WARNING: Linux users papatcher is insecure.

I guess I will update my script a bit to print some debug info in that specific case.

Ah, those ones. Yeah, there are plenty of empty files in the Linux version of PA. Those will get you the double offsets for sure. I handle those by just kicking them out of the manifest and just create the empty file.

Oh, actually, it was supposed to do that, but it doesn't. Heh, I guess PA doesn't really need those files.
Thanks for the inadvertent bug find.

haha no problem

On my end i just check if checksumZ isn't blank. Then if it is then it's either a non gz'd file, or a blank file. So writing to that with python everything kinda just works i think?

Yeah, that's exactly how you should do it. I was just trying to be too smart for my own good.