November 5, 2024

Xarchiver the default archive management tool that comes with Debian Stretch won’t open .RAR files as it is a proprietary file format.

error when using Xarchiver in Debian to extract RAR files

(An earlier article described how to enable installing non-free software in Debian).

So, here is how to extract such archives :

First install a tool : unrar-free from the Terminal :

sudo apt install unrar-free

Once installed, specify the name of RAR archive that needs to be extracted :

unrar-free filename.rar

using the unrar-free tool in Debian Stretch

This will extract the contents in the current directory. To extract it to a different location, add the destination path next to the archive name :

unrar-free filename.rar destinationpath

extracting RAR archives to a different directory using unrar-free

To view the contents of RAR archives before extracting, use the -t parameter :

unrar-free -t filename.rar

The usage of unrar-free is simple and can be viewed using man pages :

man unrar-free

man pages of unrar-free

All done.

By admin

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