Ubuntu Manpage: linkchecker - command line client to check HTML documents and websites for broken links

NAME

       linkchecker - command line client to check HTML documents and websites for broken links

SYNOPSIS

       linkchecker [options] [file-or-url]...

DESCRIPTION

       LinkChecker features

       • recursive and multithreaded checking

       • output  in  colored  or normal text, HTML, SQL, CSV, XML or a sitemap graph in different
         formats

       • support for HTTP/1.1, HTTPS, FTP, mailto: and local file links

       • restriction of link checking with URL filters

       • proxy support

       • username/password authorization for HTTP and FTP

       • support for robots.txt exclusion protocol

       • support for Cookies

       • support for HTML5

       • Antivirus check

       • a command line and web interface

EXAMPLES

       The most common use checks the given domain recursively:

          $ linkchecker http://www.example.com/

       Beware that this checks the whole site which can have thousands of URLs. Use the -r option
       to restrict the recursion depth.

       Don't check URLs with /secret in its name. All other links are checked as usual:

          $ linkchecker --ignore-url=/secret mysite.example.com

       Checking a local HTML file on Unix:

          $ linkchecker ../bla.html

       Checking a local HTML file on Windows:

          C:\> linkchecker c:empest.html

       You can skip the http:// url part if the domain starts with www.:

          $ linkchecker www.example.com

       You can skip the ftp:// url part if the domain starts with ftp.:

          $ linkchecker -r0 ftp.example.com

       Generate a sitemap graph and convert it with the graphviz dot utility:

          $ linkchecker -odot -v www.example.com | dot -Tps > sitemap.ps

OPTIONS

General options
-f FILENAME, --config=FILENAME
Use FILENAME as configuration file. By default LinkChecker uses
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/linkchecker/linkcheckerrc.

-h, --help
Help me! Print usage information for this program.

-t NUMBER, --threads=NUMBER
Generate no more than the given number of threads. Default number of threads is 10.
To disable threading specify a non-positive number.

-V, --version
Print version and exit.

--list-plugins
Print available check plugins and exit.

Output options
URL checking results
-F TYPE[/ENCODING][/FILENAME], --file-output=TYPE[/ENCODING][/FILENAME]
Output to a file linkchecker-out.TYPE, $XDG_DATA_HOME/linkchecker/failures for the
failures output type, or FILENAME if specified. The ENCODING specifies the output
encoding, the default is that of your locale. Valid encodings are listed at ‐
https://docs.python.org/library/codecs.html#standard-encodings. The FILENAME and
ENCODING parts of the none output type will be ignored, else if the file already
exists, it will be overwritten. You can specify this option more than once. Valid
file output TYPEs are text, html, sql, csv, gml, dot, xml, sitemap, none or
failures. Default is no file output. The various output types are documented
below. Note that you can suppress all console output with the option -o none.

--no-warnings
Don't log warnings. Default is to log warnings.

-o TYPE[/ENCODING], --output=TYPE[/ENCODING]
Specify the console output type as text, html, sql, csv, gml, dot, xml, sitemap,
none or failures. Default type is text. The various output types are documented
below. The ENCODING specifies the output encoding, the default is that of your
locale. Valid encodings are listed at ‐
https://docs.python.org/library/codecs.html#standard-encodings.

-v, --verbose
Log all checked URLs, overriding --no-warnings. Default is to log only errors and
warnings.

Progress updates
--no-status
Do not print URL check status messages.

Application
-D STRING, --debug=STRING
Print debugging output for the given logger. Available debug loggers are cmdline,
checking, cache, plugin and all. all is an alias for all available loggers. This
option can be given multiple times to debug with more than one logger.

Quiet
-q, --quiet
Quiet operation, an alias for -o none that also hides application information
messages. This is only useful with -F, else no results will be output.

Checking options
--cookiefile=FILENAME
Use initial cookie data read from a file. The cookie data format is explained
below.

--check-extern
Check external URLs.

--ignore-url=REGEX
URLs matching the given regular expression will only be syntax checked. This
option can be given multiple times. See section REGULAR EXPRESSIONS for more info.

--no-follow-url=REGEX
Check but do not recurse into URLs matching the given regular expression. This
option can be given multiple times. See section REGULAR EXPRESSIONS for more info.

--no-robots
Check URLs regardless of any robots.txt files.

-p, --password
Read a password from console and use it for HTTP and FTP authorization. For FTP the
default password is anonymous@. For HTTP there is no default password. See also -u.

