Author Topic: Hobbesarchive gone  (Read 3073 times)

Dave Yeo

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Hobbesarchive gone
« on: March 22, 2026, 07:49:32 am »
Well, going to HobbesArchive today, it seems due to costs, it is no more. See https://hobbesarchive.com/

Kim

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2026, 11:33:13 am »
Must be a lot of mirroring going on if it runs up 8TB traffic per month - if we assume that the entire site is around 30GB that would be around 8-9 full site mirrors per day.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2026, 01:08:29 pm by khadmin »

Dave Yeo

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2026, 05:48:09 pm »
It's Bots, perhaps IA bots harvesting data. Same problem here. It's going to kill the internet for all but the largest companies. Perhaps that's the plan as the internet started out too democratic what with anyone being able to throw up a server. Now it seems if you don't use cloudflare or similar, you get flattened.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2026, 07:40:45 pm »
Hello

We need to come up with a solution between OS2World and OS2Site.

I like TinyFileManager, but it does not has support to include metadata, like in our case "Short Description, Long description, etc.".  I think it we will need a developer with PHP skill, it we want to adapt this script to became something similar to Hobbes.

The mirrors are still up, but those are not the latest version.
- https://us01.hobbesarchive.com/pub/index.php?p=
- https://de01.hobbesarchive.com/pub/index.php?p=
- https://uk01.hobbesarchive.com/pub/index.php?p=

I'm asking Nathan in case we can get a latest full backup.

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Martin Iturbide
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khadmin

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2026, 12:09:36 am »
I like TinyFileManager, but it does not has support to include metadata, like in our case "Short Description, Long description, etc.".  I think it we will need a developer with PHP skill, it we want to adapt this script to became something similar to Hobbes.

If Nathan can share the meta db data it's then easy to convert it to something else and as mentioned Martin it's easier and quicker just to make something better that is built for the purpose than tinkering around with TFM.

//Kim

Rich Walsh

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2026, 12:23:23 am »
To me, this is the result of being stuck in the 90's.

Way back when you could set up a home-brew server and provide acceptable service to all your users on dial-up. But *25* years later home-brew usually means lousy transfer rates and unreliable service. For a fraction of the cost Nathan was paying, he could have used a hosting service and eliminated these problems. For example, the company I use (hostway.com) offers Linux hosting with unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, an SSL certificate, and more for $35/mo. At that price, who needs this rinky-dink stuff?
« Last Edit: March 24, 2026, 01:37:04 am by Rich Walsh »

RTAN

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #6 on: March 24, 2026, 11:17:33 pm »
That's a real shame, and I really feel for Nathan. I know that when the original Hobbes announcement was made, lots of people jumped up and starting trying to host a mirror without any co-ordination. I'm not blaming anyone at all, especially *not* Nathan, but my point is simply that I agree that sometimes these things can work out better when coordinated.

I'm very happy to get involved if I can help in any way. For example I have an OVH physical host server in Europe running a number of VMs and I could quite happily host a copy of the archive. OVH doesn't charge for data transfer, and it's a high-speed link so I don't foresee any issues. But I don't want to leap ahead and suddenly start doing that if others have better ideas.

And yes, Martin - if you're able to get a final dump of how it was before Nathan had to take it offline that would be great.

Richard.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2026, 11:26:01 pm »
Hello again

I'm looking forward to collaborate. Right now if someone wants to do something like coding, let me know if you want me to check it out and test it. 

Like I said on before, I like the TinyFileManager open script to have a file sharing site. 
You can check it out at the mirrors. 
- https://us01.hobbesarchive.com/pub/index.php?p=
- https://de01.hobbesarchive.com/pub/index.php?p=
- https://uk01.hobbesarchive.com/pub/index.php?p=

But that script is missing:
1) It does not has support to include metadata, like in our case "Short Description, Long description, etc.".
2) We need to include the "Upload File and Description" functionality, with the incoming and new directories to check the latest files.
3) Search functionality has to be extended. 

I have some backups and some metadata information and I can collaborate to organize a new site. 

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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Kim

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #8 on: March 25, 2026, 06:36:58 pm »
The coding part is actually the easy part. What we really need right now is the metadata. If Nathan can help us with that, it would be a great start.

As RTAN mentioned, the mirroring does need to be properly coordinated. Running Hobbes in an LXC container shouldn’t be too heavy — it will mainly generate some extra traffic. However, I still don’t understand how the figure of 8 TB/month is possible. That number suggests that sites were doing full mirroring instead of incremental mirroring only.

In any case, the 30–40 GB mentioned isn't any problem to handle for the full Hobbes.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Hobbesarchive gone
« Reply #9 on: March 29, 2026, 08:45:55 pm »
Hello

I'm working in the new version of Hobbes developed by Jason Page.

We have this mailing list if you want to collaborate.
https://warp.groups.io/g/HobbesArchive

The web site is on beta version and final hosting is still a "work in progress".

We have have finished recovering a file backup from 2026-02. We are currently working on the metadata of each file. I was not able to get a backup from the older hobbes database, so we are generating the metadata with some txt files I have from the old NMSU hobbes. I think I may have 80% of the metadata on those files, but the migration process is slow.

Let me know if you want to collaborate with the metadata. The new Hobbes now have different roles like "contributors" that can change the metadata of the files directly from the website.

Regards
« Last Edit: March 29, 2026, 08:55:12 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Martin Iturbide
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