#949506 RFP: wayback-machine-downloader -- Download an entire website from the Wayback Machine.

Package:
wnpp
Source:
wnpp
Submitter:
Alessandro Barbieri
Date:
2025-11-29 16:45:48 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#949506#5
Date:
2020-01-21 15:26:31 UTC
From:
To:
* Package name    : wayback-machine-downloader
  Version         : 2.2.1
  Upstream Author : Julian Khaleghy
* URL             : https://github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader
* License         : MIT
  Programming Lang: Ruby
  Description     : Download an entire website from the Wayback Machine.

It will download the last version of every file present on Wayback Machine to ./websites/example.com/. It will also re-create a directory structure and auto-create index.html pages to work seamlessly with Apache and Nginx. All files downloaded are the original ones and not Wayback Machine rewritten versions. This way, URLs and links structure are the same as before.
#949506#10
Date:
2025-07-03 01:26:21 UTC
From:
To:
owner 834177 anarcat@debian.org
thanks

Just to let you know that there's also a Python version of this that's
called "wayback" and seems slightly better maintained, although I've
heard this one (wayback-machine-downloader) might be "better", it's
clear the repo mentioned about has been inactive for years and one must
find The Right Fork going forward.

For now I'll be taking a look at the python version, wayback.

A.
#949506#15
Date:
2025-07-03 01:54:15 UTC
From:
To:
noowner 834177
thanks

So I've done that. I've audited the code and did some basic packaging
(mostly thanks to py2dsp, but i did the job in full), and the result is
here:

https://salsa.debian.org/python-team/packages/waybackpack

waybackpack works, but with one major limitation: it downloads only a
single URL at a time, not an entire site.

so I'm abandoning the packaging for now, anyone feel free to pick it up
and just upload it if you feel like it, but i don't quite see the point
myself.

now i guess we need to find the right machine-downloader fork now...

a.
#949506#20
Date:
2025-07-07 13:40:15 UTC
From:
To:
That seems to be:

https://github.com/StrawberryMaster/wayback-machine-downloader

To test it, I ran it from the Docker container image, by creating a user
with `adduser --system archiver` then picking that UID and passing it as
--user to the `docker-run` command, and then:

sudo docker run --rm -it --user 1023 -v /srv/mirror/example.com:/srv ghcr.io/strawberrymaster/wayback-machine-downloader:latest  -d /srv example.com -s --reset

It works well, but i'm not familiar enough with Ruby packaging to follow
through with the next steps.

a.