[OSM-talk] bz2-format of the planet-latest file

[Werner Hoch]

Hi there,

I'm currently playing on a random access tool for compressed osm files.

While my tool works fine for all files from    
http://download.geofabrik.de/osm/europe/, I've problems with the latest 
planet file.

While all files from geofabrik are only single bz2 streams it seems that 
the planet consists of several independant streams that have many "end 
of stream" in the middle of the bz2 file.

After recompressing the planet with
  bzcat planet-latest.osm.bz2 |bzip2 >planet-recoded.osm.bz2
I can read the created planet-recoded with my script now.

Does anyone know what is in the planet? 
Which tool is used to compress the planet?

Links:
Fileformat of bz2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bzip2#File_format

Regards
Werner (werner2101)