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The unrar command does not seem to work for some files. If I unrar the files with WinRar on Windows it works without a charge. These files are password encrypted and split into multiple files.

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Are you using the free or nonfree unrar? (The free version is in package unrar-free, the nonfree version in package unrar. Check which you have installed with dpkg -l | grep unrar.)

The unrar-free package won't handle some archives in the RAR 3.0 archive format. You can try using the nonfree unrar package (install with sudo apt-get install unrar).

Alternatively, you can try using 7zip (install the p7zip-full and p7zip-rar packages), or you can grab the latest RAR binaries direct from RARlabs. The official RARlabs version is a 40-day trial; see their site for a pricelist.

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+1, also for the 7zip reference. But, I have had a couple of instances where 7zip had trouble opening a RAR file and unrar had to be used. I am still wondering about them -- did not bother to analyze too much. – nik Feb 20 '10 at 13:50
@nik probably a similar problem. RARlabs created the format and the latest RAR formats are closed-source. open-source tools get to reverse engineer the formats and don't always get the details right. IIRC, unrar-free is an old version of RARlabs' own code that was offered freely, but the license changed with newer versions that support the newer file formats. – quack quixote Feb 20 '10 at 13:58
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