jerryhopper

No! Actually the bidtentify-client spotted about 39gb of missing armaholic in the aa.info ftp. i have been a bit silent, coz there is a web-spot with torrents to all the salvaged files online now. This gives me the time to focus on the scraping again since im very annoyed that there is no date or author , version or required-addons info in the database. it will take not very long after this post, that you will see additional information (date, author, version, author website, required-addons) on the website. The a2oa files will appear in the a2oa section when i run some tests before release of bidentify-client to the public. i aim for a release next week. Scraping the description is undoable, due to the embedded html, links to missing images etc. This information may be scraped from the pbo (in the future). For now, this is the datastructure i managed to scrape from armaholic. { "id":"e3d50d7d-7e58-4f60-afce-e416613f69e5", "author":"Neilreed101", "author_website":"", "requirements":"Everon", "islands":"", "playable_options":"", "version":"3.1", "date":"2007-06-02 16", "filehash":"3592144cd0a4991fa47fbebfc0e0fe53", "filesize":"139567", "signed":"yes, key included", "game":"arma", "armaholicid":"1409", "section":"arma_files_scenarios_spmissions", "name":"Battlefields (@)", "filename":"Reed101_Battlefields.rar", "armaholicpath":"argentina\/scenarios\/sp_missions\/Reed101_Battlefields.rar" }

And then, there was web-userinterface. The details page is still missing, but the download works. Missing files are marked in YELLOW. its now time to finish the commandline-client's upload functionality, and we are good to go! See it live here : http://bidentify.jerryhopper.com/files/arma2/editing/tools

Some salvage statistics: The script brought up some interesting statistics of the files i salvaged from armaholic. this index is the baseline for the old files database. arma - Missing: 658 - Salvaged: 1685 (38.31GB) arma2 - Missing: 986 - Salvaged: 1308 (21.42GB) arma2_oa - Missing: 2381 - Salvaged: 0 arma3 - no index. Salvaged: 0 How to Help Obviously, by using the bidentify-client - you automatically help out finding the missing files.... but there is more. in order to keep the files available online there is a need for storage space and internet connectivity. In this day and age many people have 'always-on' connections whether its dsl, cable or even fiber - which means there is a 24/7 internet connection of which the user only uses a small portion of this 24 hours - and it's these people that we are looking for. Any ofp/arma enthousiast willing to share his 'unused' online-time can contribute. This does not mean that your connection will suffer from hosting the files, as the uploadspeed and time-windows are completly customisable. Many of you probably have downloaded a .torrent file before, and this is exactly the same. There are a few options to help 'seeding/mirroring' the torrentfiles. 1. Desktop-computer If you download a file via a torrent, you can choose to 'seed' this file. by seeding the files, you help keep the files online! 2. Dedicated NAS, homeserver or Singleboard computer If you have a NAS or other sort of dedicated computer/server, you can use any torrent-client to seed the files manually, or choose to run a bidentify-node which runs in docker. (*no special technical skills required ) Bandwidth: For availability, not much bandwith is required. Although a upload speed of 50kbps is very slow - it still helps keeping the files available. in general, 100kbps should be fine if there are more than 2 seeders (bidentify-vaults) Another option is to only seed the torrents when you are asleep, or at work. this can be done with the scheduler option in the torrent-software. A slow internetconnection is no excuse for not helping out! Costs: As anyone knows, hosting costs money. If there are enough enthousiasts willing to host some files - the hosting costs for connectivity are zero! But hosting needs hardware. I have made an example calculation for a typical setup needed to run a bidentify-vault A NanoPi NEO3-LTS singleboard computer with 1GB, incl. sdcard, adapter & casing costs roughly 60$ A NanoPi ZeroPi singleboard computer with 512MB, incl. sdcard, adapter & casing costs roughly 45$ A Samsung 870 QVO 1 TB SSD costs roughly $100 The real costs for anyone running a bidentify-vault would be a one-time fee, untill the hardware dies. Power consumption of a SSD and a Singleboard-computer is absurdly low in comparison to a desktop-pc or NAS Obviously, you dont have to buy hardware if you already own a NAS or have a old spare computer with some free harddisk-space So it all boils down to the will to serve some files, and the hardware to do so. The costs are absurdly low, there is no strain on your internet-connectivity due to the excessive configurability of the torrent-software. The key to success is to have at least two vaults running permanently. Who has the will and the resources to become a bidentify-vault!?

blurp! This is for the brave and courageous: pre-release : https://github.com/jerryhopper/bidentify-client/releases/tag/0.02 This replaces the initial (dumb) script provided earlier in this thread. this application is more accurate. Usage instructions : https://github.com/jerryhopper/bidentify-client upload functionality is coming soon!

