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Poster: Service Unavailable Machine Date: Mar 11, 2021 7:45am
Forum: forums Subject: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

I can't archive anything. Every time I try I get f***ing "Job failed" messages. In the past, I could retry few times until it worked.

Now I retry saving page to no avail ("Job failed" every time) until I get "This URL has been already captured 10 times today...".

At first I thought that URL got archived anyway and "Job failed" nonsense was just redirect or UI issue. To confirm this I tried to search newly "10 times" archived URL and got message that "Wayback Machine has not archived that URL."

It seems that URL wasn't archived after all.

Thus, I can't archive anything because F***ING JOB GET F***ING FAILED

EVERY

SINGLE

F***ING

TIME

And then I got lied to about "This URL has been already captured 10 times today..." when in fact it was archived exactly 0 times.

It's incredibly infuriating. It's not a new issue. I reported "Job failed" errors many many many times before on this forum, almost always with no response. And it only getting worse.

I used Wayback Machine for a long time, I remember when it was reliable service. S**t started with those UI redesign with a pointless JS carousel and went downhill from that...

Now WM is just unusable to save anything, at least for me. Even in a "good days" I got "Job failed" errors, redirection errors, "Live page unavailable" errors, "Service Unavailable" errors (I created this account to report a particularly bad flood of those) literally each and every time I try to save anything.

Any plans to retire manual page saving functionality altogether and leave WM crawler-only? Because it seems that things are heading that way.

EDIT: Sorry for the strong language I used in the post. I was kind of "venting out".

This post was modified by Service Unavailable Machine on 2021-03-11 15:45:43

Reply [edit]

Poster: Anastasius Focht Date: Mar 7, 2021 8:07am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

Hello fellow archiver!

I share your experience. I'm the most prolific bug hunter / triager of the Wine project (winehq.org -> bugzilla "focht") and a heavy user of archive.org.

My goal is to have most of the bug reports contain an archive.org link to reproduce/document the issue with exactly the app / game version download it was reported with. That's kind of a lifetime task but I've still not given up on that.

I've created hundreds of snapshots of application / game installers and digged out thousands of download links from researching Internet sites history via archive.org. Many months of work researching archive.org for links besides my main work, that is actually analyzing the bug reports (debugging apps and games).

The work of creating snapshots and validating existing ones using archive.org is quite a frustrating experience. I often encounter these generic "job failed" message (no reason given) failures as well.

Many times after snapshotting a larger download (hundred MB and larger), it takes several minutes to _days_ until it becomes valid (experience greatly varies though). There is no visual feedback what happens internally, if it's being indexed, distributed or put in some queue to check. Because of this large delay people try to create snapshots from the same URL over and over again (after 30min of builtin backoff time). That's how you get multiple snapshots from the same day because people have absolutely no feedback on the internal processing when using the browser plugins or main site "save" UI.

Related problem: corrupted snapshots. Sometimes the app/game installer binary on archive.org is truncated for whatever reasons (created via automatic webcrawling). Trying to add a newer "good" snapshot is very black magic (current link works, downloaded/validated manually). Many times archive.org "save" redirects me to one of the corrupted snapshots from years ago. Hours or even days later a newer snapshot "magically" appears without any prior UI feedback. Apparently my "save" attempts still succeeded in the end.

The biggest frustration are the snapshots where archive.org claims a snapshot was successful and if you try to access it you get the infamous:

"Hrm. The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL." message.

If one uses the overview feature, "https://web.archive.org/web/*/your-url" the item is even shown as blue "successful" snapshot in the calendar view. When trying to access it, ones gets above error again. That's days after the snapshot was taken.

Regards

Reply [edit]

Poster: Michael Krivoshey Date: Feb 18, 2025 8:02am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

I have a same error
i cannot archive this page
https://www.kypur.net/larysa-onul-prokuratura-vygrala-sud-pro-demontazh-basejniv-u-dendroparku-v-pidpryyemstva-yake-ne-maye-do-nyh-stosunku/

Reply [edit]

Poster: Ansumana Sinera Date: Jul 10, 2024 2:37am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

??

Reply [edit]

Poster: MarkJGraham Date: Mar 8, 2021 8:33am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

Hi Anastasius,

Thank you for that feedback!

There are several issue raised here... all of which we are working to address.

Yes, there can be a time delay between when a URL is archived via Save Page Now and when it is available via the Wayback Machine.

