ia-download.md

Downloading and Syncing Archive.org Collections

Following are instructions on how to use the Internet Archive command-line tool, "ia", to download a collection from Archive.org and keep it synced. The only requirements are that you have Python 2 installed on a Unix-like operating system (i.e. Mac OS X, Linux).

Downloading and Configuring the Ia Command-Line Tool

1. Download the latest binary of the ia command-line tool:

   $ curl -L https://archive.org/download/ia-pex/ia > ia

2. Make the binary executable:

   $ chmod +x ia

3. Configure ia with your Archive.org credentials (This step can be skipped if you are downloading from a public collection):

   $ ./ia configure

Downloading and Syncing an Archive.org Collection

The following command will download all files for all items in the https://archive.org/details/ArchiveIt-Partner-168 collection.

The --checksum option will allow you to easily resume your download if something goes wrong, or to keep your local collection in sync with the collection on Archive.org. When the --checksum option is included in your command, ia will skip over any files that have already been downloaded (granted the md5 checkusm of the local file matches the md5 of the file on Archive.org).

The --log option will generate a log file in the directory from which you run the command, called internetarchive.log. For more details and options, run ia download --help.

$ ./ia download --search 'collection:ArchiveIt-Partner-168' --checksum --log

To keep your local collection in sync with the collection on Archive.org, the above command can simply be rerun.