# find /bin | cpio -o -H odc | cpio -itv | head -5
9700 blocks
prwS--S-wt   0 16877    root     909938282 Jan  1  1970
cpio: premature end of file

i get the same error whatever directory i list, and even
if i save the first cpio into a file and re-read it later.

Other formats work:
# find /bin | cpio -o -H crc | cpio -itv | head -5
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Nov  1 17:38 /bin
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         9764 Apr 24  1998
/bin/chgrp
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root        10276 Apr 24  1998
/bin/chmod
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         9592 Apr 24  1998
/bin/chown
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root        23156 Apr 24  1998
/bin/cp
9236 blocks
9236 blocks

BTW, on a Solaris 2.5.1 Sparc system, both commands work
perfectly. Archives created on Solaris systems (in odc
format) can be read by Linux (GNU) cpio, while archives
created on Linux cannot be read by either systems. I've
tested this on different RHL5.1 boxes (from 80386 to AMDK5).

--
.TM.