Two or more existing ArchiveBox collection dirs can be merged together by simply combining the contents of archive/*
and re-running archivebox init
to pull the new Snapshots into the index.
Warning
Snapshot folders are identified by their timestamp (in milliseconds), this is normally not a problem for archives collected on one machine, but when merging archives from two different instances that ran at the same time it means there is a small chance of conflicts. Check the contents of archive/
before merging, and backup any directories that may conflict before proceeding.
- Upgrade both old collections to the most recent ArchiveBox version (following instructions above)
pip install --upgrade archivebox # or follow instructions above for upgrading w/ Docker
cd /path/to/archivebox1/data
archivebox init
archivebox status
cd /path/to/archivebox2/data
archivebox init
archivebox status
# ... repeat the same for each collection if merging more than two
- Create a new empty archivebox collection in a new folder somewhere, this will hold the new merged collection
mkdir /path/to/archivebox_new
cd /path/to/archivebox_new
archivebox init
- Copy everything under
./archive/*
in each old collection into the new collection's./archive/
folder
rsync --archive --info=progress2 /path/to/archivebox1/data/archive/ /path/to/archivebox_new/data/archive
rsync --archive --info=progress2 /path/to/archivebox2/data/archive/ /path/to/archivebox_new/data/archive
# ...repeat the same for each collection if merging more than two
- Run
archivebox init
in the new merged collection to regenerate the new index
cd /path/to/archivebox_new
archivebox init
- The new collection should now contain all the entries from the old collections combined
cd /path/to/archivebox_new
archivebox status
# optionally force an update of the snapshot index files (normally done lazily)
archivebox update --index-only
For more information about why Snapshot index files are usually updated lazily, see: ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox#962
After you've confirmed your Snapshots are present in the new index, the old index.sqlite3
, index.json
, index.html
, etc. main index files from the old archives can be safely deleted. You can optionally merge the contents of ArchiveBox.conf
(your ArchiveBox config options), sources/
(copies of all URLs imported in their original format), logs/
(ArchiveBox error logs and debug info), and other root-level items yourself if that data is important to you.
If you need to automate changes to the ArchiveBox DB (for example adding a User from an Ansible script), you can modify the SQLite3 DB directly.
Note, this is often unnecessary for modifying ArchiveBox on a host that doesn't have the CLI installed, as you can also copy the index.sqlite3
to a local machine that has it, do the modifications locally, then copy the modified db back into place on the host. (Docker/CLI/GUI/Web ArchiveBox all share the same DB schema/format)
cd ~/archivebox/data # cd into your archivebox collection dir
sqlite3 index.sqlite3 # open the db with sqlite3 shell
UPDATE auth_user
SET email = 'someNewEmail@example.com', is_superuser = 1
WHERE username = 'someUsernameHere';
Note: this is just an example to demonstrate direct database usage. If you are trying to create a user on initial setup, use the ADMIN_USERNAME
& ADMIN_PASSWORD
configuration options.
- First, generate the hashed password in a Python shell using Django's
make_password
function.
This can be done on any machine with Python 3+, it doesn't have to have ArchiveBox installed.
pip3 install django==3.1.3 # install the django version used by ArchiveBox
python3 # open any python shell with django available, doesn't have to be the archivebox shell
>>> from django.contrib.auth.hashers import make_password
>>> make_password('somePasswordHere', 'someSaltHere', 'pbkdf2_sha256') # choose a password and a salt (can be anything 12 chars long)
'pbkdf2_sha256$216000$someSaltHere$styW1Uoy8SHp3zbSwGRp20C9mPjOHVjP9rl5a8/UOVE='
- Use the generated hashed password to insert a new User row in the SQLite3 database directly:
cd ~/archivebox/data # cd into your archivebox collection dir
sqlite3 index.sqlite3 # open the db with sqlite3 shell
INSERT INTO "auth_user" ("password", "last_login", "is_superuser", "username", "first_name", "last_name", "email", "is_staff", "is_active", "date_joined")
VALUES ('pbkdf2_sha256$216000$someSaltHere$+2beZufc3JUXnmn0tG+2peJEBh7MjxPYmT3YfIFzEl0=', NULL, 0, 'someUsername', '', '', 'someEmail@example.com', 0, 1, '2022-03-22 23:34:02.333042')
Replace the values above with the desired username, email, and password hash from python output^.
- Log in using the new generated user to confirm it works
https://localhost:8000/admin/login/ user:
someUsername
pass:somePasswordHere
More info:
- https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#python-shell-usage
- https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#sql-shell-usage
See here Troubleshooting: Database...
- https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#disk-layout
- https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#large-archives
- https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Security-Overview#output-folder
- https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#python-shell-usage
- https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#sql-shell-usage