cpio: Unable to determine current directory.

oracle@winn-oss10g-1 $ ls -lrt
total 3174512
-rwxrwxrwx 1 oracle dba 227991552 Mar 29 15:36 ship_rel10_sol64_crs.cpio
-rwxrwxrwx 1 oracle dba 728784896 Mar 29 15:43 ship_rel10_sol64_db.cpio
-rwxrwxrwx 1 oracle dba 667746304 Mar 29 15:50 ship_rel10_sol64_ccd.cpio
oracle@winn-oss10g-1 $ cpio -idmcv < ship_rel10_sol64_crs.cpio
cpio: Unable to determine current directory.
1 errors
oracle@winn-oss10g-1 $

Crystal ball broken, please add more details.

Or try PWD.

oracle@winn-oss10g-1 $ pwd
/u01/app/oracle

All I'm trying to do here is to install install oracle cluster ready services . My sysadmin has not set something right :(

It is permissions problem:

Get your UNIX admin to unmount /u01 partition.
chmod 755 /u01
remount the partition.

That should fix your problem.

only a year since the last update, congratulations