Since i havent got any reply, lets talk about the elephant in the room. 1- Who has contacted foxhound 2- Got a reply from foxhound 3- Who offered money to foxhound 4- How much money did you offer to foxhound 5- Who got any reply on its offer?

You should read my posts! But to keep you & others up to speed, i am working on something that as of now has a name! Bidentify ( Pronounced: Bee-Eye-dentify ) A file identification utility-suite for detecting,finding and archiving usergenerated content for Bohemia Interactive games. The Bidentify-client is a commandline tool to scan, detect & identify Addons and Missions archives, folders or .pbo's The Bidentify-server is the database/web-backend for use with the bidentify-client,bidentify-node,bidentify-vault. The Bidentify-node is a Torrent based file-archive that seeds files ( limited to specific size) which are listed in the Bidentify server of your choice. The Bidentify-vault is a Torrent based file-archive that archives and seeds (ALL!) files which are listed in the Bidentify-server. This package is for dedicated librarians who want to preserve and longterm seed all data on the Bidentify server of your choice. ----------- Im very close to a initial usable version of the Bidentify-client, that detects files based on the armaholic MIA file. More functionality is planned, like the Bidentify-node & Bidentify-vault, and more intelligent detection for Bidentity-client like Unpacked-addon/mission-detection, hashdetection, version-detection and pbo-inspection. Stay tuned!

Well, has been a interesting journey so far. First, i received no email. Second, What im trying to do now is to create some 'definitive' filename list of addons, and mpmissions. i'm using the categories from armaholic, and use their contents for this list. As there is no 'official index' of released addons (aside from the initial ArmaHolic index)- i will use the info from config.cpp (classname) as unique-id. im in the process of writing a parser that extracts zip/7z/rar files, dissect the pbo and grab the classname - or in case of a mission, the missionname. This approach allows us to detect new or repacked addons or missions, or even mission/addon-folders. Unfortunatly i cannot detect for which game a pbo is, so there will be some manual labor left to do. Eventually, im aiming for a online searchable index of mission/addon names ( with magnetlinks ). There will be a updated version of the MIA-scanner script, which will help fill the database, and find missing files. As an addition to this database, will be a simple yet configurable filehosting 'mirror' using torrents. a very easy deployable package can turn a 25$ singleboard computer, with a harddisk @ size of your choice into a instant filemirror that doesnt need any administration.

this is what i scooped up: FOUND: 1st_Battalion_Para_Regiment.Sara.zip FOUND: [ARMA]_[MP-COOP]_Ambush.zip FOUND: OFrP_AmeAgaru.rar FOUND: Co10_AssassinsII.zip FOUND: CWR_BattleAtLolisse_MP.zip FOUND: CWR_BearsInRedWood_MP.zip FOUND: BlackSword_v3.zip FOUND: BleedingSkies_v2.0.zip FOUND: co06_Bomb_magnet.rar FOUND: oops_city_take_ortego_v1.0.zip FOUND: oops_city_take_paraiso_v1.2.zip FOUND: Eagle_Claw.rar FOUND: [R.O.S]_FCR.rar FOUND: @co_08_Get_them_back_PartOne.MAP_SSara.rar FOUND: co_10@_Get_them_back_PartTwo.MAP_SSara.rar FOUND: navyseals.rar FOUND: co12@Justice_for_all.7z FOUND: liberationv6_5_co4.rar FOUND: Boogie_Men.Porto.rar FOUND: OFrP_Neutralisation.rar FOUND: ACE_Operation_Al-Fajr.7z FOUND: co03_sneakybeaver.zip FOUND: Co02_ParaisoAssassination.zip FOUND: ARMA_MP-COOP_Red_Star_Com.zip FOUND: OFrP_SarinWarReborn.rar FOUND: DAC_SectorFight.rar FOUND: Co04_StealTheCar2-Bagango.zip

can you be more specific? filename? was it case-sensitivity that made the difference?