-r NUMBER, --recursion-level=NUMBER
Check recursively all links up to given depth. A negative depth will enable
infinite recursion. Default depth is infinite.

--timeout=NUMBER
Set the timeout for connection attempts in seconds. The default timeout is 60
seconds.

-u STRING, --user=STRING
Try the given username for HTTP and FTP authorization. For FTP the default username
is anonymous. For HTTP there is no default username. See also -p.

--user-agent=STRING
Specify the User-Agent string to send to the HTTP server, for example
"Mozilla/4.0". The default is "LinkChecker/X.Y" where X.Y is the current version of
LinkChecker.

Input options
--stdin
Read from stdin a list of white-space separated URLs to check.

FILE-OR-URL
The location to start checking with. A file can be a simple list of URLs, one per
line, if the first line is "# LinkChecker URL list".

CONFIGURATION FILES

       Configuration files can specify all options above. They can also specify some options that
       cannot be set on the command line. See linkcheckerrc(5) for more info.

OUTPUT TYPES

Note that by default only errors and warnings are logged. You should use the option
--verbose to get the complete URL list, especially when outputting a sitemap graph format.

text Standard text logger, logging URLs in keyword: argument fashion.

html Log URLs in keyword: argument fashion, formatted as HTML. Additionally has links
to the referenced pages. Invalid URLs have HTML and CSS syntax check links
appended.

csv Log check result in CSV format with one URL per line.

gml Log parent-child relations between linked URLs as a GML sitemap graph.

dot Log parent-child relations between linked URLs as a DOT sitemap graph.

gxml Log check result as a GraphXML sitemap graph.

xml Log check result as machine-readable XML.

sitemap
Log check result as an XML sitemap whose protocol is documented at ‐
https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html.

sql Log check result as SQL script with INSERT commands. An example script to create
the initial SQL table is included as create.sql.

failures
Suitable for cron jobs. Logs the check result into a file
$XDG_DATA_HOME/linkchecker/failures which only contains entries with invalid URLs
and the number of times they have failed.

none Logs nothing. Suitable for debugging or checking the exit code.

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

       LinkChecker        accepts       Python       regular       expressions.       See       ‐
       https://docs.python.org/howto/regex.html for an  introduction.   An  addition  is  that  a
       leading exclamation mark negates the regular expression.

COOKIE FILES

       A  cookie  file  contains standard HTTP header (RFC 2616) data with the following possible
       names:

       Host (required)
              Sets the domain the cookies are valid for.

       Path (optional)
              Gives the path the cookies are value for; default path is /.

       Set-cookie (required)
              Set cookie name/value. Can be given more than once.

       Multiple entries are separated by a blank line. The example below will send two cookies to
       all  URLs  starting  with  http://example.com/hello/  and  one  to  all URLs starting with
       https://example.org/:

          Host: example.com
          Path: /hello
          Set-cookie: ID="smee"
          Set-cookie: spam="egg"

          Host: example.org
          Set-cookie: baggage="elitist"; comment="hologram"

PROXY SUPPORT

       To use a proxy on Unix or Windows set the http_proxy or https_proxy environment  variables
       to  the  proxy  URL.  The  URL  should  be  of  the  form  http://[user:pass@]host[:port].
       LinkChecker also detects manual proxy settings of Internet Explorer under Windows systems.
       On  a  Mac  use the Internet Config to select a proxy.  You can also set a comma-separated
       domain list in the no_proxy environment variable to ignore any proxy  settings  for  these
       domains.   The  curl_ca_bundle environment variable can be used to identify an alternative
       certificate bundle to be used with an HTTPS proxy.

       Setting a HTTP proxy on Unix for example looks like this:

          $ export http_proxy="http://proxy.example.com:8080"

       Proxy authentication is also supported:

          $ export http_proxy="http://user1:mypass@proxy.example.org:8081"

       Setting a proxy on the Windows command prompt:

          C:\> set http_proxy=http://proxy.example.com:8080

PERFORMED CHECKS

All URLs have to pass a preliminary syntax test. Minor quoting mistakes will issue a
warning, all other invalid syntax issues are errors. After the syntax check passes, the
URL is queued for connection checking. All connection check types are described below.

HTTP links (http:, https:)
After connecting to the given HTTP server the given path or query is requested. All
redirections are followed, and if user/password is given it will be used as
authorization when necessary. All final HTTP status codes other than 2xx are
errors.

HTML page contents are checked for recursion.

Local files (file:)
A regular, readable file that can be opened is valid. A readable directory is also
valid. All other files, for example device files, unreadable or non-existing files
are errors.