And, yes, a Wayback Machine message can say a URL is not archived when, in fact it was just archived.

We expect to have addressed both of those issues very soon.

Please send any specific URLs you have playback quality issues with to info@archive.org so we can try to replicate them.

- Mark Graham

Reply [edit]

Poster: Shadow Anonymous Date: Mar 2, 2023 1:03am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

I have the same problem. After archiving a URL I can't access it.

Reply [edit]

Poster: MarkJGraham Date: Mar 2, 2023 7:31am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

Hi,

Can you please share the URL in question?

There CAN (at times) be a delay between when a URL is archived via Save Page Now, and when it is available for playback via the Wayback Machine.

- Mark

Reply [edit]

Poster: N.O.P.E. Date: Dec 25, 2023 7:15am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

Hello, I'm trying to retrieve a lost piece of firmware.
I localized it on this page
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.skynetwork.ru/files/soft/curitel_pantech/hx525b_ver.525MP104_RU.rar*
It states that it's "application/x-rar-compressed", captured 1 time "May 12, 2006".
The actual link to the file is
http://web.archive.org/web/20060512120622/http://www.skynetwork.ru:80/files/soft/curitel_pantech/hx525b_ver.525MP104_RU.rar?PHPSESSID=35b09897dedcfafe40f047b57324984f
But when I'm trying to retrieve it I get the "The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL."

There are other files under the prefix, all with "PHPSESSID" appendix that won't download, while those without it download just fine:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.skynetwork.ru/files/*

If this can't be fixed can anyone help me to retrieve the file(s) manually please? Or at least say if it's actually even archived. It's literally an extinct piece of software.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Eric Hepperle Date: Jan 9, 2024 7:31am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

@N.O.P.E.: Others can correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears you are trying to hijack this thread. If you have an urgent need, the appropriate thing to do is to create your own thread and then email info@archive.org.

This post was modified by Eric Hepperle on 2024-01-09 15:31:47

Reply [edit]

Poster: N.O.P.E. Date: Jan 17, 2024 9:52am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

That's the only thread that seems to be about the exact same problem I encountered, and I've found it in google. I thought it would be useful to post an example of this behaviour, as was asked by MarkJGraham in a previous post. I believe having it in a related forum post is much more useful, as it's not an individual problem.

Reply [edit]

Poster: lagrave Date: Nov 9, 2022 11:39pm
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

How soon is "very soon"? Care to explain what the problem is? It is always easier to accept problems if you understand the background.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Service Unavailable Machine Date: Mar 11, 2021 7:46am
Forum: forums Subject: Re: Wayback Machine doesn't work (again)

A few days ago I got nice email from the Internet Archive Support. Among other, it says that "We found and fixed a major contributor to this bug on the weekend of March 6th." Could confirm that Wayback Machine is working much better now (minor glitches, but usable).

Thanks for the fix, and the response! Sorry for the language of the original post.

I am posting the email verbatim below:

The Wayback Machine’s Save Page Now (web.archive.org/save) feature successfully archives 10s of millions of URLs/day.

At the same time, there are a number of known issues with the service that our engineering team is actively working to address.

We are aware that some % of requests result in a “job failed” error message. We found and fixed a major contributor to this bug on the weekend of March 6th. (It was related to an instability with the specific version of Chromium and Ubuntu we were using.)

We are also aware that there can be a several second, to several minute, delay from the time a URL is archived to when it is available for playback. And, that during the time the service may represent the URL is available for playback when, in fact, it is not.

There is also a condition when a URL that is archived is available for playback, in some cases for several hours, but then is not available for playback for a day or more. (This relates to the multi-tier indexing system we use to provide access to the hundreds of billions of playback URLs available.)

Finally were are aware of issues related to messages that say a URL has been archived n number of times, in the past n minutes, and, as such, can not be archived at this time. This can be especially frustrating when those archives can not be played back, or even shown to exist.

Please know the Save Page Now feature gets engineering attention every day. Features are added to it, the capacity of the service is increased, the reliability of this service is improved, and bugs are discovered and fixed.

Some of these bugs might appear simple/obvious from the outside and, as such, the fact they have not been fixed might suggest we are not aware of them, or don’t care about them.

Please know we committed to providing reliable Wayback Machine services that support high fidelity archiving and playback, and that are capable of scaling to meet user demands.

Thank you for sharing your bug reports, suggestions about how we can improve our services, and for your patience and support along the way.

Take care,

- Mark Graham, Director, the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive