#define blog.Fauz

Frustrated at being sent files in the 7zip and zip formats and being unable to open them on my N900 – I had a quick peek into maemo 5’s repository and found a little beauty named p7zip.

There’s p7zip and p7zip-full.

p7zip is lightweight and only handles 7z formats.

p7zip-full, however, handles a LOT more:

“ZIP, Zip64, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM, ISO and DEB archives”

On the downside – it’s a command line app, though decompressing a file is pretty straightforward and easy.

First you’re going to need root access to install it.  You can find a guide on how to do that at the Maemo Wiki.

If you don’t know how to access additional repositories, then head over to Sergejs‘ app list . He has a pretty good review of a lot of the other apps available through the standard package manager graphical interface as well as instructions on how to add repo’s.

I’ll be accessing the Extra’s Testing repo – the packages can be found in the free section. Once the repository is enabled, instead of going into the app manager, head over to a terminal and enter the command:
“sudo gainroot”.

Once you enter the command you should see the following:

If you don’t see something saying root shell has been enabled, double check the first link I posted about gaining root access.

Next you need to type the command:

“apt-getinstall p7zip-full”

because I already have the app installed (see below) your install won’t look exactly like mine.

To use 7zip to extract a file you can be a normal user again – all you need is the command:

“7z x some_archive.7z”

but bear in mind that when you do that – it will extract to the current directory.  This can make things a little messy so extract to the correct location!

For removal, you’ll need to log in as root again and run

“apt-get –purge remove p7zip”

I believe that SHOULD remove it.

I’m much happier now that I can compress and decompress files on my n900.  Have fun compressing (or uncompressing)!