Ubuntu – extracting file with too long of a name

filenamesrarUbuntu

I have a rar archive that I downloaded, except some of the filenames are too long to be created by ubuntu. How can I extract all of the files?

The default archive manager on ubuntu goes through most of the files, fails, and deletes the entire folder. Ark extracts them and silently fails on names that are too long.

Best Answer

The usual filesystem limitation of 255 chars applies to unique file or directory names, not their entire path. So extracting it to /a won't help. The problem is that the RAR file format allows the archive to contain files which name can exceed 255 chars.

You can work around this problem by printing the problematic file to stdout and redirecting it to a file:

unrar -inul p archive.rar overly-long-file-name > shorter-name

This extracts overly-long-file-name from archive.rar, into a file named shorter-name.

Related Solutions

Windows – Filenames too long and Windows can’t open the files

Try substituting the path with SUBST.EXE. It comes with Windows:

C:\Users\shufler>subst /?
Associates a path with a drive letter.

SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D

  drive1:        Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
  [drive2:]path  Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
                 a virtual drive.
  /D             Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.

Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

What you want to do is substitute one of the folders down the chain for a drive letter:

 C:\>subst X: Q:\Dir1\Dir2\ProjectA\FilesForSomething\SomeotherDirectory\Blahblah\RootOfLongFileNames\LongSubdirectoryName1

Now the LongSubdirectoryName1 folder is accessed on the X: drive. When you're done with it you can delete your substitution with subst X: /D

If you need this all the time, then add it to your login script.

Another approach would be to map a drive further down the chain from wherever Q: is mapped.

Windows – On Windows 7, how to find all the files whose filenames are too long

If you happen to have cygwin installed, I think this should work:

find /cygdrive/c/Users/username/Dropbox -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} bash -c 'if [[ $(echo -n "{}" | wc -c) -gt "269" ]]; then echo "{}"; fi'

Sorry that I don't know of the native way of doing the same.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – Filenames too long and Windows can’t open the files

Windows – On Windows 7, how to find all the files whose filenames are too long

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