RiverWind wrote: > Whilst trying to get and install the rar file compression utility, > I encountered a bit of an interesting obstacle. It seems that this > file is either obsolete and hence no longer supported by Linux, or > something else of that nature has made this application unavailable > via mainstream measures. The 'rar' program is nonfree. The program is shareware and you must register it after 40 days of use. Because it is nonfree it cannot be part of any free software distribution. In particular it cannot be part of Debian because it does not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. The problem is legal not technical. > I have several radio plays, books and documentaries that have been > compressed using rar, so I therefore don't quite know what to do in > order to process these particular files so they can be played by my > media utilities. Here is the error message that the "apt" command > returned. It was compiled and packaged in the Lenny timeframe in the nonfree section. You can still install the Lenny version. Here is a URL for the Lenny package page. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/rar You can download the package for Debian 32-bit i386 from one of the mirror locations listed at this following URL. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/rar/download Then install the deb file using this command: dpkg -i rar_3.8b3-1_i386.deb And similarly for the "unrar" package. Due to the licensing issues as soon as possible I suggest that you move all of your content out of the problematic rar files and into different containers. Since you say media and since most media formats are already compressed then there is no need to try to compress them again. Being a free software advocate I suggest using a free software container such as a tar file. Bob
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