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I'm dealing with a large amount of password protected .rar files which need to be repacked to remove the password. (The password is known.) I was wondering if there was a script to batch/recursively extract & repack them while keeping the same name and directory structure that they had before.

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I would split this task up in two elements, the first is that you need a script rerar that extracts and builds the rar and takes the name of a rar as parameter:

#!/bin/bash

R="$PWD"/"$1"     # if realpath is available you can use  R=$(realpath "$1") 
tmpdir=$(mktemp -d --suff rerar)
pushd "$tmpdir"
# extract preserving directory structure of the archive
# replace YOUR_PASS_WORD in the next line, with no space after "-p"!
unrar x -pYOUR_PASS_WORD "$R"     
# backup the rar file, optional
mv "$R" "$R".org
# re-create recursively going over the files here
rar a -r "$R" .
popd
rm -rf "$tmpdir"

Now you only have to run this on all the rar files involved e.g. by using find

find . -name "*.rar" -exec ./rerar {} \;

It is not as efficient as calling the script with multiple parameters, but here the timeconsuming action is recreating the rar archive, that is why I went for the simple solution.

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  • Thanks for your response! I tried your method out, however this is all I am getting for output: ./rerar.sh: line 3: realpath: command not found Then: /tmp/tmp.XXCpTKpWX9rerar ~/gctest It then asks for a password and errors out with: Cannot create . Is a directory (This happens for each .rar that it finds.)
    – AwesomeMarioFan
    Jun 1, 2015 at 2:47
  • @AwesomeMarioFan realpath can be installed on a Debian system from the package realpath, I never realised this was not part of bash. There should be no space between -p and your_pass_word, I could not test that part of the script as I have no encrypted .rar files. I updated the script. You have to replace YOUR_PASS_WORD with your password for these .rar files.
    – Anthon
    Jun 1, 2015 at 3:05
  • Thank you! It seems to be working now except I need to input the password every time it extracts a file. Its not a big deal though (What's odd is even when I search up the syntax, the password flag is the same as the one you had).
    – AwesomeMarioFan
    Jun 3, 2015 at 3:01
  • @AwesomeMarioFan That is very strange, I just created a password protected .rar file to test with and it re-rarred it) (and it also worked on a non-protected file with the -p123 password that I used. Does: touch abc; rar m -p123 xxx abc; unrar x -p123 xxx work for you?
    – Anthon
    Jun 3, 2015 at 4:56
  • Yep there's no issues with that - I end up with a file called abc and a xxx.rar file. Does that mean it is only a small syntax issue with the original script?
    – AwesomeMarioFan
    Jun 3, 2015 at 21:11

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