i have updated the script. When you start the script in that directory, it fill write the addon name in a textfile named: found.txt

So i read that some people have stored their past downloads on dvd or backup-disks. I have made a clunky batch script that will index your directories, and reports back if a missing file is found! Download the script : http://ftp.armedassault.info/armaholic/findfiles.bat Copy the script to the drive or directory that contains arma-downloads, and start it. - The script will download the latest MIA-lists to the %PUBLIC% directory. - The script will index your directory, and save the result in %PUBLIC%\LocalFiles.Txt - The script will start searching for missing arma files, and report if any are found. If the script found any files, you should upload them on a (to be announced) sftp location. or PM me if you found files! Do note that during the search-process many windows will popup and close. During the process you cannot use your computer due to the popups. This is is expected behaviour (sorry!) I fixed the annoying popups! You can kill the script by hitting ctrl-c

@darkxess i am causing nothing. the only thing i do, is reacting to the new reality. A reality that hit everybody as thunder on a sunny day. The scraping of data was stopped by foxhound himself (when he found out). Im not sure why you are trying to blame me for stuff i have nothing to do with. This, and the fact that fox did'nt try reach out to people to take over before he pulled the plug, and the files were still publicly reachable via the web - gives me every right to salvage of what's left. I understand Fox is your friend - but lets not waste this thread bickering on stuff that already happened. You do what you can, and so will i. We just do things differently. ( ps: i have free rackspace at home, there is always space for few 1-4u boxes.) That said: i'd like to present the lists with missing addons: the "MISSING IN ACTION" FILELIST. the Arma missing in action file-list : http://ftp.armedassault.info/armaholic/arma.armaholic.MISSING.txt the Arma2 missing in action file-list : http://ftp.armedassault.info/armaholic/arma2.armaholic.MISSING.txt the Arma2_OA missing in action file-list : http://ftp.armedassault.info/armaholic/arma2_oa.armaholic.MISSING.txt If you have any of the files listed in these lists, please be patient while i setup a upload-facility so we can consolidate all the recovered files.

Thanks that's good to know but: I'm doing this as a hobby. like i said: its a payback to the game and its community. i have taken precautions if i somehow am not able to host anymore. i have 2 backup-disks which i keep offline and disconnected. these disks contain all arma-related stuff. ofpinfo, armedassault.eu, sahraniradio - and soon - also the contents recovered from armaholic. If anything happens to me or my hosting, these disks will find their way to the right people. But this 'Armaholic' issue has made me start thinking again about the preservation of data, and how to deal with it. i'm playing with the idea to make yearly(?) backups of online resources, and dump them on a data-cardridge (LTO6) (which can store 2.5TB at a price of about 40euro's) and share that with other 'arma-librarians' These cardridges are easyly transferrable over mail, cheap and can store enough data : it will be the perfect offline-backup for data that belongs to be preserved. Dispite the previously failed attempts by others to host files via Torrent in the past, i still think this is our best shot at keeping the files available to the public in a scalable and redundant way. Obviously, the above chitchat is jibberisch for most players - but im sure there are a few people who understand what i'm saying, and why im saying this. The time of being eachothers 'concurrent' when comes to community-websites should be long behind us. After all, it's the 20th amniversary of BI: we're grownups now! Meanwhile, i will setup some storage space where people can upload their preserved Arma2OA addons. I will make a post with information how to access it, and which files are needed.

thanks for clearing that up. i was just wondering how that worked.

That paid subscription thing makes me wonder what 'rights' people have. i mean people that actually have a paid subscription @armaholic .... i cant imagine dutch law allows sudden 'service cutoff' when having paying customers.... just sayin'

I''m already paying A LOT on electricity to keep armedassault.info (and ofpr.info files) (hosted@home) available to the public. I didnt own armedassault.info - it was handed over to me for free, just so i can host it as some kind of payback to the community, and the fun ive had with the game. Therefore, i am not willing to pay money to take over the data. If armaholic gets saved (by buying it) im happy to host the whole thing for free, for as long as im able to. In case i am not able anymore, the data can be taken over for free by anyone that is interested. Crowdfund : Free Armaholic So, if the community wants armaholic preserved in its current form, feel free to donate to my crowdfunding initiative. I have set a goal for 500 euro's i dont know if this amount is enough, as that is totally up to Foxhound. https://www.gofundme.com/f/free-armaholic lets see what happens!

i think valve has some kind of agreement with the game-publisher. i cant imagine all is lost if valve stops - there are legal agreements with bi, although i dont know how what garantees are given regarding user-submitted data.