HTML or other parseable file contents are checked for recursion.

Mail links (mailto:)
A mailto: link eventually resolves to a list of email addresses. If one address
fails, the whole list will fail. For each mail address we check the following
things:

1. Check the address syntax, both the parts before and after the @ sign.

2. Look up the MX DNS records. If we found no MX record, print an error.

3. Check if one of the mail hosts accept an SMTP connection. Check hosts with
higher priority first. If no host accepts SMTP, we print a warning.

4. Try to verify the address with the VRFY command. If we got an answer, print the
verified address as an info.

FTP links (ftp:)
For FTP links we do:

1. connect to the specified host

2. try to login with the given user and password. The default user is anonymous,
the default password is anonymous@.

3. try to change to the given directory

4. list the file with the NLST command

Unsupported links (javascript:, etc.)
An unsupported link will only print a warning. No further checking will be made.

The complete list of recognized, but unsupported links can be found in the ‐
linkcheck/checker/unknownurl.py source file. The most prominent of them should be
JavaScript links.

SITEMAPS

       Sitemaps are parsed for links to check and can be detected either from a sitemap entry  in
       a  robots.txt,  or  when passed as a FILE-OR-URL argument in which case detection requires
       the urlset/sitemapindex tag  to  be  within  the  first  70  characters  of  the  sitemap.
       Compressed sitemap files are not supported.

PLUGINS

       There  are  two  plugin  types: connection and content plugins. Connection plugins are run
       after a successful connection to the URL host. Content plugins are run if the URL type has
       content  (mailto: URLs have no content for example) and if the check is not forbidden (ie.
       by HTTP robots.txt).  Use the option --list-plugins  for  a  list  of  plugins  and  their
       documentation. All plugins are enabled via the linkcheckerrc(5) configuration file.

RECURSION

       Before  descending  recursively into a URL, it has to fulfill several conditions. They are
       checked in this order:

       1. A URL must be valid.

       2. A URL must be parseable. This currently includes HTML files, Opera bookmarks files, and
          directories. If a file type cannot be determined (for example it does not have a common
          HTML file extension, and the content does not look like HTML),  it  is  assumed  to  be
          non-parseable.

       3. The  URL  content  must  be  retrievable.  This  is usually the case except for example
          mailto: or unknown URL types.

       4. The  maximum  recursion  level  must  not  be  exceeded.  It  is  configured  with  the
          --recursion-level option and is unlimited per default.

       5. It  must  not  match  the  ignored  URL  list. This is controlled with the --ignore-url
          option.

       6. The Robots Exclusion Protocol must allow links in the URL to be  followed  recursively.
          This is checked by searching for a "nofollow" directive in the HTML header data.

       Note  that  the  directory  recursion reads all files in that directory, not just a subset
       like index.htm.

NOTES

       URLs on the commandline starting with ftp. are treated like ftp://ftp., URLs starting with
       www.  are  treated  like  http://www.. You can also give local files as arguments.  If you
       have your system configured to automatically establish a connection to the internet  (e.g.
       with  diald), it will connect when checking links not pointing to your local host. Use the
       --ignore-url option to prevent this.

       Javascript links are not supported.

       If your platform does not support threading, LinkChecker disables it automatically.

       You can supply multiple user/password pairs in a configuration file.

ENVIRONMENT

       http_proxy
              specifies default HTTP proxy server

       https_proxy
              specifies default HTTPS proxy server

       curl_ca_bundle
              an alternative certificate bundle to be used with an HTTPS proxy

       no_proxy
              comma-separated list of domains to not contact over a proxy server

       LC_MESSAGES, LANG, LANGUAGE
              specify output language

RETURN VALUE

       The return value is 2 when

       • a program error occurred.

       The return value is 1 when

       • invalid links were found or

       • link warnings were found and warnings are enabled

       Else the return value is zero.

LIMITATIONS

       LinkChecker consumes memory for each queued URL to check. With thousands  of  queued  URLs
       the amount of consumed memory can become quite large.  This might slow down the program or
       even the whole system.

FILES

       $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/linkchecker/linkcheckerrc - default configuration file

       $XDG_DATA_HOME/linkchecker/failures - default failures logger output filename

       linkchecker-out.TYPE - default logger file output name

AUTHOR

       Bastian Kleineidam <bastian.kleineidam@web.de>

COPYRIGHT

       2000-2016 Bastian Kleineidam, 2010-2024 LinkChecker Authors