WaybackProxy

WaybackProxy

WaybackProxy is a retro-friendly HTTP proxy which retrieves pages from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine or OoCities and delivers them in their original form, without toolbars, scripts and other extraneous content that may confuse retro browsers.

Setup

Python 3.5 or newer is required.

1. Edit config.json to your liking (make sure to set QUICK_IMAGES to false for non-Internet-connected systems)
2. Optionally exclude domains and URLs from being proxied by adding them to whitelist.txt (without http://, wildcards supported)
3. Install dependencies: pip install --user -r requirements.txt
4. Start waybackproxy.py
5. Set up your retro browser:
   • If your browser supports proxy auto-configuration (PAC), set the auto-configuration URL to http://ip:port/proxy.pac where ip is the IP of the system running WaybackProxy and port is the proxy's port (8888 by default).
   • If proxy auto-configuration is not supported or fails to work, set the browser to use an HTTP proxy at that IP and port instead.
   • Transparent proxying is also supported for advanced users, with no configuration to WaybackProxy itself required.
     • The easiest way to set up a transparent WaybackProxy is to run it on port 80 (this cannot be done on Linux without security implications), set up a fake DNS server - such as dnsmasq -A "/#/ip" where ip is the IP of the system running WaybackProxy - to redirect all requests to the proxy, and point client machines at that DNS server.
6. Try it out! You can edit most settings that are in config.json by browsing to http://web.archive.org while on the proxy, although you must edit config.json to make them permanent.
7. Press Ctrl+C to stop the proxy

Docker Container

A Dockerfile is included that allows you to run WaybackProxy from a Docker container.

Environment Variables

When deploying via Docker, the config.json can be customized by specifying environment variables when creating the docker container. The environment variables match the example config.json in this repository. Below is a complete list:

How to run in Docker

Using Docker Registry

To pull:

docker pull richardg867/waybackproxy:latest

To run:

docker run -d -e DATE=20011025 -p 8888:8888 richardg867/waybackproxy

Build locally

To build:

docker build --no-cache -f Dockerfile -t waybackproxy .

To run:

docker run -d -e DATE=20011025 -p 8888:8888 waybackproxy

Known issues and limitations

• The Wayback Machine itself is not 100% reliable. Known issues include:
  • Pages newer than the specified date (setting a specific YYYYMMDD date instead of a wider YYYYMM or YYYY helps with that);
  • Random broken images;
  • Strange 404 errors caused by bad server responses or incorrect URL capitalization at archival time;
  • Infinite redirect loops;
  • Server errors when it's having a bad day.
• The Wayback Machine blocks IPs for a few seconds (with Connection refused errors) if connections are made too quickly. WaybackProxy has measures to try and prevent this block, but it may still be triggered if:
  • QUICK_IMAGES is used alongside the PAC file, as that bypasses WaybackProxy and connects to the Wayback Machine directly;
  • Multiple instances of WaybackProxy on the same Internet connection are being used at once.
• WaybackProxy will work around some redirection scripts (example: http://example.com/redirect?to=http://...) which are not archived by the Wayback Machine, but the destination URLs are sometimes not archived either.
• WaybackProxy is not a generic proxy. HTTP POST, CONNECT and other methods are only supported on excluded domains for passthrough purposes.
• Transparent proxying mode requires HTTP/1.1 and therefore cannot be used with some really old (pre-1996) browsers. Use standard mode with such browsers.

Other links

• Donate to the Internet Archive, they need your help to keep the Wayback Machine and its petabytes upon petabytes of data available to everyone for free with no ads.
• Check out 86Box, the emulator I use for testing WaybackProxy on older browsers.
• WaybackProxy container on Docker Hub.