Hey all.. i wanted to share something with you guys about armaholic. I dont want to point fingers, or blame anyone - i have only one goal and that is preserving arma history. Next to that, i'd like to understand things. I am fully aware that everyone has its own reasons to stop or quit with arma - or their websites about arma. i respect everybodies choice, but that doesnt mean i understand it. So, here is my story. From the moment Armaholic went down, i looked for ways to efficiently index what has been lost. Some of you who read my posts know that i was attempting to use the waybackmachine to scrape the data. So i started downloading all armaholic-related stuff from the waybackmachine. Meanwhile, i was searching on google for filenames etc and i checked the domainname status of armaholic. We know that the domain seems to be sold or lost, and i started thinking.... what happens if a domain is lost? - it probably points to different servers. This means that its quite possible that the original armaholic-server is still up, only the domain-name is pointing to a different ip. i figured that if this was true, i needed to find the old IP adress that the armaholic was pointing to. Thanks to SecurityTrails, i was able to find this ip which is 5.133.183.13 When i changed my local hosts-file on my pc,i added the lines below: armaholic.com 5.133.183.13 www.armaholic.com 5.133.183.13 After saving the file and when i navigated to the armaholic website, i found that the website was working! Immedeatly i started scraping ALL addon data from the site. Once i had a textfile with all the download pages, i started to download as many addons as i could. Luckyly, w0lle wanted to help and started downloading the arma1 addons. i started downloading the arma2 addons. WE WERE HAPPY! But today, the day after we found out this loophole - i was downloading like a madman when suddenly a 404 popped up. i ignored this, coz shit happens! but also the next downloads all produced 404 errors. When i tried a file, that i downloaded earlier, again a 404. I switched IP adresses, cleared browser-caches - but nothing worked. So, my urge to archive data has learned me a few things. 1. armaholic.com domain is sold(?) at least it has a diff owner. 2. the armaholic server is still up. 3. the armaholic files are hosted on www.armaholic.net and downloads originate from www.visitor.armaholic.net 4. armaholic has anti-leech/abuse mechanics, but the 404 isnt part of this function 5. the Owner of armaholic tweeted about the end of armaholic. and suggests that people can take over the data. 6. the contact info from this tweet info@joocoo.nl does exist, but doesnt reply to anyone. 7. the associated phonenumber for joocoo.nl is out of order. 8. When the sysadmin of armaholic finds out i have been downloading from armaholic while its down, decides to close the loophole. i can safely say that the sysadmin of armaholic does tweet about the end of armaholic, and in the past days - didnt reply to anyone who emailed him. Yet he deliberately shut-down the downloads TODAY. I can understand and accept if people decide to stop with arma activities, but i really like to understand why the armaholic-sysadmin denies access to their files, and is not answering emails. Foxhound, i dont have beef with you. i dont know if you have beef with anyone here in the community. But isnt it a bit harsh to deny innocent players access to files that are essential to the game? Or maybe this is some late april-1 joke, where you (in the near future) launch a renewed website with all its old content? - If this is the case, i find it a very peculiar joke. My question to Armaholic / Foxhound My attempt to archive the data has given me a lot of arma1 and arma2 files - but not all. I hope that somehow, you (foxhound) reads this post, and like to elaborate on what is going on. if there is a way to work things out, let us (or me) know. i cannot believe that you dont understand the historical value of 20yrs of generated community-data, and i dont understand why you -so sudden- denies access to this data. I have send you several emails to several adresses, i even included my phonenumber. If you wanna talk - talk to me. im here. i like to understand, and help where i can With only one goal: preserve history Sincerly, Your favorite Arma-TalkShowHost from the past : Jerry Hopper. UPDATE; i just learned from a community-member, that at least 1 person had a reply from the joocoo.nl contact-address UPDATE2 : i decided to make the response public ---------------------------- Hi , Good to hear from you and thank you for your interest. You are very welcome to continue the website in whatever form you like. I have no interest what so ever to continue working on it. I can provide you the database, the website files, 2 domains (armaholic.net and armaholic.eu) and of course all files which is around 1.6TB in size. Also I would hand over the twitter account, the youtube account and the facebook account (if thats possible without compromising my own security). I am looking for financial compensation towards the database and the website (as that contains all images etc used in the DB) and the domains. We had around 150.000 users and over 30.000 pages. The CMS used is Cotonti. You could simply host the website as is, or import the DB into a different CMS and go from there. I do not have a set asking price. Please feel free to make me an offer what the website, the database and the domains are worth to you and maybe we can agree on something. Looking forward to hear from you. Kind regards, ----------------------------------------- Additional Note: How about we setup a crowdfund?! im happy to chip in. Additional note2: Be aware that i already made a copy with httrack of the armaholic site. I also have most Arma1 & 2 files. - I think we're about to play the game of "whats the value?"

