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RAR2FS(1)                        User Commands                        RAR2FS(1)



NAME
       rar2fs - FUSE file system for reading RAR archives

SYNOPSIS
       rar2fs [options] source target

DESCRIPTION
       rar2fs  is  a  FUSE  based  file  system that can mount a source RAR ar-
       chive/volume or a directory containing any number  of  RAR  archives  on
       target  and  access (read only) the contents as plain files/directories.
       Other files located in the source directory are  handled  transparently.
       Both  compressed  and  non-compressed  (store) archives/volumes are sup-
       ported but full media seek support (aka. indexing) is only available for
       non-compressed plaintext archives. If a RAR volume is selected as source
       the file specified must be the first in the set.

       Since rar2fs is non-interactive, passwords that are required to  decrypt
       encrypted  archives should be stored in a file with the same name as the
       main archive/volume file but with a .pwd extension. It may also be  pre-
       fixed  with  a dot '.'  character to hide it from simple list operations
       in traditional UNIX style. The latter variant has less  precedence  than
       the former.  It is also possible to specify a password per archive using
       the .rarconfig file described below.  Be aware that a password  must  be
       stored  in  plaintext  format  and is thus not protected in any way from
       unauthorized access.

       This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify  it
       under  the  terms  of the GNU General Public License as published by the
       Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or  (at  your
       option) any later version.

       This  program  is  distributed  in  the hope that it will be useful, but
       WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABIL-
       ITY  or  FITNESS  FOR  A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public
       License for more details.  You should have received a copy  of  the  GNU
       General   Public   License   along   with  this  program.  If  not,  see
       <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>

OPTIONS
       Besides the standard FUSE options rar2fs accepts the  following  options
       that can be passed to the program.

       --seek-length=n
              set number of volume files that are traversed in search for head-
              ers [0=All]

              Normally the RAR specific header(s)  describing  the  files  con-
              tained in a volume is located in the first volume file. Providing
              a value of 1 here should thus be sufficient to cover most  cases.
              The  default is 0, meaning that the complete set of volumes files
              are searched for headers.  The lower the value (starting from  1)
              the faster the display of folders containing a lot of RAR volumes
              (or volumes with a lot of files) will become since the number  of
              open/search/close  requests  can  be reduced but with less chance
              that all files are found and displayed.

              It is also possible to specify the seek length per archive  using
              the .rarconfig file described below. This adds the possibility to
              find all files without any significant performance loss.

       --exclude="<file>[;<file>;...]"

       --exclude=<path>
              exclude file filter

              When file access is requested and the file can not  be  found  on
              the  local file system all RAR archives in target folder are also
              searched for it. Not until that last operation fails the file  is
              considered  missing.  On  some platforms certain files (eg. .lock
              files) are always accessed but are usually never to expect within
              a  RAR  archive.   Specifying  this  option will treat the listed
              files differently. If not found on local file  system  they  will
              never  be  searched  for in the local RAR archives. This dramati-
              cally decrease the folder  load/display  time  during  'ls'  like
              operations on such systems.  Each file in the list should be sep-
              arated by a semi-colon ';' character.

              It is also possible to use this option in  such  a  way  that  it
              instead  points  to  a file that lists the actual exclude filter.
              This is done by specifying an absolute file path  (starting  with
              '/')  instead  of  a semi-colon separated list of file names. The
              file pointed to may contain more than one line but for each  line
              files should be separated by a semi-colon ';' character.

       --no-smp
              disable SMP support (bind to CPU #0)

              Note  that this option is only available on Linux based platforms
              with support for the cpu_set_t type (GNU extension).

       --save-eof
              force creation of .r2i files (end-of-file chunk) [EXPERIMENTAL]

              Index information is usually populated by the media player at the
              beginning  of  a  playback session. Since the index table in most
              cases is stored at the end of the file, retrieving this  informa-
              tion  without  the  use  of  some post-processing is more or less
              impossible to perform in real-time for compressed/encrypted video
              streams.  The  mkr2i tool is intended to be used in such cases to
              make the index table available in a separate .r2i file.

              Enabling this option will instead tell rar2fs to guess where  the
              index  information  is located by analyzing the access pattern of
              the media player and then write the end-of-file chunk to an  .r2i
              file automatically. This method is however less precise than when
              using the mkr2i tool. Expect an increase in size of the generated
              .r2i  file  compared  to  using the mkr2i tool directly. Start of
              playback will also be delayed since  almost  the  entire  archive
              needs to be extracted in order to access the data towards the end
              of the file and make it available for playback.

              This option is only supported for AVI 1.0 and multi-part  OpenDML
              (AVI  2.0)  files  created  by a properly configured muxer. Badly
              configured muxers will expose themselves  by  generating  invalid
              frame counts. The latter is automatically detected by rar2fs.

              It  is  also  possible  to enable/disable this option per archive
              using the .rarconfig file described below.

