mirror-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

1. Edit config.py to your liking
2. Start waybackproxy.py (Python 3 is required)
3. Set up your retro browser:
   • If your browser supports proxy auto-configuration, 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.
4. Try it out! You can edit most settings that are in config.py by browsing to http://web.archive.org while on the proxy, although you must edit config.py to make them permanent.
5. Press Ctrl+C to stop the proxy

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.
• 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. The POST and CONNECT methods are not implemented.
• 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.