Skip to content

Unable to skip particular archives #748

@phette23

Description

@phette23

Bug Report

The specific archive flags like --ia are misleading and do nothing. For instance, your readme states that running wayback --ia https://example.com will submit to Internet Archive, implying that it only submits to Internet Archive, but that's not the case. Unless I'm missing something, wayback https://example.com and wayback --ia https://example.com have identical behavior, which is to submit to all five archives. I'd like to only submit to particular archives. This is particularly important when some web archives have ethical issues or are unavailable, which is the case with at least one right now.

The documentation says that IPFS and Telegram are disabled by default, but when I ran wayback it still tried to use them despite missing configuration.

Finally, Ghost Archive does not have the same env vars and configuration options as other services listed in the documentation. WAYBACK_ENABLE_GA=false does not work.

Current Behavior
A clear and concise description of the behavior.

wayback --ia https://example.com

Expected behavior/code

Site is submitted only to Internet Archive.

Environment

Version: 0.20.1
Commit: Homebrew
Build Date: 2024-07-02T08:49:39Z
Go Version: go1.25.1
Compiler: gc
Arch: arm64
OS: darwin

Possible Solution

Documentation notes you can use a config file. It doesn't say what the format is, but it appears to be an .env file so this wayback.conf disables all non-IA archives except Ghost Archive:

WAYBACK_ENABLE_IS=false
WAYBACK_ENABLE_IP=false
WAYBACK_ENABLE_PH=false

I do not see the ability to disable Ghost Archive specifically, as noted above.

Additional context/Screenshots
Add any other context about the problem here. If applicable, add screenshots to help explain.

¿ wayback --ia --debug https://ocl.cca.edu/in-a-nutshell/
[2026-04-28T11:16:30] [INFO] [pprof.go:24:profiling] Go profiling via: http://127.0.0.1:56011
...
[2026-04-28T11:16:46] [DEBUG] [wayback.go:217:func1] archiving slot: is
[2026-04-28T11:16:46] [DEBUG] [wayback.go:217:func1] archiving slot: ph
[2026-04-28T11:16:46] [DEBUG] [wayback.go:217:func1] archiving slot: ip
[2026-04-28T11:16:46] [DEBUG] [wayback.go:217:func1] archiving slot: ia
[2026-04-28T11:16:46] [DEBUG] [wayback.go:217:func1] archiving slot: ga
[2026-04-28T11:16:46] [DEBUG] [tor.go:105:useProxy] Try to connect tor proxy failed: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:9050: connect: connection refused
[2026-04-28T11:16:47] [ERROR] [wayback.go:161:Wayback] wayback https://ocl.cca.edu/in-a-nutshell/ to IPFS failed: pin failed: infura: 401 Unauthorized
...
[2026-04-28T11:16:52] [ERROR] [wayback.go:106:Wayback] wayback https://ocl.cca.edu/in-a-nutshell/ to archive.today failed: archive.today is unavailable.
── https://ocl.cca.edu/in-a-nutshell/
   ├─ GA: https://ghostarchive.org/archive2
   ├─ IP: pin failed: infura: 401 Unauthorized
   ├─ PH: https://telegra.ph/OCL-in-a-Nutshell--Open-Collaboration-Lab-04-28
   ├─ IS: archive.today is unavailable.
   ├─ IA: https://web.archive.org/web/20260428181649/https://ocl.cca.edu/in-a-nutshell/

It should skip the other four services when --ia is specified. Your documentation also says Tor is disabled by default, yet it attempted to connect.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    bugSomething isn't working

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions