imgur is removing "old, unused and inactive" content

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thelinx
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imgur is removing "old, unused and inactive" content

Post by thelinx »

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Yesterday, imgur announced that they are updating their terms of service, saying that they will remove "old, unused and inactive content" from their service moving forward.

If any of you remember Photobucket and Imageshack, it looks like imgur has finally decided to follow the footsteps of the services it was meant to replace.

Grievances aside, the truth remains that users have been uploading pictures to imgur for linking to the forum for a long while now (a quick search gives over two thousand results).
I would strongly disencourage anyone from uploading pictures to there in the future. We have attachments on the forum that you can use.

The good news is that the new terms of service don't go into effect until May 15, 2023.

In the meantime, the forum administration will try its best to go through those posts and see if we can move their images to the forum before they disappear. If you know that you've used imgur yourself, feel free to edit your own posts, if you'd like.
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Bigfoot71
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Re: imgur is removing "old, unused and inactive" content

Post by Bigfoot71 »

And to think that I bothered to upload everywhere else to avoid overloading the server with all kinds of gifs, if it's an open bar after all, I feel a bit silly :megagrin:
My avatar code for the curious :D V1, V2, V3.
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knorke
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Re: imgur is removing "old, unused and inactive" content

Post by knorke »

Please do not tell them that I accidentally filled 50% of imgur webspace by uploading the wrong pictures.
Bigfoot71 wrote: Thu Apr 20, 2023 3:58 pm And to think that I bothered to upload everywhere else to avoid overloading the server with all kinds of gifs, if it's an open bar after all, I feel a bit silly :megagrin:
I do not know about this forum but I think in other forums that has not been a problem.
Diskspace is not that much an issue nowadays and the traffic is relatively light. One should probably avoid hotlinking forum-hosted images from elsewhere. And use good practices, like cropping images to relevant parts and using appropriate file formats.
I like browsing old threads, to find answers or just look at things. It is always nice when images still work.
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thelinx
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Re: imgur is removing "old, unused and inactive" content

Post by thelinx »

I've gone through old posts and rehosted images wherever I could. Some images were already gone, so they've been left alone.
Because you might find it interesting, here's the process I followed and my code:

At first I was downloading images manually and uploading them as attachments, as a result of that I've changed embedded attachment styling a bit but it's still not ideal.
Also, this was a lot of manual labor, so I was thinking of a better way. I didn't feel like learning how to interface with phpBB's attachments programmatically, so I decided to just upload things to a static folder on the website.

I made a userscript to quickly harvest imgur links inside a post and then give me a command I could run on the server to quickly download them.
Userscript

Code: Select all

// ==UserScript==
// @match        https://love2d.org/forums/posting.php*
// @grant        GM_setClipboard
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';
    let imgur_re = /(https?:\/\/)?i\.imgur\.com\/([a-zA-Z0-9\.]*)/

    let button = document.createElement("button")
    button.className = "button button-secondary"
    button.innerText = "rehost"
    button.addEventListener("click", e => {
        e.preventDefault()

        let message = document.querySelector("#message")
        let files = []
        let match
        while ((match = imgur_re.exec(message.value)) !== null) {
            let filename = match[2]
            message.value = message.value.replace(match[0], `https://love2d.org/imgmirrur/${filename}`)
            files.push(filename)
        }
        let cmd = "./download.sh " + files.join(" ")
        console.log("copied: ", cmd)
        GM_setClipboard(cmd)
    })
    document.querySelector("#format-buttons").appendChild(button)
})();
download.sh

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
for fn in $@; do
  if [ -f $fn ]; then
    echo "skipping already downloaded $fn"
  else
    echo "downloading $fn"
    wget https://i.imgur.com/$fn
  fi
done
I was rehosting images in batches of whenever-I-felt-like-it. However, a few days ago I ran into an issue: All requests to imgur were returning a code 429: Something imgur uses to signify rate limiting.
I sent them a support message asking to be unblocked, but it was ignored. Therefore, I had to overengineer a solution to download images through a VPN, and then upload it to the server.

download.erl

Code: Select all

-module(download).

