Scan is extracting files

[Row]

Updated to latest Kodi and was forced to update the rar archive add on, which I had rolled back to version that was working. And now it is a mess.

• While scanning the library it keeps unpacking subs.
• While scanning a prompt is asking me if I want to unpack big file, that is the same couple of files not different files. Does it want me to keep choosing no until I change my mind?
• the process of scanning the library never ends.
• it is not possible to delete folders in the library since they are used by another application. That must be this add-on.
• Triple duplicate entries in the library or more. I can see that it would add it once but twice?
• While scanning rrror notifications with not enough memory to extract file keep appearing.

Why does the add-on need to unpack the files while scanning? I have not seen this behaviour before. It feels like the underlying logic how this should work is completely broken.

Windows 7
Kodi 19.0.0
Rar archive support 4.0.0

[Row]

And it is not possible to disable or uninstall the add-on, the options to do so are grayed out/disabled.

[rmlund]

I'm experiencing this exact same problem. It seems to be isolated to the Movies source though. As soon as I enter that source while browsing files, the rar-addon starts going through all the sub-folders and unpacks every subtitle-rar it finds. For large files it does ask first though, but everything that falls below whatever the threshold is, is extracted to the temp dir. I'm running Kodi on an nVidia Shield and I only have less than 1 Gb of free space, which gets eaten up pretty quickly by these unpacked subtitles. The original files are stored on my NAS, but they get extracted to the temp folder on the Shield. The only way to stop the process (that I've found) is to force stop Kodi and restart it. But whenever I enter the Movies source again, the process starts right back up. I've only noticed this happening in the Movies source. The TV-shows source seems unaffected by this issue, from what I can tell. The greyed out "disable" and "uninstall" buttons in the add-on settings only seem to happen when the unpacking process is running. If I start up Kodi and don't go into the Movies source (and avoid triggering the unpacking process) the disable and uninstall options are available.

[Sopor]

You can disable the question about unpacking big files, but if you disable it, it will unpack files that are compressed too and if that is a big 48GB ISO full BD it will take forever and you will mostly ran out of disk space.

It shouldn't need to unpack files that are STORED. Most subs are compressed and that is why you get this question. I don't know why it will include the subs, but it is an old issue that has been around since 18.x. Even if you try to exclude them in the advancedsettings.xml it won't work :(

[rmlund]

Yeah, I know about the setting for asking before unpacking large files, and that seems to work as expected. I definitely don't want to disable that. :) And yes, the issue only applies to compressed rars. The problem though is that vfs.rar even tries to unpack every compressed rar-file it finds automatically at all, just by browsing the Movies source. That must be a bug, right? I can't think of any reason to unpack subs until you actually need them. That is, when you specifically request the player to use those particular subtitles.

As for why it only seems to affect the Movies media source and not the TV Shows source, I don't know.

In Kodi 18.x I never experienced this problem of triggering an automatic unpacking of any sort just by browsing a media source. It would however cause Kodi to crash when it tried to scan a folder to the library, if that folder contained a rared sub (it still does actually). And like you said, trying to exclude subs in advancedsettings.xml doesn't work either. The workaround for the latter issue (crashing Kodi) has been for me to change the extension of all problematic rars to something else, then do the scan, then change them back to .rar. The auto-unpacking issue though, I don't know how to get around. I kind of have to go into the Movies source if I ever want to add new movies to my library, right? :)

[Sopor]

@rmlund There was a bug before that make it unpack the subs when entering the folder. I'm not sure if that is fixed or not? It seems that vfs.rar check all the files inside the folder you open, even the subs. I believe that is the reason it ignores the advancedsettings.xml.

[r4nd0m123]

I too get this.

Nvidia Shield TV (2017)
Android 9 with 5 December 2020 patch level.
Using an external SSD drive to allow for large apps. E.g. Kodi.
Kodi 19
RAR archive plugin 4.0.0

[ZevZev]

Mostly the same issue with for me. I turned Off the option "Asks to unpack" - then at least I don't get bothered anymore with it.
But, as some if you say: it might unpack stuff. I didn't notice that myself, and the scanning isn't slowed down because it seems to unpack stuff. But, I do get another error message in return:

RAR archive support: Not enough memory available to decompress file in the bottom right, and stuff like this:
ERROR : AddOnLog: vfs.rar: CRarFile::Open: Open failed to cache file

in kodi.log.

As @Sopor wrote: in Kodi 18, vfs.rar also seemed to break / start showing this behavior after versions >2.0.8 at that time.
I had to manually go back to 2.0.8 and that always worked fine. Seems the issue is still there in 4.0. And I can't use 2.0.8 again because it is not compatible.

[Raboo]

I also get the RAR archive support: Not enough memory available to decompress file . like a 40 times every time kodi scans the library. Please fix so this plugin doesn't try to extract subtitles when scanning library or at least give us an option to turn that feature off.