[HN Gopher] ArchiveBox: Open-source self-hosted web archiving
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       ArchiveBox: Open-source self-hosted web archiving
        
       Author : pcr910303
       Score  : 204 points
       Date   : 2021-04-19 02:34 UTC (20 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (archivebox.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (archivebox.io)
        
       | chrisweekly wrote:
       | Wow, great! Self-hosted, open-source, solid UI, tie-ins to the
       | broader ecosystem... seems to check all the right boxes. Looking
       | fwd to trying it and if all goes well, maybe see about
       | integrating it into AthensResearch. Thanks for sharing!
        
       | sleavey wrote:
       | Even works on the Raspberry Pi, apparently. This would be nice in
       | combination with a Pi-Hole.
        
         | dehrmann wrote:
         | Am I the only one who spins up a new VM in VMWare ESXi for
         | things like this?
        
           | thies226j wrote:
           | Yeah, why don't you just use a container?
        
           | Karunamon wrote:
           | VIC containers for me - a full VM is a bit overkill for
           | something this light :)
        
             | gzer0 wrote:
             | What's your setup like? I use VMWare workstation pro- I
             | have Windows Enterprise 2019 LTSC N installed and
             | snapshotted to a base VM.
             | 
             | Any time I need to do anything, I will full clone the base;
             | with a decent SSD it takes maybe 10 seconds for the full
             | clone and I have a full OS.
        
               | Karunamon wrote:
               | Actual ESXI on a decently powerful (33 cores, 512 gigs)
               | machine. VMWare's been really good to me, minus some
               | points for occasional stupidity on upgrades.
        
       | ramraj07 wrote:
       | Can I export my history from my iPhone web browsing?
        
         | nojito wrote:
         | Safari reading list already does this
         | 
         | https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/keep-a-reading-list-s...
        
         | dewey wrote:
         | I'm not sure how the iCloud Sync works in this case but if you
         | use Desktop Safari where it has your iOS history too you might
         | be able to get it out of the Safari sqlite DB on your computer:
         | 
         | https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28628385/sqlite-safari-h...
        
         | rakoo wrote:
         | If you can somehow extract your browsing history, archivebox
         | can ingest a list of links
        
           | nikisweeting wrote:
           | ArchiveBox comes with a script that exports Safari history to
           | a text file (which can then be imported into AB):
           | ./bin/export_browser_history.sh --safari
           | 
           | https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/blob/dev/bin/export.
           | ..
        
       | thedanbob wrote:
       | I've been using ArchiveBox since the last time it popped up on HN
       | and I like it a lot. It recently got a significant UI upgrade.
        
       | pacifika wrote:
       | No mention of search?
        
         | nikisweeting wrote:
         | It has full-text search using ripgrep and sonic.
        
         | dugite-code wrote:
         | I literally just spun up a copy but it looks like it has Sonic
         | full-text integration, however I'm not 100% sure if it's
         | working via the UI as there isn't much feed back letting you
         | know why a site has displayed in the results.
        
       | weekay wrote:
       | It saves pages to archive.org as well. You might want to be
       | careful while using this to archive personal content.
        
         | nikisweeting wrote:
         | Yes, I can write a long article about why it's the default
         | someday. I've agonized over this decision for many many months,
         | and it's flipped flopped a few times as well.
         | 
         | The short version is that defaults in software are really
         | important (90% of users wont change them), and I don't trust
         | myself to code ArchiveBox 100% correctly so as to never lose
         | data, or the majority of people to store their archives
         | correctly so as to never lose data on their own. Archive.org is
         | the redundant failsafe. Another good reason is that Archive.org
         | is not the only way that your archive content can be leaked,
         | the security model means that archived pages can read each
         | other's content, so I want to make it abundantly clear to users
         | that by default it's designed to only archive content thats
         | already public (in which case it's already fair game for
         | Archive.org).
         | 
         | I've settled on leaving it on as the default, but I do mention
         | 3 times in the README how to disable it, most notably in the
         | CAVEATS section which explains both the security model
         | drawbacks and how to prevent your content from being leaked to
         | Archive.org or other 3rd party APIs.
        
           | jka wrote:
           | Although I tend privacy-by-default for most deployed
           | technologies, the context of archiving does change the
           | criteria quite a lot; you've selected a sensible and
           | reasonable default, I reckon. Hopefully integrity is a
           | consideration too? Glad to read that article, one day :)
        
         | kenniskrag wrote:
         | Can be disabled but on in default mode.
         | 
         | https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration#...
        
