Extract >1 files using WinRAR
 

I just downloaded the latest version of WinRAR for Linux and I have successfully extracted one rar'ed file into 25 others. Each of the 25 files (.r00 to .r23, including .rar) contain a piece of a large (800mb) .bin file that I need to burn to a cd. What I need to know is how to extract all 25 files at the same time (from a shell prompt, using the "unrar" command) to get that big file. When I type "unrar x filename.rar" or "unrar e filename.rar" it extracts all the files in the archive from each series (overwriting each other only about 24 times over) i.e. it goes "extracting filename.rar", "extracting filename.r00", "extracting filename.r01"... "extracting filename.r23" and it gives me the .cue file and the .bin file, which ends up as 24mb but is supposed to be 800.5mb. For example, in Windows, I would go to the folder where the 25 files are, select them all, and simply choose "extract here" and then I would get one big file that takes about 20-30mins to extract, opposed to when I go to linux and select all the files and click on "extract here", it opens 25 windows of Ark that, when I click extract on each one, it overwrites the 24mb file about 25 times. Capiche? I dont know if you can understand what I just wrote. I hope you do so you can help me out because I don't want to redo my whole partition table to create a shared partition for XP and RH8 and send the files to XP to extract. Now that would suck. Anyways, thanks in advance.

Available UnRAR Commands & Switches
 

[root@localhost root]# cd folder
[root@localhost folder]# dir
filename.r00 filename.r06 filename.r12 filename.r18 filename.rar
filename.r01 filename.r07 filename.r13 filename.r19 filename.sfv
filename.r02 filename.r08 filename.r14 filename.r20
filename.r03 filename.r09 filename.r15 filename.r21
filename.r04 filename.r10 filename.r16 filename.r22
filename.r05 filename.r11 filename.r17 filename.r23
[root@localhost folder]# unrar -?

UNRAR 3.20 beta 3 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2003 Eugene Roshal

Usage: unrar <command> -<switch 1> -<switch N> <archive> <files...>
<@listfiles...> <path_to_extract\>

<Commands>
e Extract files to current directory
l[t,b] List archive [technical, bare]
p Print file to stdout
t Test archive files
v[t,b] Verbosely list archive [technical,bare]
x Extract files with full path

<Switches>
- Stop switches scanning
ad Append archive name to destination path
ap<path> Set path inside archive
av- Disable authenticity verification check
c- Disable comments show
cfg- Disable read configuration
cl Convert names to lower case
cu Convert names to upper case
dh Open shared files
ep Exclude paths from names
f Freshen files
idp Disable percentage display
ierr Send all messages to stderr
inul Disable all messages
kb Keep broken extracted files
o+ Overwrite existing files
o- Do not overwrite existing files
ow Save or restore file owner and group
p[password] Set password
p- Do not query password
r Recurse subdirectories
ta<date> Process files modified after <date> in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format
tb<date> Process files modified before <date> in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format
tn<time> Process files newer than <time>
to<time> Process files older than <time>
ts<m,c,a>[N] Save or restore file time (modification, creation, access)
u Update files
v Create volumes with size autodetection or list all volumes
ver[n] File version control
vp Pause before each volume
x<file> Exclude specified file
x@ Read file names to exclude from stdin
x@<list> Exclude files in specified list file
y Assume Yes on all queries
[root@localhost folder]#

*What am I supposed to do with that ".sfv" file? It has the list of all the files that need to be archived from... does WinRAR use that when it is unraring the archives...?*

Here's the contents of the filename.sfv file:

;

filename.r00 20a78af9

filename.r01 318af94a

filename.r02 289939ef

filename.r03 aed7175b

filename.r04 88e4fda4

filename.r05 f0fcf6de

filename.r06 7e0ef9c3

filename.r07 17020d40

filename.r08 c5818d25

filename.r09 83e8537b

filename.r10 4f156f11

filename.r11 49a05a1c

filename.r12 c1763ef5

filename.r13 13a523bf

filename.r14 a69fa7b4

filename.r15 42198e52

filename.r16 bd6f5c14

filename.r17 53da09a6

filename.r18 7bba317e

filename.r19 00e53cc2

filename.r20 dbd73485

filename.r21 9486fae2

filename.r22 3f3caff2

filename.r23 f5adadbf

filename.rar 12500d5a

;Q2-1c2da7f69d33680
;Q2-sFC8JB/cwgE=
;Q2-////gA==


And here's what is returned when I list the contents of the first archive in the series (*.rar):

[root@localhost folder]# unrar l filename.rar

UNRAR 3.20 beta 3 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2003 Eugene Roshal

Volume filename.rar

Name Size Packed Ratio Date Time Attr CRC Meth Ver
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
filename.cue 74 74 100% 22-02-03 19:21 .....A D5F047DA m0e 2.0
filename.bin 839341776 19999818 --> 22-02-03 19:24 .....A B9FF2438 m3e 2.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 839341850 19999892 2%

[root@localhost folder]#


Well, I hope you get the idea, and I know others are having the same problem out there. I can't find the answer in the documentation nor the online knowledgebase. I hope someone out there can help. Thanks again in advance.

Doesn't RH 8 come with File Roller? a Gnome graphical compression tool which happens to manage RAR files (if you have rar installed, of curse).

Random thought:
what happens if you try to unrar *only* the .rar file? doesn't it asks you for the rest of the spawned .rxx files?

I'm on KDE so I'm not seeing File Roller. I'll try that when I switch to GNOME. When I use Ark to unrar the .rar file, it only unrars the contents of that file and doesn't look for the others. When I unrar the .rar file from the command prompt (using, "unrar x filename.rar" or "unrar e filename.rar") it extracts each file one by one. After it unrars the .rar file it replaces the resulting .bin file with the .bin file it gets from the next archive in the series. Its messed up. Anyways, I'll try that File Roller in the meantime. Thanks.

You can use any app in any graphical environment (pretty much) nowwadays ;)

In that help file there is this switch:
o- Do not overwrite existing files

And this one:
u Update files

When used together, I'd think it might not overwrite, but append to the existing files.

Good Luck, I've never used that app, so it's just a guess.

Cool

NP.

I find it strage RAR not placing information about the sapwned files to rebuild the original one... It may be a flaw of the library? I do not think another tool will get it right since the rar library is taking care of the uncompression process.

If you still have the 800 Mb .bin file why don't you try to bzip it with bzip2? It has a superior compression ratio than that of RAR (at least in my personal experience)

Thanks for the command MasterC, i'll check that out. Thetargos, uhh, i dont have that 800mb file yet, its the product of those rar files. I had a 480mb rar file which i unrared into these 25 other rar files which contain parts of the 800mb bin file i want. Sorry if i was unclear earlier, my fault. Thanks though, i'll check that out as well, see if it can solve my problem if MasterC's solution doesn't work. Thanks again guys.

Any time... that is why this page exists anyway ;)

Thanks a billion to MasterC (and Thetargos) for your help. The o- and u switches worked. I used "unrar -o- -u filename.rar" to successfully unrar the 800mb bin. And it didnt take half as long as it does in windows hehe. Thanks again.

You're Welcome ;)

Cool

Glad you could solve your problem!

using "rar e <filename.rar>" should work as well from the command line. Make sure you don't put in a "-" sign in front of the e argument. I have used this many times, and it works for files that are split up. The problem may be that sometimes the archiver splits them using the option where each independent file know's nothing about the previous/next file - so that is the case where you will need to use the append technique described by MasterC.

Kristian Hermansen