nzbget not working because of free unrar

[Richard Browne]

Hi out of the box nzbget on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS doesn't work because of the unrar version that ships with Ubuntu. In the nzbget log, we get these errors:

INFO Unrar: unrar: invalid option -- 'y'
INFO Unrar: Try `unrar --help' or `unrar --usage' for more information.
ERROR Unrar error code: 64

To solve this problem, I needed to 'sudo apt install unrar'.

So I guess nzbget needs to depend on the unrar (non-free) package?

[Richard Browne (9-launchpad-richb-net)]

I guess I'm the only one using nzbget on ubuntu?

[Andreas Moog (ampelbein)]

The dependency can't easily be changed to prefer the non-free rar version, as that would make nzbget not eligible for universe anymore (it has to be moved to multiverse). It currently states:

Recommends: python3, unrar-free | unrar

I will have a look at the scripts used, maybe they can be changed to support both versions.

[Am Laher (laher)]

I've come to install nzbget 3 or 4 times in the past 5 years. Each time, I forget about this workaround and almost give up ...

> nzbget not eligible for universe anymore (it has to be moved to multiverse)

I'd sooner see it in multiverse and working properly.

Alternatively, I think we might be good if nzbget itself was able to hint at the problem itself ... Possibly this code could be changed to recognise "invalid option" errors, and to make appropriate recommendations:

https://github.com/nzbget/nzbget/blob/f8f9dd2b6d82d4be96c45a70f889162a43e7a461/daemon/postprocess/DirectUnpack.cpp#L209

It might also be beneficial to add some info in the UI - e.g. the `UnrarCmd` notes.

I'll see if I can make a PR for this in nzbget