LJ Engineers Laid Off
Jan. 6th, 2009 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bryantSee here and here. Some rather large percentage of the technical people at LJ have been laid off. Ops is reportedly still around, so maybe database problems and so on will still get fixed, but you gotta be concerned.
Update: LJ press release. They're moving the programming to Russia, which makes sense. So don't be too concerned, but back up your LJ anyway, cause it's good practice. (Then forget to do it for another year, like I do.)
For the more technical, ljdump looks good. ljsm also works well. The difference: ljdump produces a real backup, that could be processed and reasonably easily uploaded to a new blog. (Reasonably easy for me, but I'm a geek.) ljsm produces a mirror of your livejournal that you could stick up on a Web site somewhere.
I think I'd recommend using them both. Caveat: ljsm may not work on your Mac if you aren't running Leopard. (For geeks: it needs the LWP libraries, which weren't always shipped with the OS.)
Community maintainers: ljsm looks like it'll work better for archiving your community. I have not tested this yet.
Big important note: you will be backing up your locked entries along with everything else. So if you republish it without checking those, you will republish your locked entries, and they will probably not be locked.
ljArchive may be good for Windows; I haven't tested it. See this post if you want to give it a try. I can't find anything that's simple, Mac-oriented, and that backs up comments, but here are some HOWTOs for the other programs if you're on a Mac. Both have been tested and seem to work for most people.
LJBook allows you to turn your journal plus comments into a PDF. Their site was not ready for a bazillion worried LJ readers to come over and use it, alas, and they are down as of this writing.
LJMigrate is another command line tool. That page provides novice instructions. I haven't tested it at all but I've seen recommendations for it.
jbackup.pl is another perl backup script; I haven't tested it.
LJ has a built in export feature, which does not export comments or icons or anything.
ljdump
1. Open up a Terminal window. The app is in Applications/Utilities.
2. Type: curl http://hewgill.com/ljdump/ljdump-1.2.tar.gz -o - | tar -xvzf -
3. Type: cd ljdump-1.2
4. Type: mv ljdump.config.sample ljdump.config
5. Type: open -a TextEdit ljdump.config
6. Woo, we're back in a GUI world. You should have a TextEdit window with a bit of cryptic text in it. Edit the word "myaccount" to be your account name, and edit the word "mypassword" to be your password. It'll look like, say: <username>bryant</username>.
7. Save (in the File menu) and Quit (also in the File menu).
8. Go back to the Terminal window. Sorry!
9. Type: ./ljdump.py
10. Watch it run. It'll get entries first, then comments.
ljdump produces saved entries in XML format, but that's OK; if it becomes urgent I can always write and post something that'll display them in plaintext. Maybe even upload to an alternate server, dunno.
I am not sure if ljdump saves security settings in any way; if someone wants to take a look and let me know that'd be cool.
Caveat: ljdump tends to error out when it can't get data from LJ's servers. LJ's servers are a little busy right now, and people have been reporting errors. Running it again should work.
Caveat 2: people have reported having problems with multiple journals. I have not tested this problem yet.
There are two fairly common errors you may see with ljdump, as follows:
I'm not sure what causes this and I don't know how to fix it. :( If anyone who gets this error can identify the actual post causing it, I might be able to make a guess.
This one is easy to fix; you have a userpic with a weird character in the name (like an accented e, say). Change the userpic name and you're good to go.
ljsm
In step 5, where it says <username> and <password>, put in your own user name and password. Example actual line: perl ljsm.pl -a -r -i 2 -u harrytuttle:brazil harrytuttle
1. Open up a Terminal window. The app is in Applications/Utilities.
2. Type: curl http://www.offtopia.net/ljsm/ljsm-2.9.zip -o ljsm-2.9.zip
3. Type: unzip ljsm-2.9.zip
4. Type: perl ljsm.pl -a -r -i 2 -u <username>:<password> <username>
4a. If you wanted to download your community, the second <username>> should be your community name.
You now have a new folder/directory called <username>. (<username> means whatever you entered in step 4.) You could copy this to a Web site if you wanted. Very important: your locked entries will not be locked! I said that before but it bears repeating.
Caveat: if and only if you use the -t option, ljsm uses a third party web site to unfold long comment threads (over 50 comments). Don't do that. It passes your password and your username to a third party site.
If you don't use the -t option, posts with long comment threads will not have all the comment threads saved.
My instructions above assume no -t option.
Update: LJ press release. They're moving the programming to Russia, which makes sense. So don't be too concerned, but back up your LJ anyway, cause it's good practice. (Then forget to do it for another year, like I do.)
For the more technical, ljdump looks good. ljsm also works well. The difference: ljdump produces a real backup, that could be processed and reasonably easily uploaded to a new blog. (Reasonably easy for me, but I'm a geek.) ljsm produces a mirror of your livejournal that you could stick up on a Web site somewhere.
I think I'd recommend using them both. Caveat: ljsm may not work on your Mac if you aren't running Leopard. (For geeks: it needs the LWP libraries, which weren't always shipped with the OS.)
Community maintainers: ljsm looks like it'll work better for archiving your community. I have not tested this yet.
