In this tutorial, we will show you how to install rar/unrar on your CentOS system. For those of you who didn’t know, RAR is the most popular tool for creating and extracting compressed archive (.rar) files, but unfortunately, rar tool doesn’t pre-installed under Linux systems, we need to install it using third-party tools to open, extract, uncompress or unrar archive files.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of unrar and rar command-line tools.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS or RHEL-based.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Rar/Unrar on CentOS
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
sudo yum clean all sudo yum update sudo yum install epel-release
Step 2. Installing Rar/Unrar on CentOS.
- Method 1. Install Rar/Unrar from Source Code.
By default, rar/unrar is not available on the CentOS base repository. Now run the following command below to download rar installer to your CentOS system:
https://www.rarlab.com/rar/rarlinux-x64-611.tar.gz
Next, extract the downloaded file using the tar command:
tar -xzvf rarlinux-x64-611.tar.gz
After that, set the environment variables by copying the rar and unrar files to /usr/local/bin/.
cp -v rar unrar /usr/local/bin/
- Method 2. Install Rar/Unrar from the EPEL repository.
Once the EPEL repository is enabled, you can install RAR and UnRAR packages using the following command below:
sudo yum install rar unrar
After the installation is complete, you can verify whether RAR and UnRAR packages are installed by running the following commands:
rar --version unrar --version
Commands for Rar/Unrar archive
Here’s a table of commonly used RAR and UnRAR commands with examples:
| Command | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| RAR Commands | ||
rar a [archive_name] [file/directory_name] |
Creates a new RAR archive and adds the specified file/directory to it | rar a archive.rar myfile.txt |
rar x [archive_name] [destination_directory] |
Extracts files/directories from a RAR archive to the specified destination directory | rar x archive.rar /home/user/documents |
rar t [archive_name] |
Tests the integrity of a RAR archive and lists its contents | rar t archive.rar |
| UnRAR Commands | ||
unrar x [archive_name] [destination_directory] |
Extracts files/directories from a RAR archive to the specified destination directory | unrar x archive.rar /home/user/documents |
unrar l [archive_name] |
Lists the contents of a RAR archive | unrar l archive.rar |
unrar e [archive_name] [file_name] |
Extracts a single file from a RAR archive to the current directory | unrar e archive.rar myfile.txt |
Note: Replace the square brackets [] with the actual file or directory name/path.
These commands can be executed from the command line or terminal on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. For more information on the available options and flags, refer to the manual pages by typing man rar or man unrar in the terminal.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed rar/unrar. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing rar/unrar in the CentOS system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official rar website.
