extracting file with too long of a name

Question

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.

Answer 1

you could try & shorten the path it has to work with... in a shell i.e.:

mkdir /a; cd /a
unrar /path/to/file/with/long/names .

(make sure you sudo su - in ubuntu or you won't have sufficient privileges to write to the root dir.)

instead of trying to extract files to some directory like /long/directory/name/some/path/where/fish/live/ ... you should be able to extract them to a short dir like /a

from there... you should be able to manipulate your files however you need... and/or put them where they should go. Just remember to clean-up your / by removing the temporary directory.