HOWTO: Access files within rar without extracting (perfect for video streaming)

[andreeh]

This is a guide on how to grab files inside a rar archive without actually extracting them (perfect for video streaming)
Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for your system, everything in here is done by you and you're responsible for the things that might happen to your system.
Comments on how to make this guide better is very welcome, since I'm not all that good on user permits and these commands might compromise your system security (although I'm almost 100% it shouldn't).

Get the required packages (note that fuse-utils probably already is installed)

sudo apt-get install subversion automake1.9 fuse-utils libfuse-dev

Get the source code for our main attraction rarfs, which is a virtual filesystem based on fuse

svn co https://rarfs.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/rarfs/trunk/rarfs/ rarfs

Lets build that code!

cd rarfs
./configure
make
sudo make install

Since fusermount comes pre-installed as root-only, we need to change group owner and execution permits.
First off, add your user to the "fuse" group.
NOTE: The user need to relog to update it.

sudo adduser <user> fuse

Next up, make the group "fuse" owner on these fukes so we can access them.

sudo chgrp fuse /dev/fuse
sudo chgrp fuse /bin/fusermount

Make fusermount command available to users

sudo chmod u+s /bin/fusermount

Now try

mount.fuse rarfs#/location/of/.rar/file /my/mount/dir

If no errors appear, you're all set!

You can unmount your rars by typing

fusermount -u /my/mount/dir

Here's a basic script that I'm using to just right click those .rar files and stream them directly.

#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/`whoami`/rar.mount/
mount.fuse rarfs#$1 $DIR
gmplayer -fs -zoom $DIR`ls $DIR`
fusermount -u $DIR

Good luck!

Edit 1: Fixed typos and such.

[bshakil]

very good tutorial ... Works Perfect under linux...

Just a question...

I mounted a rar Archive to a Folder /media/sda1/rardrive
and i also added this Folder in smb.conf ...

But its not accessible... It keeps on asking the password if an archive is mounted ..
if i umount the archive .. i can access the Empty Folder

[hardik123]

thanks for help but i cant understand how to mount multiple rar archive ?

[hardik123]

thanks for help but i cant understand how to mount multiple rar archive ?

thanks its now work with multiple archive also

but may be your script not mount and play file #!/bin/sh

[hardik123]

I found the way just add script copy in terminal

gedit ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Mount

and past this code change path as your this add mount to your rar in right click menu and play on player you like

#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/'your name'/Desktop/rar
mount.fuse rarfs#$1 $DIR

Save and close the gedit window, and then execute the following command to make the script executable:

chmod u+x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Mount

For unmont

gedit ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Unmount

This will add Unmount script add in right click

#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/hardik/Desktop/rar
fusermount -u $DIR

Save and close the gedit window, and then execute the following command to make the script executable:

chmod u+x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Unmount

[JBAlaska]

If you want to view and stream avi's from inside rar's..Just use VLC Player.

[MattiJ]

Very useful thanks!
There is a segfault on some rar's and here is the fix.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cg...03&action=diff

	
char buf[4];
file->read(buf,3);

//for some rar files there are seeks past file end, then directly to file end
//which makes file->good() return true, but there is nothing to read
//so with file->gcount() we check if we actually read something
//otherwise we use old bufer and crash somewhere

if(file->gcount()==0)
break;
file->seekg (-3, std::ios::cur);				switch( buf[2] )

[Gfy]

This is how you get it working in openSUSE:

Get the required packages. Only one missing for me on openSUSE 11.2.

sudo zypper install fuse-devel

Grab rarfs-0.0.8.tar.gz or newer from http://sourceforge.net/projects/rarfs/files/ and extract it.

Build and install the code. (see first post)

No need to mess with users and permissions. Also for Ubuntu 10.04 this isn't necessary anymore.


For easy access in Nautilus, see the post from hardik123, but place this in the two files:

#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/`whoami`/rarfs
/sbin/mount.fuse rarfs#$1 $DIR

#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/`whoami`/rarfs
/usr/bin/fusermount -u $DIR

And the same changes for the original basic script:

#!/bin/sh
DIR=/home/`whoami`/rar.mount/
/sbin/mount.fuse rarfs#$1 $DIR
gmplayer -fs -zoom $DIR`ls $DIR`
/usr/bin/fusermount -u $DIR

The advantage of this method over VLC is that you can use whatever player you want. e.g. SMPlayer. Also, this tread is older than VLC had support for playing rars. If you still have an older VLC version, you can get the plugin here: http://www.shapeshifter.se/code/vlc-unrar/

You can also use this script and associate it as default program to open a rar file. If the rar file has a certain size, it will be opened with vlc. Otherwise the archival program will be used.

#!/bin/bash
#get the size of the file
SIZE=`stat -c %s "$@"`

#if the file is a rar file from a scene rar
if [[ "$SIZE" -eq 15000000 || "$SIZE" -eq 20000000 || "$SIZE" -eq 50000000 ||  "$SIZE" -eq 100000000 ]] 
then
	#play the rar file with vlc
	vlc "$@"
elif [ -f $1 ] #file exists and is a regular file
then
	#open the file with the preferred archival programm
	file-roller "$@"
fi

I recently switched to openSUSE on my laptop because of a couple of bugs I couldn't fix that I didn't have in hardy. VLC 1.1.0 often indicates an avi is broken while I had no problems with older vlc versions + the plugin. Thus I use rarfs to solve it.

[NexX.swe]

I keep getting errors when trying to compile

when i try ./configure

config.status: error: cannot find input file: doc/Makefile.in

when i try make

nexx@lemur:~/rarfs$ make
cd . && /bin/bash ./config.status config.h
config.status: creating config.h
config.status: config.h is unchanged
make  all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/nexx/rarfs'
Making all in .
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/nexx/rarfs'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/nexx/rarfs'
Making all in src
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/nexx/rarfs/src'
Makefile:297: .deps/archiveblock.Po: No such file or directory
Makefile:298: .deps/fileblock.Po: No such file or directory
Makefile:299: .deps/main.Po: No such file or directory
Makefile:300: .deps/markerblock.Po: No such file or directory
Makefile:301: .deps/rararchive.Po: No such file or directory
Makefile:302: .deps/rarblock.Po: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** No rule to make target `.deps/rarblock.Po'.  Stop.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/nexx/rarfs/src'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/nexx/rarfs'
make: *** [all] Error 2

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS
please help.

[Gfy]

Do the files exist on your hard drive?
.deps/rararchive.Po ect.

Download the archive and try again.
If the files do exist, then the error message is not very helpful.