IMPORTANT UPDATE! For now, ARMA2OA files are of the highest value. *DO NOT DELETE THEM* Now here is the first GOOD news since the demise of armaholic, and the depressing contact-attempts. Regarding ARMA1 files, @W0lle has a reasonable portion of the files, All Arma sections except : weapons and mpmissions Regarding ARMA2 files @jerryhopper has 100% of all addons listed on armaholic. also 100% of all mpmissions. Regarding ARMA2OA files, no information is yet available, aside from the scraped fileinformation. all addons are considered high-value files. So we have the raw files, but no searchable index. this is something i will do later. i'd like to focus on indexing what's missing. But - if you need files, you know the name - or you have the patience to manually search - The Arma2 mod-section from armaholic is available now! NEED ARMA2 FILES? Armaholic file-mirror for ARMA2 (25GB): http://ftp.armedassault.info/armaholic/arma2/ This mirror is missing the Arma2 sections : 'scenario' 'patches 'modules' 'editing-tools' 'editing-scripts' 'editing-templates' NEED ARMA FILES? Armaholic file-mirror for Arma (Armed-Assault) (45GB) : http://ftp.armedassault.info/armaholic/arma1/ This mirror is missing the Arma sections: Mpmissions, Weapons

What you need, is the requirement mod: A-stan marines filename: astanmarinesbeta.7z pbo-filename: foxus_astanmarines.pbo

Ok... im focussing on ADDONS. there are also scenario' and other stuff, i think the best is to start with all Addons. Progress update : i have managed to get all download-pages for addons per game/category. (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_KEtRnFGarvXR2yDPrFdFLI0tqvdEhY0?usp=sharing) Todo (in progress): Parse the above lists, grab the addon-information ( filename ) and store that in a database. From then on we will have at least a list of filenames.

Update! No reply on email. Also, i tried to call the listed number for joocoo.nl - which was out of service. :( Does anyone have any bright ideas?

Extracted stuff is also worth keeping. in case a packed version doesnt re-appear, we could repack the unpacked pbo. - after all, inside the pbo there should be some info regarding version number. Another thing came to my mind: A small tool that scans your local directories for 'wanted' filenames could make the whole process a lot easier. i'll see what i can do.

Yes you can do something. Dont delete stuff that looks like Arma1 of Arma2 mods/missions. Dont trash the harddisk of that old gamerig that has been lying around in the closet for years. Oh, and dont forget to inform your gaming-buddies about the above.

the WaybackMachine is slow, as im attempting to download all resources from there. i'm at file 57378 of 155025 and this is day 2 since i've started. i assume it would take another 2-3 days before complete. Meanwhile, ive written a parser that extracts addon information that's listed on the armaholic.com/page.php and from armaholic.com/list.php Prolly tonight im gonna create the database so i can start importing the addon-data. Since im downloading ALL of the archived content, its really tempting to rebuild a 'minimal' armaholic frontend so that the Armaholic 'feeling' will be preserved too... I'll keep u posted EDIT: Yes, i have contacted info@joocoo.nl. No, i havent got any reply yet.