admin@netbsd.org,
	netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/30379
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 17:47:41 -0400

 On May 30,  8:18pm, rpaulo@netbsd-pt.org (Rui Paulo) wrote:
 -- Subject: Re: bin/30379
 
 The file database is should work both on big and little endian boxes.
 There was a bug in the file source that prevented that, but it should
 be fixed in head.
 
 christos
 
 |  file(1) is not recognizing binary files correctly because you built your
 |  userland on a little-endian machine. There should be a way to solve this
 |  problem as _every_ port is affected if the endianess of the build host
 |  is different (the releng machine is little-endian).
 |  
 |  As a workaround, besides reinstalling file on the host, you could use
 |  file -C.
 |  
 |  I first saw this on port-sparc64 mailing list.
 |  
 |  Who can we solve this problem ? 
 |  Possible solutions:
 |  	1) add an rc.d script so that it generates the magic file on
 |  	every startup;
 |  	2) add a flag to file(1) so that you can choose between little
 |  	or big endian;
 |  	3) make the file(1) magic file endian-independant.
 |  
 |  Personally, I think 3) is kind of impossible, so I'd for 2).
 |  
 |  --
 |  Rui Paulo <rpaulo@netbsd-pt.org>
 |  
 -- End of excerpt from Rui Paulo