RAR for Linux: A Comprehensive Guide

If you are looking for a powerful and versatile compression tool for your Linux machine, RAR is a great option. RAR is a proprietary archive format that supports high compression ratios and advanced features such as password protection, error recovery, and file spanning. In this article, we will explore RAR for Linux in detail, including its features, installation, usage, and related concepts.

Features of RAR for Linux

RAR is a popular archive format that has been around since 1993. It was developed by Eugene Roshal, a Russian software engineer, and is now maintained by RARLAB. Some of the key features of RAR include:

High compression ratio: RAR uses a combination of compression algorithms to achieve high compression ratios, especially for large files.
File spanning: RAR can split large files into smaller parts, which can be useful for storing or transferring files on media with limited capacity.
Password protection: RAR allows you to encrypt your archives with a password, which prevents unauthorized access to your files.
Error recovery: RAR can detect and recover from errors in archives, which can be useful for files that are transferred over unreliable networks or media.
Unicode support: RAR supports Unicode filenames, which means that you can use non-ASCII characters in your file names.

Installing RAR for Linux

RAR is not an open-source software and is not available in the default package repositories of most Linux distributions. However, you can download the RAR binary from the RARLAB website and install it on your Linux machine.

Here are the steps to install RAR on Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions:

Open the Terminal application by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T.
Add the RARLAB GPG key to the keyring by running the following command:

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 0xC59C6B4E5B5D0B14

Add the RARLAB repository to the sources.list file by running the following command:

$ echo "deb http://www.rarlab.com/rar/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rarlab.list

Update the package list by running the following command:

$ sudo apt-get update

Install RAR by running the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install rar

Once the installation is complete, you can start using RAR on your Linux machine.

Using RAR for Linux

RAR for Linux has a command-line interface, which means that you need to use the Terminal application to interact with it. Here are some common use cases of RAR for Linux:

Creating an archive

To create a new RAR archive, you need to use the rar command with the -a option followed by the name of the archive file and the names of the files or directories that you want to include in the archive. For example, to create an archive named myarchive.rar that contains the files file1.txt and file2.txt, you can run the following command:

$ rar a myarchive.rar file1.txt file2.txt

By default, RAR uses the maximum compression level, which can be slow but produces the smallest archive size. You can use the -m option followed by a compression method to specify a different compression level. For example, to use the fastest compression method, you can run the following command:

$ rar a -m1 myarchive.rar file1.txt file2.txt

Extracting an archive

To extract the files from an existing RAR archive, you need to use the rar command with the x option followed by the name of the archive file. For example, to extract the files from the myarchive.rar archive to the current directory, you can run the following command:

$ rar x myarchive.rar

By default, RAR preserves the directory structure of the archive, which means that the files are extracted to their original directories. You can use the -o+ option to override this behavior and extract all files to the current directory. For example, to extract all files from the myarchive.rar archive to the current directory, you can run the following command:

$ rar x -o+ myarchive.rar

Listing the contents of an archive

To list the files and directories contained in an existing RAR archive, you can use the rar command with the l option followed by the name of the archive file. For example, to list the contents of the myarchive.rar archive, you can run the following command:

$ rar l myarchive.rar

This will print a list of all the files and directories in the archive, along with their attributes such as size, date, time, and CRC checksum.

Testing an archive

To test the integrity of an existing RAR archive, you can use the rar command with the t option followed by the name of the archive file. For example, to test the myarchive.rar archive, you can run the following command:

$ rar t myarchive.rar

This will check all the files and directories in the archive and report any errors or warnings.

Conclusion

RAR for Linux is a powerful and versatile compression tool that can be useful for storing, transferring, and protecting your files. In this article, we have explored the features, installation, and usage of RAR for Linux, including creating, extracting, listing, and testing archives.