Big important note: you will be backing up your locked entries along with everything else. So if you republish it without checking those, you will republish your locked entries, and they will probably not be locked.
ljArchive may be good for Windows; I haven't tested it. See this post if you want to give it a try. I can't find anything that's simple, Mac-oriented, and that backs up comments, but here are some HOWTOs for the other programs if you're on a Mac. Both have been tested and seem to work for most people.
LJBook allows you to turn your journal plus comments into a PDF. Their site was not ready for a bazillion worried LJ readers to come over and use it, alas, and they are down as of this writing.
LJMigrate is another command line tool. That page provides novice instructions. I haven't tested it at all but I've seen recommendations for it.
jbackup.pl is another perl backup script; I haven't tested it.
LJ has a built in export feature, which does not export comments or icons or anything.
ljdump
1. Open up a Terminal window. The app is in Applications/Utilities.
2. Type: curl http://hewgill.com/ljdump/ljdump-1.2.tar.gz -o - | tar -xvzf -
3. Type: cd ljdump-1.2
4. Type: mv ljdump.config.sample ljdump.config
5. Type: open -a TextEdit ljdump.config
6. Woo, we're back in a GUI world. You should have a TextEdit window with a bit of cryptic text in it. Edit the word "myaccount" to be your account name, and edit the word "mypassword" to be your password. It'll look like, say: <username>bryant</username>.
7. Save (in the File menu) and Quit (also in the File menu).
8. Go back to the Terminal window. Sorry!
9. Type: ./ljdump.py
10. Watch it run. It'll get entries first, then comments.
ljdump produces saved entries in XML format, but that's OK; if it becomes urgent I can always write and post something that'll display them in plaintext. Maybe even upload to an alternate server, dunno.
I am not sure if ljdump saves security settings in any way; if someone wants to take a look and let me know that'd be cool.
Caveat: ljdump tends to error out when it can't get data from LJ's servers. LJ's servers are a little busy right now, and people have been reporting errors. Running it again should work.
Caveat 2: people have reported having problems with multiple journals. I have not tested this problem yet.
There are two fairly common errors you may see with ljdump, as follows:
Fetching journal entry L-1772 (update)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./ljdump.py", line 187, in ?
writedump("%s/%s" % (Username, item['item']), e['events'][0])
IndexError: list index out of range
I'm not sure what causes this and I don't know how to fix it. :( If anyone who gets this error can identify the actual post causing it, I might be able to make a guess.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./ljdump.py", line 165, in
userpics = dict(zip(r['pickws'], r['pickwurls']))
TypeError: unhashable instance
This one is easy to fix; you have a userpic with a weird character in the name (like an accented e, say). Change the userpic name and you're good to go.
ljsm
In step 5, where it says <username> and <password>, put in your own user name and password. Example actual line: perl ljsm.pl -a -r -i 2 -u harrytuttle:brazil harrytuttle
1. Open up a Terminal window. The app is in Applications/Utilities.
2. Type: curl http://www.offtopia.net/ljsm/ljsm-2.9.zip -o ljsm-2.9.zip
3. Type: unzip ljsm-2.9.zip
4. Type: perl ljsm.pl -a -r -i 2 -u <username>:<password> <username>
4a. If you wanted to download your community, the second <username>> should be your community name.
You now have a new folder/directory called <username>. (<username> means whatever you entered in step 4.) You could copy this to a Web site if you wanted. Very important: your locked entries will not be locked! I said that before but it bears repeating.
Caveat: if and only if you use the -t option, ljsm uses a third party web site to unfold long comment threads (over 50 comments). Don't do that. It passes your password and your username to a third party site.
If you don't use the -t option, posts with long comment threads will not have all the comment threads saved.
My instructions above assume no -t option.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 04:52 pm (UTC)Traceback (most recent call last):File "./ljdump.py", line 187, in ?
writedump("%s/%s" % (Username, item['item']), e['events'][0])
IndexError: list index out of range
And when I tried running the backup again, the exact same thing happened again. Any ideas?
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:06 pm (UTC)Fetching journal entry L-390 (create)
Fetching journal entry L-458 (update)
Fetching journal entry L-276 (update)
Fetching journal entry L-96 (update)
Fetching journal entry L-97 (update)
Fetching journal entry L-100 (update)
Fetching journal entry L-802 (update)
Traceback (most recent call last):
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:13 pm (UTC)I will fiddle with this more tonight; I don't have two LJs so it's harder for me to test.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 06:49 pm (UTC)As for the error you are getting, unfortunately the LJ servers aren't terribly robust about the exact form of data that they provide to utilities like ljdump (bad character encodings and so on). Even more unfortunately, I can't run ljdump against the (public) entries in your journal to debug this without knowing your password!
Perhaps you could try one of the other utilities mentioned here to see whether that helps.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 07:26 pm (UTC)Fetching journal entry L-802 (update)
{'events': []}
Source returned unexpected result when queried for item L-802
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 06:11 pm (UTC)Go to http://www.livejournal.com/settings/?c=OldEncoding and see what your encoding setting is. If it's "None", change it to "Western European (Windows)" and try again. Let me know whether that improves things for you.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 05:05 pm (UTC)