cannot run unrar non-free

[Issyer]

Etch is pretty obsolete for home desktops, IMO.

Etch can't be "pretty obsolete" for desktops. I run it and the latest possible software, newer than in Sid. Moreover, Etch is the only latest official Debian release. Other ones are not releases.

I still don't think the OP has "non-free" installed because his sources list doesn't include the non-free repos.

Actually he has.

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian etch main non-free

The choice is strange, of course, but not incorrect. I've just checked this mirror. It does contain unrar

Package: unrar
Priority: optional
Section: non-free/utils
Installed-Size: 216
Maintainer: Martin Meredith <mez@ubuntu.com>
Architecture: i386
Source: unrar-nonfree
Version: 1:3.5.4-1.1

So, I guess, the list of packages is OK. That's why the OP has no problems to see them in synaptic. But during installation something weird is being fetched from the repos and installed instead of the real unrar.
I used this Canadian yorku mirror too until something (I don't remember now what exactly) weird similar to that happened, and I switched to ftp.us.debian.org which is OK.

[windrunner]

Thanks for all your replies, really appreciate it

OK, so I replaced the line I added to sources.list when following the mentioned tutorial, with the one Issyer suggested:

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deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

And then I ran:

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apt-get update
apt-get install unrar

Here is the output from my terminal from the latter command:

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debian:~# apt-get install unrar
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
unrar is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
debian:~# unrar -V
unrar 0.0.1
debian:~#  

So from this it looks like I do have unrar non-free already installed. But when I execute unrar the free one runs... even though it's not supposed to exist as per synaptic showing I do not have it installed.

Hmmm... Is there maybe a manual way I can get rid of unrar-free and unrar? Like going to the directory where the executables are located and deleting them? Or will this just screw up my system?

[Issyer]

Try

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whereis unrar

If it shows anything like /usr/bin/unrar, run

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/usr/bin/unrar -V

It sounds like your unrar is a symlink to /usr/bin/unrar-free. And this is weird. Try also

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whereis unrar-free

Try also

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locate unrar

and post.
It's something weird that you have there.
Try also

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apt-get install --reinstall unrar

Try

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dpkg -l unrar*

Or maybe the guys at the mirror made a mistake and ship unrar-free under the name of unrar? Can it be? I wouldn't delete anything manually until I make sure that my database doesn't contain any unrars.

[izar]

If you have already purged unrar-free make sure that the file unrar-free is not in /usr/bin. That is the executable file and the rest of the package has only documentation, so you can remove the file without problems.

[windrunner]

OK, I have found some closure to this.

I first ran whereis unrar and got:

unrar: /usr/bin/unrar /usr/X11R6/bin/unrar /usr/bin/X11/unrar /usr/local/bin/unrar /usr/share/man/man1/unrar.1.gz

I then ran all but the last location from the list. The first three locations were unrar (the non-free one) because they displayed this:

UNRAR 3.51 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2005 Alexander Roshal

Usage: unrar <command> -<switch 1> -<switch N> <archive> <files...>
<@listfiles...> <path_to_extract\>
...

Only /usr/local/bin/unrar was the unrar-free version because it displayed:

/usr/local/bin/unrar: Archive not specified

Try `unrar --help' or `unrar --usage' for more information.

And after typing /usr/local/bin/unrar -V I got:

unrar 0.0.1

I ran /usr/bin/unrar on my .rar file and all went well! The file uncompressed successfully!

So I guess every time I just typed unrar it was running the version stored in /usr/local/bin/. What I wanna know is how come unrar-free is posing as unrar in /usr/local/bin/? ...and also if I should replace it with unrar from /usr/bin/ for instance to permanently get rid of unrar-free?

[izar]

These are the files included in the unrar package and these are the ones for unrar-free.
Where the other files came from is a mystery, but it looks like the installation from a tar file. You can erase them or maybe uninstall them if you installed unrar or unrar-free from a tar file.[/quote]