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.