How do I use ZIP, UNZIP, RAR or UNRAR on Kubuntu?

[bai.ganga]

Well the title itself may not be fully apt for what I am asking. I am working with Kubuntu 11.10 and, I am able to right-click and ZIP, UNZIP and RAR any folder, file etc. But only the UNRAR is not working even on a file that I myself RARed [well, I should probably say ---- reduced using RAR]. The problem was first noticed on a file sent in a mail by my friend that I downloaded and that is when I tried to ZIP, UNZIP, RAR and UNRAR some other files and folders with me. Surprisingly, the symbol for a (.rar) file or folder is correctly displayed, which means the system is recognising it correctly. Can someone help please?

[barbolani]

I've experienced sometimes issues with Ark not being able to extract files that have non-ASCII characters in their names. Do you have a RAR file that only has files with 7-bit clean ASCII names to test?

In those cases I've always been able to extract the files using the command line unrar program.

[dibl]

unrar is proprietary, therefore it is not shipped in the default installation. You can apt-get install it. Once installed, check man unrar for the command line options.

[OneLine]

The default KDE archiving application is the Ark: http://userbase.kde.org/Ark.

The Ark is a front end. It is using rar, zip and other command line applications to do the work.

Kubuntu package ark:

Suggests: rar, unrar | unrar-free, bzip2, p7zip-full, zip, unzip

Description: archive utility
Ark manages various archive formats, including tar, gzip, bzip2, rar and zip.
It can be used to browse, extract, create, and modify archives.
.
This package is part of the KDE SC utilities module.
Homepage: http://www.kde.org/

You need to install the ark + rar, unrar or unrar-free, bzip2, p7zip-full, zip, unzip to get the fully working ark.

The Ark is adding the service menus to the file manager (Dolphin, Konqueror).




But to work the Ark needs the back ends: rar, unrar,...

[bai.ganga]

Sometime ago too, there was some comment something like "If 'dibl' was not there, most problems in Kubuntu would not have got solved". That answer seems to be the precise one for my question! But, just seeing the answer by 'Oneline' above, I am tempted to ask one more related question.

Is it possible to install the program called 7-zip into this Kubuntu setup? I have used that [7-zip] in windows background and have found that it is extremely efficient to work on rar as well as zip files.

[dequire]

I have had good luck installing XArchiver and using it in situations where Ark did not work (such as opening .jar files, for example). Just an FYI.

[lo_koraco]

Try unp, it's a command line wrapper for the various tools. You run unp archivename in a terminal. After you install it, of course.

[dibl]

Is it possible to install the program called 7-zip into this Kubuntu setup?

don@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-cache policy p7zip-full
p7zip-full:
  Installed: 9.20.1~dfsg.1-2
  Candidate: 9.20.1~dfsg.1-2
  Version table:
 *** 9.20.1~dfsg.1-2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status