Newbie Question Thread

[ozerune]

After giving up on configuring FreeArc itself, I switched to DiskSpan GUI for a little bit. Now that I have a better understanding of repacking, I want to go back to FreeArc, but am running into some issues.

1) It won't let me put the compressors into different folders
e.g. unpackcmd = "compressors\lolz_64.exe" {options} InFile OutFile
gives me an error, where not using subfolders works just fine

"The system cannot find the path specified."

2) cls-lolz refuses to unpack anything. I have all 4 necessary cls-* files, and am running an unpack.bat file as administrator, and nothing is working



3) When I have the cls files in the FreeArc bin folder, it tries to compress the files using the cls instead of the actual compressor. How can I stop this from happening?

arc.ini at defining external compressors:

[External compressor:lolz]
packcmd = "compressors\lolz_x64.exe" {options} InFile OutFile
datafile = InFile
packedfile = OutFile

[Masquerade]

unpackcmd = "compressors\lolz_64.exe" {options} InFile OutFile

lolz_x64.exe cannot be used to unpack data, only compress.

As for file not found, don't try and use a FreeArc installation for your repacking. Make a separate folder with arc.exe, arc.ini and your tools. Make sure arc.exe from your FreeArc installation isn't in the PATH variable because things get messy this way.

cls-lolz refuses to unpack anything. I have all 4 necessary cls-* files, and am running an unpack.bat file as administrator, and nothing is working

Please may you explain what error you face? You only really need:
cls-lolz.dll
cls-lolz_x64.exe
And the appropriate configuration in cls.ini.

When I have the cls files in the FreeArc bin folder, it tries to compress the files using the cls instead of the actual compressor. How can I stop this from happening?

You can't. FreeArc will always load and prefer cls plugins over external compressors configured in arc.ini. you will need to remove cls-lolz components and other cls based decompressors from your Arc compressor.

You don't need to use datafile = / packedfile = in arc.ini either, you can simply use $$arcdatafile$$.tmp $$arcpackedfile$$.tmp in the command (this could be why your archives won't unpack with lolz cls).

datafile/packedfile is reserved for awkward tools that require a specific in/out file extension to work and has no filename override.

[External compressor:lolz]
packcmd = "compressors\lolz_x64.exe" {options} $$arcdatafile$$.tmp $$arcpackedfile$$.tmp