website down, would you use github release for download?

[yoyoys]

Without website we can't download this awesome software :(

[IanWardell]

For now try way back machine https://web.archive.org/web/20211122235924/https://exiftool.org/

[IanWardell]

I came here to note that the website is down.

[robbiemorrison]

Website still down. Just posting this to record the timestamp, that is now 13 hours down.

[tanrak]

Download is also possible at SourceForge.net.

[danielhoherd]

I also came here due to the website being down, hoping that releases were mirrored in Github or Gitlab. If anybody needs help working on that feature I can help out.

[IvanDesuo]

Download is also possible at SourceForge.net.

The forum, however, doesnt work even in this domain, there were so many good infos in that forum. Im kind worried. Do we know what happened to the site? Is Phil struggling with something?

[robbiemorrison]

It also looks like the domain name https://exiftool.org has bee relinquished. Perhaps it should be secured? I am afraid I cannot contribute to that effort.

[IanWardell]

1. Checkout this project url https://github.com/exiftool/exiv2

2. It looks like Phil retired from Queen's University in Apr 2020, maybe retired the project? https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-harvey-17806935/?originalSubdomain=ca ; either way not good for the project. Quick Google search found a Facebook with a Nov 28th post, so I believe he is alive. Which is good.

The domain information from: https://lookup.icann.org/lookup
Dates
Registry Expiration: 2022-11-27 18:18:08 UTC
Updated: 2021-10-27 07:59:37 UTC
Created: 2019-11-27 18:18:08 UTC

[CarbonV]

Just found out about this tool and was able to download it from SourceForge. However would love to access some of the forum posts. Most have not been stored in the WayBackMachine.

[robbiemorrison]

There was a lot of documentation on the https://exiftool.org website. That included many large tables describing the supported metadata along with change logs and so forth. What a tragedy if some or all of that of that information has been lost. Looks like the fabled hit‑by‑bus factor in play?

[tanrak]

@robbiemorrison An old version (from the year 2007) of the website with all docs and tables can be found here.

[speich]

wow, this is a bummer

[hackerfactor]

Any update? Has anyone heard from Phil? (I'm wondering if he even knows it is down.)

[Sponsoredby]

today my AV has been going haywire detecting malware from cache-exiftool

[robbiemorrison]

AV = antivirus software

[hackerfactor]

Exiftool.org seems to be back up.

Q: Is the malware detection coming from software downloaded from Exiftool.org, or is it in your local copy of the code?

[robbiemorrison]

The https://exiftool.org website is indeed back up. We could talk about moving the documentation (in basic HTML or something else) to some kind of repo. That depends a little on how the website is indeed generated or (possibly) hand‑coded.

That site has version 12.36 listed as current. My last admittedly last haphazard update was to 12.34 and I've had no problems. Indeed, I am not going to change unless the integrity of the codebase can be confirmed. There are techniques and practices for doing trusted builds, but these lie well outside my area of knowledge.

[boardhead]

The web site is back up again. Explanation here:

https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=13078

• Phil

[Sponsoredby]

Exiftool.org seems to be back up.

Q: Is the malware detection coming from software downloaded from Exiftool.org, or is it in your local copy of the code?

local copy in the /cache-exiftool-12.35/ folder offending file 25bbf886.dll

[boardhead]

2. It looks like Phil retired from Queen's University in Apr 2020, maybe retired the project? https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-harvey-17806935/?originalSubdomain=ca ; either way not good for the project. Quick Google search found a Facebook with a Nov 28th post, so I believe he is alive. Which is good.

Yes, it is good that I am alive. :)

I did retire from Queen's in April last year, and moved the web site to DreamHost a few months prior to that. I am still actively developing ExifTool. It is DreamHost that has been the problem, and I'm trying to deal with that as best I can.

Is Phil struggling with something?

Not any more than anyone else. ;) I was relaxing on a beach in Cuba for a week. :) I do take 1- and 2-week vacations a few times a year, and I try to put a notice in the ExifTool revision history page of the release prior to a vacation, but I didn't this time because it was a last-minute vacation deal.

• Phil

[danielhoherd]

Now would be a great time for a https://github.com/exiftool/exiftool admin to backfill all the recent tgz releases of exiftool into GH releases

[timkatje]

@boardhead: Sorry if this has already been reported, but it looks like the site is totally down again. In my case, I was attempting to run a chocolatey upgrade and the exiftool failed to update because of it. If I were a pro user, the content might've been cached by chocolatey, but alas I no longer am.

Has there been any thought about just transferring all of the site data over here to GitHub Pages. Chocolatey would work great if all releases were just posted here, which could work in conjunction with an external website. But migrating to GHPages might solve the site breaking every couple of years...

[danielhoherd]

In case the site goes down again...

Note: If exiftool.org goes down, it is because of the crappy DreamHost web hosting which disables an "unlimited traffic" web site if a single bot hammers the site with a moderate load. An alternate ExifTool homepage is available at http://exiftool.sourceforge.net/

[boardhead]

The site wasn't disabled again, and is back up now. I don't know what happened, but I checked the server logs and it doesn't look like a site outage.

[Luuk34]

The site wasn't disabled again, and is back up now. I don't know what happened, but I checked the server logs and it doesn't look like a site outage.

But that site no longer worked....
It seems to work (for) now.

[StarGeekSpaceNerd]

There are websites that will check if a domain is down for everyone or just you. For example, first google result for me is IsItDownRightNow.com.

I refresh the forums many times during the day (helping people with exiftool problems is my Sudoku). In the past week, there's been about two occasions where I've received a Server Load warning trying to view the forums and that disappeared when I tried again 10-15 minutes later. It's been a much longer time since I've been unable to access the main page.

[danielhoherd]

The site was working an hour ago, but is down now, and unfortunately the sourceforge mirror does not have the same file structure as exiftool.org. For instance, the download link listed at the top of https://exiftool.sourceforge.net/history.html does not work.

[StarGeekSpaceNerd]

The site is working for me. Both the main page and the forums.

Try using the link I gave above to check if it's just down for you or for everyone.

[danielhoherd]

@StarGeekSpaceNerd you're right. they have blocked my home IP address. shame on me for maintaining an exiftool ansible role that has tests.

[StarGeekSpaceNerd]

Phil will have to fix it. The site blocks IPs that make too many requests

I'd say see here, but you probably can't.

I've implemented some limits to help deal with future attacks and misbehaving bots.

With the current settings an automatic IP ban is applied to any non-member of the forum that exceeds 500 page loads or 50 MB of data in a 10 minute period.

If you think you have been erroneously banned, send me an email (philharvey66 at gmail.com), but of course you will have trouble reading this post if that happened to you. :P

Edit: I've also added a limit of 200 MB per day.

[boardhead]

A GPT bot was blocked 3 hours ago due to downloading 65.9 MB in 10 min, but that was the only ban added in the last few hours. This ban will be automatically lifted tonight so if it was you it should work again tommorrow.

• Phil