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.
Content Mirror
Before you begin, you will need the following:
- Java 11 JRE
- for Linux, install OpenJDK 11 JRE using your package manager
- for windows, I would recommend Azul's Zulu Community Edition JRE
- 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 viachmod +x unreal-archive
- for Windows, download
unreal-archive-exec.jar
- Several hundred GB free disk space and data transfer capacity
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/output --concurrency=5
Windows command prompt
\> java -jar unreal-archive-exec.jar 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 following (see above for more detail):
- Java 11 JRE
- Download the
unreal-archive
tool - Several GB free disk space
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.