IFilterShop RAR IFilter Server Edition Release 1.3 README

CONTENT OF README FILE


General Information

RAR IFilter is a plug-in that allows Microsoft Search products and services to index RAR archives, enabling customers to search and organize their content. RAR IFilter extracts all valuable information from files stored inside RAR archive. This information includes archived directory names, list of archived files, archived files' metadata and content. RAR IFilter also supports recursive indexing of RAR files included in the archive.

RAR IFilter supports Indexing Service, SharePoint Portal Server, SQL Server Full-Text Search, Window Search Service and all other products based on Microsoft Search technology.


System Requirements

RAR IFilter supports the following Microsoft server operating systems:

RAR IFilter supports the following Microsoft desktop operating systems:

RAR IFilter supports the following Microsoft Search products


Information Retrieval

RAR IFilter indexes files within RAR archives. Out of the box RAR IFilter indexes archived Microsoft Office, HTML and plain text files. For other file types it may invoke appropriate IFilters. Its functionality can be further extended by installing IFilters from IFilterShop or other providers. RAR IFilter supports recursive indexing of RAR files included in the archive.

RAR IFilter outputs names of directories and files stored in RAR archive as text content of RAR file. Text content is defined as standard Indexing Service "Contents" property with Property Set GUID = {B725F130-47EF-101A-A5F102608C9EEBAC} (PropertyStorage) and Property Name = 19 (0x13).


Installation Instructions

Setup file is a self-extracting archive that must be downloaded and opened on the machine where you wish to use RAR IFilter.

  1. Stop all appropriate Search services.
  2. Uninstall any previous version of RAR IFilter.
  3. Start setup file and follow the on-screen instructions.
  4. Start all appropriate Search services.
  5. Re-index catalogs containing RAR files.


Additional Setup Steps

Some Microsoft Search products require additional setup steps as described below:

SharePoint Portal Server 2001:

  1. Open the web folder for the workspace you are using
  2. Open the Management folder
  3. Open the Content Sources folder
  4. Click on "Additional Settings"
  5. Click on "File Types..."
  6. Make sure that ".rar" file type is included

SharePoint Portal Server 2003:

  1. Open "Site Settings" web page
  2. In the "Search Settings and Indexed Content" section click on "Configure search and indexing"
  3. Click on "Include file types"
  4. Make sure that ".rar" file type is included

Office SharePoint Server 2007:

  1. Open Shared Services Provider Admin Site
  2. In the "Search" section click on "Search settings"
  3. Click on "File type inclusions"
  4. Make sure that ".rar" file type is included

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:

  1. Open registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\<WSS Server Name>\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList"
  2. Add ".rar" extension to the list of indexable file types
  3. Restart Windows SharePoint Services Search

SharePoint Server 2010:

  1. In SharePoint Central Administration go to "General Application Settings" page
  2. In the "Search" section click on "Farm-Wide Search Administration"
  3. Click on " Search Service Application" link
  4. On the left side menu select "File Types"
  5. Make sure that ".rar" file type is included

SharePoint Foundation 2010:

  1. Open registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\Search\Applications\<WSS GUID>\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList"
  2. Add ".rar" extension to the list of indexable file types
  3. Restart SharePoint Foundation Search

Windows Desktop Search:

When integrated with Windows Desktop Search RAR IFilter uses temporary directory to process RAR archives. By default it uses system temporary directory. For Window Desktop Search versions 3.x and higher RAR IFilter must be set to work with user specified temporary directory. To change temporary directory setting:

  1. Stop Windows Search service.
  2. Open registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IFilterShop\RarFilter"
  3. Add new String value named "TempPath" and enter the full path to the new temporary directory. If this value is missing, empty or the path is not pointing to a valid directory, system temporary directory will be used. Please make sure that "Users" or "Authenticated Users" Group has "Full Control" permissions to the custom temporary directory.
  4. Start Windows Search service.
When using custom temporary directory, we recommend that you set it as "not indexable" in all your indexing products. Otherwise temporary files may be indexed. This will pollute the index and also can prevent temporary files from proper removal by RAR IFilter.

Vista Search, Windows 7 Search:

Configure custom temporary directory as described in "Additional Setup Steps" for Windows Desktop Search section above.


How to Uninstall

If you ever have to uninstall RAR IFilter application you can easily do it using any of the following methods:


Known Issues

RAR files are not searchable in Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Desktop Search

Custom temporary directory has to be configured as described in "Additional Setup Steps" for Windows Desktop Search section above.

Archived PDF files are not indexed

RAR IFilter calls an IFilter registered for PDF files to index archived PDF files. Adobe PDF IFilter (versions 5.0 and 6.0) is an apartment threaded IFilter. Apartment threaded IFilters behave abnormally on some server platforms where indexing process is multithreaded. Follow the steps below to make Adobe PDF IFilter work on these platforms.

  1. Change the registry value "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{4C904448-74A9-11d0-AF6E-00C04FD8DC02}\InprocServer32\ThreadingModel" from Apartment to Both.
  2. Right click on the registry value "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\DLLsToRegister" and select "Modify".
  3. Remove the entry corresponding to pdffilt.dll from the list. This will prevent Adobe PDF IFilter from re-registering itself each time Indexing Service is restarted.
  4. Restart all appropriate Search services.
  5. Re-index catalogs containing RAR files.
If you ever want to reverse these changes, locate pdffilt.dll and re-register it with regsvr32.exe.


What's new in this version

Version 1.3

Version 1.2

Version 1.1


Contact Information

WWW:
http://www.ifiltershop.com
E-mail:
support@ifiltershop.com