Archive Mirroring Guide

To ensure the longevity of the archive, you're encouraged to create your own local (or hosted, if needed) mirrors of both the archive content, and the website itself.

Both are supported by the unreal-archive tool.

General Requirements

1. Java 17 JRE
   • for Linux, install OpenJDK 17 JRE using your package manager
   • for Windows, I would recommend Azul's Zulu Community Edition JRE
2. 7-Zip
   • for Linux, install package p7zip-full (Debian-based) or equivalent; this should add command 7z to your path
   • for Windows, download and install an appropriate version from the 7-zip website.
3. Download the unreal-archive tool
   • the latest can always be downloaded here
   • on Linux, you may download the unreal-archive binary, and make it executable via chmod +x unreal-archive
   • for Windows, download unreal-archive-exec.jar
4. At least 2GB RAM
   • The tool loads a lot of metadata, and uses a large amount of memory.

Local Content Mirror

Before you begin, you will need the requirements listed above.

To create a local mirror of all content (maps, skins, mods, etc) within the archive, run the unreal-archive tool with the following parameters:

Linux terminal

$ ./unreal-archive mirror local-mirror /local/mirror/output --concurrency=5

Windows command prompt

\> java -jar unreal-archive-exec.jar local-mirror c:\local\mirror\output --concurrency=5

A temporary copy of the archive metadata will be downloaded and extracted, loaded, and then begin downloading all the actual files to the specified /local/mirror/output directory.

If you want to tune the concurrency, adjust the --concurrency option's value. The default is 3.

The entire process will take a while, depending on the size of the content repository, available bandwidth, etc., but once completed, you'll have a complete local copy of everything the archive contains.

Website Mirror

The option exists to create a complete mirror of the archive website, with the intention that this can be easily re-generated and re-hosted at any point, should the original website go down, or if you simply want to create an offline copy of the website for your own use.

Before you begin, you will need the requirements listed above.

To create a local mirror of the website, run the unreal-archive tool with the following parameters:

Linux terminal

$ ./unreal-archive www /local/website/path --local-images=true --content-path=/path/to/unreal-archive-data

Windows command prompt

\> java -jar unreal-archive-exec.jar www C:\local\website\path --local-images=true 

This will generate a copy of the website, within the directory specified by /local/website/path. The option --local-images=true will also download all images needed by the website to the output directory, rather than linking to them remotely.

You may then open the index.html file within the output directory to begin browsing the site.