         | Proven wrote:
         | "Democratizing Tragedy of Commons at scale"
        
         | asaddhamani wrote:
         | archive.org will only archive publicly visible content and it
         | respects robots.txt
        
           | tyingq wrote:
           | _" and it respects robots.txt"_
           | 
           | Not since 2017. https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-
           | txt-meant-for-sea...
           | 
           | They now have a clunky manual process to exclude your site.
           | https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
           | us/articles/360004651732-Usin... ("How can I exclude...")
           | 
           | They don't spoof user agents, but blocking them actively
           | doesn't remove their history.
        
             | Karunamon wrote:
             | When did this change? It used to be that adding robots.txt
             | would retroactively remove archives for a domain.
        
               | tyingq wrote:
               | 2017.
        
               | pseudalopex wrote:
               | Hide. Not remove.
        
       | gravypod wrote:
       | I can't wait for the API to be completed. I want to build
       | something to archive HN (article + comments) and turn it into
       | epub go read offline. Hard to do currently.
        
         | jcoscolla wrote:
         | I was trying to do something similar with walls bag, but no
         | epub file to send :(
        
           | antman wrote:
           | I assume its auto corrected, do you mean Wallabag?
           | https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag
        
       | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
       | How does it differ from https://wallabag.org?
        
         | unicornporn wrote:
         | https://www.linkace.org/
         | 
         | Just a heads-up. Found that a while ago and much prefer it over
         | wallabag.
        
           | Kovah wrote:
           | Thanks for sharing LinkAce! Maintainer here. If you or others
           | have any questions, feel free to ask.
        
           | pseudalopex wrote:
           | What makes it better?
        
             | Kovah wrote:
             | I think it's primarily personal preference of features and
             | how things are stored and presented. While Wallabag is more
             | a Pocket/Read It Later alternative, LinkAce does not save
             | the website itself, but a reference to it including the
             | taxonomy you assign to it. It is intended to be a long-term
             | bookmark archive, but without handling all the website
             | archiving on its own.
        
         | coffeeri wrote:
         | It is quiet convenient to combine the two. You are able to
         | export your wallabag list via RSS and import it on a schedule
         | in archivebox.
        
         | hlasdjlfhalwjk wrote:
         | Wallabag only stores links. ArchiveBox archives a snapshot of
         | the actual content of a page at a specific point in time.
        
           | ernesth wrote:
           | Wallabag extracts the content and stores it. Not just the
           | links.
        
       | kwhitefoot wrote:
       | How do tools like this cope with pages that are rendered by
       | Javascript. What do the tools actually save? For instance if I
       | save a Quora page using Firefox I can open it but if Quora is not
       | accessible it doesn't work.
        
       | gogopuppygogo wrote:
       | Would be great to allow for it to save to worm storage.
        
         | asaddhamani wrote:
         | Worm storage?
        
           | kinard wrote:
           | write once read many
        
       | throwaway823882 wrote:
       | Last time I tried to do this same thing, I didn't know about
       | these, and ended up spending a couple days on wget and httrack.
       | Do all these alternatives work from the command line, or are they
       | their own little proprietary ecosystem?
        
       | elric wrote:
       | If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might also be
       | interested in Archivy [1], which is somewhat similar but it
       | (thankfully) doesn't upload your stuff to archive.org
       | 
       | [1] https://archivy.github.io/
        
         | dugite-code wrote:
         | > doesn't upload your stuff to archive.org
         | 
         | FIY You just have to set the environment variable
         | SUBMIT_ARCHIVE_DOT_ORG=False
        
           | pseudalopex wrote:
           | It's an accident waiting to happen.
        
             | nikisweeting wrote:
             | See my answer here for why it's the default:
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26866689
        
         | faitswulff wrote:
         | What's the danger in uploading to archive.org?
        
           | elric wrote:
           | Aside from the can of worms that is copyright infringement?
           | There was a recent HN discussion about how much of a pain it
           | is to get something removed from archive.org.
           | 
           | Not uploading people's stuff to permanent, public archives
           | seems like a good rule of thumb.
        
             | notRobot wrote:
             | > There was a recent HN discussion about how much of a pain
             | it is to get something removed from archive.org.
             | 
             | I really wanna read this but can't find the thread, do you
             | happen to have a link?
        
             | tashbarg wrote:
             | Isn't this just passing the URL to archive.org which then
             | does the actual archiving?
             | 
             | If it isn't already public (i.e., reachable by
             | archive.org), it won't be afterwards?
        
               | elric wrote:
               | Something can be public today and not tomorrow. Something
               | can be made public by accident. Something can be
               | publically reachable (i.e. a private URL but one without
               | a login) without the intention of being searchable.
        
       | dugite-code wrote:
       | Last time I saw this you could only view the archive via the UI.
       | It's really come a long way.
       | 
       | Could be very useful now.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-04-19 23:02 UTC)