       --no-lib-check
              disable dynamic library consistency check

              At startup rar2fs validates that the dynamic libraries libfuse.so
              and libunrar.so are compatible/consistent with what was used dur-
              ing compilation.  Use this option to by-pass this check.  Use  of
              this option is discouraged.

       --iob-size=n
              tune the size of the I/O buffer

              The  I/O  buffer  is  used to prefetch data at extraction of com-
              pressed or encrypted archives to make sure streaming is  possible
              without  delay  due to disk or network I/O. Depending on the cur-
              rent system resources and network latency this buffer might  need
              to  be adjusted. A small buffer takes less resources but increase
              the chance that rar2fs must wait for data to arrive during a read
              request.  On  the other hand, a large buffer will increase memory
              footprint which may not always be desired. Also keep in mind that
              every  file being extracted requires its own buffer. So the total
              memory resources required are always the buffer  size  multiplied
              by  the  number  of  active  extraction  threads. Be careful when
              choosing buffer size. There is no cap on  the  size  itself.  The
              only  requirement  is  that  it  is a 'power of 2' Megabytes, eg.
              1,2,4,8, etc. The default size is 4MiB.

       --hist-size=n
              tune the size of I/O buffer history

              The I/O buffer history is a sliding window within the I/O  buffer
              that  is guaranteed to never be overwritten until future data has
              been consumed passed this limit. This means that, even though  an
              extraction process can never be reversed, this part of the buffer
              can still deliver "historic" data within this window  (eg.  skip-
              ping  backwards  during  movie playback). The size of the history
              buffer is expressed as a percentage of the total I/O buffer  size
              between  0%  and  75%.  Specifying 0 here will completely disable
              this function. The default size is 50% of the  total  I/O  buffer
              size.

       --no-expand-cbr
              disable support for comic book RAR archives

              Default  is to always expand comic book RAR archives. In the case
              that comic book readers are used that expect to find the original
              .cbr archive this option can be used to keep such files intact.

       --relatime

       --relatime-rar
              update file access times relative to modify or change time

              By default rar2fs adhere to whatever access time update scheme is
              dictated by the underlying host file system. Since the host  file
              system  is  unaware  of  files  inside RAR archives the effect on
              those files will be that of 'noatime'. To overcome  this  limita-
              tion  the  --relatime  option  may  be  used.  See mount(8) for a
              description of 'relatime' and  other  mount  options  related  to
              timestamping.

              Another  issue  with strictly relying on the host file system for
              timestamping is the effect on RAR  volumes.  Since  reading  data
              from  a  RAR volume might not access all files, only parts of the
              volume will obtain an updated timestamp. Tools relying on  access
              time  to clean up and delete "old" data might get fooled deleting
              only a subset of the volume resulting in a  corrupt  archive.  By
              using  the  --relatime-rar  option  this problem is eliminated by
              making sure all files in  a  volume  set  is  always  updated  on
              access.  Note  that  the  underlying  host  file  system  must be
              writable and user needs sufficient permissions for this option to
              have any effect.

              Except from what is described above the --relatime-rar option has
              the same effect as --relatime which effectively means  that  both
              these  options  does  not  need to be specified. Using --relatime
              makes sense only if updates of  the  source  RAR  files  are  not
              wanted  for  some reason. There is a slight overhead inflicted by
              using --relatime-rar since in the case of large  RAR  volume  ar-
              chives  a lot of files will need a new timestamp. The access time
              is updated only at first read access  after  a  file  was  opened
              which means overhead should be almost negligible.

       --config=file
              specify per archive configuration file

              Use  this  file  instead of the default .rarconfig that should be
              placed directly  under  the  source  folder.   Refer  to  rarcon-
              fig.example  for an explanation of syntax and details on how this
              feature can be used.

       --date-rar
              use file date/timestamp from main archive file

              By default the dates/timestamps are collected from the meta  data
              in  the  RAR archives.  Use this option to instead force all ini-
              tial dates/timestamps to be set according to the main RAR archive
              file.  For  volumes  this means the first file in the set. If the
              --relatime and/or --relatime-rar options are used it might affect
              the result of this option after mount time.

       --no-inherit-perm
              do not inherit file permission mode from archive

              By default the file permission mode bits are inherited from what-
              ever is stored in the archive. Sometimes this is not  preferable.
              This  option  can be used to instead set the permission mode bits
              based on file type and  current  file  mode  creation  mask,  see
              umask(1p).  Another option is to use the FUSE umask mount option.
              The latter has the benefit of completely ignoring what  ever  the
              file  system  implementation  sets but also has some caveats with
              respect to directories versus regular files.

SEE ALSO
       mount(8), mount.fuse(8), fusermount(1)

       Project home page <https://hasse69.github.io/rar2fs/>

AUTHOR
       Hans Beckerus
       <hans.beckerus#AT#gmail.com>




Thu, Oct 31, 2019                      v                              RAR2FS(1)