Where did you get rpm2cpio from if you don't use a distribution with an rpm 
extractor? (rpm2cpio is an rpm extractor)
What tool did you use to download the rpm file? (is it corrupted?)

/tmp/v> rpm2cpio ../vivaldi-stable-1.0.435.42-1.x86_64.rpm| cpio -id
332191 blocks
/tmp/v> dpkg -l rpm2cpio
[snip]
ii  rpm2cpio                   4.12.0.1+dfsg1-3bu amd64              tool to convert RPM package to CPIO archive

/tmp/v> md5sum ../vivaldi-stable-1.0.435.42-1.x86_64.rpm
848368665107cb1670c15639843ad58e  ../vivaldi-stable-1.0.435.42-1.x86_64.rpm


Nope; no problem here extracting it.

HTH,
Ger
On Sat, 9 Apr 2016, rhubarbpieguy at gmail.com wrote:

>
> I'm receive "Error: header not recognized" and "cpio: premature end of 
> archive" when attempting to process the following using rpm2cpio:
>
> https://download.vivaldi.com/stable/vivaldi-stable-1.0.435.42-1.x86_64.rpm
>
> I commonly use rpm2cpio to process rpm files and have had the issue with all 
> Vivaldi's betas.  I see nothing about such a problem on their site so assume 
> it's unique to rpm2cpio.  I don't use a distribution with an rpm extractor.
>
> Can others successfully process the file?
>
>
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