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Wiki Backups
Wiki Backups have a number of uses, including preperation for when the Internet goes out. Having access to information is an essential aspect of the modern world. There are many ways you can access WikiMedia archives, as well as render them.
Contents
MediaWiki Based Sites
You can create your own viewable and offline backup of most MediaWiki wikis (i.e. anything that looks like wikipedia). This is handy if you're away from your wifi connection, are too cautious to lookup certain search terms or have friends where wikis are blocked.
It's also pretty cool to have your own copy of Wikipedia.
Usable Offline MediaWiki Backups
To create an accessable, offline wiki backup you need two things:
- A dump of the wiki, often compressed into a single file (sources below).
- A program to access and search the compressed wiki file with.
XOWA is a cross-platform, AGPLv3 licensed program to view wiki dumps with. It's simple to use and pretty easy to setup. Wiki dumps need to be imported before use, and on an i7 running at 3.4ghz take about 1mb/sec to import. So about a minute for WikiVoyage and half a day for the full english Wikipedia.
Creating Usable MediaWiki Backups
MediaWiki based wikis (like this one) can be backed up on your computer:
- tutorial via Archive Team
WikiMedia Backup Sources
WikiMedia creates backups monthly, available from WikiMedia Dumps.
- These are text only dumps.
- They backup all of their wikis in all languages.
- There are several versions of each wiki do download. You likely want the [wikiname]-[date]-pages-articles.xml.bz2 file, which they kindly highlight in bold for you. This version lacks the full edit history and details of the non text items (pics, vids etc). If you want full edit history, there are several versions available.
- Full, compressed text backup of the english Wikipedia is about 10gb.
BurnBit is a useful site for downloading large WikiMedia dumps. It's a site that can create a torrent from any url and also acts as a tracker. Paste your WikiMedia backup file url into it to create/access the torrent for it and you'll download at maxspeed.
Kiwix
Kiwix is another offline wiki viewing software that uses the ZIM format. They offer a list of pre-compiled files that can be loaded onto your preferred storage medium. Note that large files (>4GB) will need to be split on filesystems such as FAT.
This Wiki's Backup
A backup of this wiki is now available here, this includes all images, pages, and a database backup (excluding user account data) and is suited for offline viewing with xowa. A backup of the wiki is generated nightly.
Alternatively you can scrape the wiki yourself, using Wikiteam's mediawiki scripts:
$ sudo apt-get install python2 python-kitchen python-requests git p7zip
$ python2 dumpgenerator.py --xml --images
2022: since the wiki-dump page has been gone for dog knows how long, I am making (at least) weekly backup dumps, available here and here --sneak (talk) 21:48, 7 May 2022 (CEST)
WikiLeaks Backups
WikiLeaks release insurance files from time to time to secure forthcoming files. These insurance files are encrypted and no passwords have yet become available.
All wikileaks torrents can be found here.
- WikiLeaks Insurance 20120222
- WikiLeaks insurance 20130815 - A (3.6gb)
- MD5: a243f323612b86155e4c44c7efa38d90
- SHA1: a3e666f7f03001ce1b6556133b5217ab0d668463
- SHA256: 6688fffa9b39320e11b941f0004a3a76d49c7fb52434dab4d7d881dc2a2d7e02
- SHA512: c865d260e96a654540b4ef34be4242e5105d5260059436779028f1db0324f046b11a83098d561aa855ad7cc823e9e72c59fe59e92b246889985054edfaea1ef2
- direct link
- TPB magnet link
- WikiLeaks insurance 20130815 - B (49gb)
- MD5: 0a7f57171f4ba49e42d3cb9cd602ec72
- SHA1: 7e56d7a720ba6e9b00bbb66e6f64bd46e9285361
- SHA256: 3dcf2dda8fb24559935919fab9e5d7906c3b28476ffa0c5bb9c1d30fcb56e7a4
- SHA512: 37f3c44c6a8b51d6c7da84386ecc9b2ef4b9d1ca6df44ebee606742772be14c53811e883bcc0e8c659c7a4fe3ecf7b170585bbdf0a0c5b305a51162ce49147e5
- direct link
- TPB magnet link
- WikiLeaks insurance 20130815 - C (349gb)
- MD5: c735e3f7c6d0ae2cad131b5539d303b0
- SHA1: e74fd2fdd5e3bc6a0cb26813746912394385422e
- SHA256: 913a6ff8eca2b20d9d2aab594186346b6089c0fb9db12f64413643a8acadcfe3
- SHA512: e2385bf423e7b10aae121a2cf6467d996d32814eefc70c0fe08daa66096119a202d108e199a26ab6f1cbba0c6b1bfc03e9c670b853cc346dd061ce6b49a6f819
- direct link
- TPB magnet link
- WikiLeaks Insurance 20160603 (88gb)
- MD5: c9dceaa83f1c5dee5136015ff5f03ac2
- SHA1: c2b904b658745e51e4a597b2fa8699c6f62ba2c7
- SHA256: 1df5bcfa13d1e728e6f37a15ba7cd1354e3d1e41b46b1295c3ab835542528bec
- SHA512: bd4e66c9cc563d71c5440b3c537a1d9f38587d6f2e13bd918aa5db508bd731586ebfd296f1bf3dcb6ef1921abae42cde25476d3f818b8ab6609608ab3bdbd38d
- direct link
- magnet link
- WikiLeaks Insurance 20161107 - EC (512mb)
- MD5: 468494be5db13297c4c80a272586902e
- SHA1: 4fcb391b440f7c68e3ca1b91027292323f300d54
- SHA256: b231ccef70338a857e48984f0fd73ea920eff70ab6b593548b0adcbd1423b995
- SHA512: 71ea01c291ee429833c1283f034792a868272413128652611f5164a1c96a46fdeed80db02aaada46a31513814f34e1ff8d8ab4a15bb88890823599a649af7fac
- direct link
- magnet link
- WikiLeaks Insurance 20161107 - UK (1.3gb)
- MD5: aeb9559197e0c8633755137179b4cc2d
- SHA1: b7f94d0b15bb9bc0e4eb69ce4e11c4733b6b65cc
- SHA256: 655821253135f8eabff54ec62c7f243a27d1d0b7037dc210f59267c43279a340
- SHA512: 48f5f1042622324659e8ae0aa488589b927194835db4eea73e848d439c1d59930865306bb230830531632aadfc5cd8b914eb3feb54609d044514ca681f274638
- direct link
- magnet link
- WikiLeaks Insurance 20161107 - US (3.0gb)
- MD5: 2ff715772bde4fa2709de66fd0e75de7
- SHA1: 3da5150f1d52b830f90142b9d7d14c1fb29a6c56
- SHA256: ab786b76a195cacde2d94506ca512ee950340f1404244312778144f67d4c8002
- SHA512: 18e3f031569ac1ad00fe1317d678db3d179d64b26a334d2e2a3aca77294a875f22daf01e9e43dceba74398fd99c3abf320df532babd7a39480fbee124ff530af
- direct link
- magnet link
If the password is ever released ("Whatever happens, even if there's video; it was murder"), the files are encrypted via OpenSSL file encryption.
