What's the easiest way to unrar a file on Ubuntu 12.04

Question

I just realized I can't unrar .rar files on my Ubuntu machine!

Here: http://askubuntu.com/a/323716/158442, then use the default archiving program. — muru, Dec 28 '14 at 22:56

score 259 · Accepted Answer · edited May 19 '18 at 00:47

259

First you need to install unrar:
```
sudo apt-get install unrar
```
If you want to unpack all files within the .rar files in the same directory:
```
unrar e -r /home/work/software/myfile.rar
```
if you want to unpack the files in full path:
```
unrar x -r /home/work/software/myfile.rar
```

edited May 19 '18 at 00:47

David Foerster

answered Dec 28 '14 at 22:54

Festus Tamakloe

25

It seems like in 16.04 at least, the standard file roller program will do rars too once you've got unrar installed. – mlissner Dec 21 '17 at 00:15
5

This applies to Ubuntu 18.* too. The standard archive manager was able to open rar files once I installed unrar. – Vineeth Sai Dec 26 '18 at 07:26
3

sudo apt-get install unrar-free worked when I got "Package 'unrar' has no installation candidate" on Ubuntu 16.04 when I did sudo apt-get install unrar. – Gnubie Jul 19 '19 at 10:12
Even in 14.04 after installing unrar normal file viewer will open .rar files – shantanu pathak Sep 28 '19 at 08:53
1

Only the craziest of us would do e, oh god, why is this flag ever exists??? – ieXcept Sep 07 '20 at 12:05
unrar e? i think if we don't even know what would happen then it's better to just answer '/h'. what you think is ok, most don't – stackunderflow Jun 14 '21 at 14:44
@ieXcept I am using it right now! I have a set of .rar files, and some have been packaged with the files in the root, and some have been packaged with all files in a subfolder. I want a normalised process, so I use e to extract them to a homogenous structure. It's not what you normally need, but when you do need it it saves a lot of time. – Logan Pickup Oct 15 '23 at 22:24

1 Answers1