How to open winrar files with Linux

Introduction

To open RAR (those created with winrar) you will need unrar. There are lots of sites now providing files packaged under the rar format.

So you will need first to install unrar on your systems and therefore be able to list content and unpack the files into your hard disk to be able to work with them.

Installation of the needed program

Debian / Ubuntu

apt-get install unrar

Fedora / Centos

Be sure to have rpmforge repository enabled on CentOS

yum install unrar

Using the program

To read the contents of the file.

unrar l [file.rar]

Example

$ unrar l Manual_Sistema.rar

UNRAR 3.70 beta 3 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2007 Alexander Roshal

Archive Manual_Sistema.rar

Name Size Packed Ratio Date Time Attr CRC Meth Ver
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ManualSistema.pdf 4590335 2938370 64% 21-04-07 10:23 .....A. FB0D139E m3g 2.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 4590335 2938370 64%

To extract the content of the file

unrar e [file.rar]

Example

$ unrar e Manual_Sistema.rar

UNRAR 3.70 beta 3 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2007 Alexander Roshal

Extracting from Manual_Sistema.rar

Extracting ManualSistema.pdf OK
All OK

You may want to read Unrar man page