-compile(export_all).

prepare() -> io:format("call download:prepare({127,0,0,1}) where the IP is the VPN interface~n").

prepare(IP) ->
    inets:start(),
    ssl:start(),
    ok = httpc:set_options([{ip, IP}]), % make all outgoing httpc requests go through this interface
    {ok, Response} = httpc:request("https://ipof.me/"),
    {{_,200,_}, _, Body} = Response,
    string:find(Body, "(vpn provider)") =/= nomatch. % make sure it's working

go(Files) ->
    UniqueFiles = lists:usort(Files),
    {DownloadedAlready, NotDownloadedAlready} = lists:partition(fun (Fn) -> filelib:is_file(Fn) end, UniqueFiles),
    [ io:format("skipping already downloaded ~s~n", [Fn]) || Fn <- DownloadedAlready ],
    Responses = [ {Fn, download(Fn)} || Fn <- NotDownloadedAlready ],
    {Successes, Failures} = lists:partition(fun ({_, {{_, Code, _}, _, _}}) -> Code =:= 200 end, Responses),
    [ io:format("failed to download ~s (code ~p)~n", [Fn, Code]) || {Fn, {{_, Code, _}, _, _}} <- Failures ],
    [ file:write_file(Fn, Body) || {Fn, {_, _, Body}} <- Successes ],
    SuccessFiles = [ Fn || {Fn, _} <- Successes ],
    case length(SuccessFiles) of
        0 -> ok;
        _ -> upload_files(SuccessFiles)
    end,
    io:format("uploaded ~p files~n", [length(SuccessFiles)]).

download(Fn) ->
    {ok, Res} = httpc:request("https://i.imgur.com/" ++ Fn),
    io:format("downloaded ~s~n", [Fn]),
    Res.

upload_files(Files) ->
    Cmd = io_lib:format("scp ~s love:love2d.org/imgmirrur/", [lists:join(" ", Files)]),
    os:cmd(Cmd),
    ok.
A quick change to the userscript was also required to adapt to the new format (download:go([...]).)

Today I finished rehosting everything. Albums required a little bit more manual work. First I downloaded them using https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl with the --with-metadata argument.
I then cooked up a script to generate an album page from the downloaded folder.

gallery_page.js

Code: Select all

const fs = require("fs")
const path = require("path")
const { exec } = require("child_process")

if (process.argv.length < 3) {
    console.log("gallery_page.js folder")
    process.exitCode = 1
    return
}

const imgname_re = /_([^_]+)$/

const folder = process.argv[2]
let title
let album_id
let images = []
files = fs.readdirSync(folder)
for (const file of files) {
    const fullpath = path.join(folder, file)
    if (file.endsWith(".json")) { // metadata
        const info = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(fullpath))
        if (album_id === undefined) {
            album_id = info.album.id
        }
        if (title === undefined && info.title !== "") {
            title = info.title
        }
        const image = {}
        image.filename = `${info.filename}.${info.extension}`
        if (info.description !== "") {
            image.description = info.description
        }
        images.push(image)
    } else {                      // image
        fs.copyFileSync(fullpath, imgname_re.exec(file)[1])
    }
}

let album_page = `
<html>
<head>
<title>${title === undefined ? "untitled album" : title}</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" src="album.css" />
</head>
<body>
`
if (title !== undefined) {
    album_page += `<h1>${title}</h1>`
}
let i = 0
for (const image of images) {
    album_page += `<div id="${i}">`
    if (image.filename.endsWith("mp4")) {
        album_page += `<video src="${image.filename}" autoplay></video>`
    } else {
        album_page += `<a href="${image.filename}"><img src="${image.filename}" /></a>`
        i += 1
        if (image.description !== undefined) {
            album_page += `<p>${image.description}</p>`
        }
    }
    album_page += `</div>`
}
album_page += `
</body>
</html>`

fs.writeFileSync(`${album_id}.html`, album_page)

exec(`scp ${album_id}.html ${images.map(f => f.filename).join(" ")} love:love2d.org/imgmirrur/`, (_, stdout, __) => console.log(stdout))
console.log(`https://love2d.org/imgmirrur/${album_id}.html`)
Here are some numbers:
  • 941 images downloaded and attached (phase 1)
  • 1565 images directly rehosted (phase 2)
  • 1133 images rehosted through VPN (phase 3)
  • 1.2GB of total data
From now on, I would recommend attachments. I'm aware of some issues with them, for example, you can't put an attachment image inside url-tags, but fixing that would probably require uncomfortable amounts of phpBB-hacking.
Uploading a webm is allowed if you want to show off a video/gif, but unfortunately they won't embed. I may look into that.
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