Ubuntu Manpage: webcheck - website link checker

NAME

       webcheck - website link checker

SYNOPSIS

       webcheck [OPTION]...  URL

DESCRIPTION

webcheck will check the document at the specified URL for links to other documents, follow these links
recursively and generate an HTML report.

-i, --internal=PATTERN
Mark URLs matching the PATTERN (perl-type regular expression) as an internal link. Can be used
multiple times. Note that the PATTERN is matched against the full URL. URLs matching this
PATTERN will be considered internal, even if they match one of the --external PATTERNs.

-x, --external=PATTERN
Mark URLs matching the PATTERN (perl-type regular expression) as an external link. Can be used
multiple times. Note that the PATTERN is matched against the full URL.

-y, --yank=PATTERN
Do not check URLs matching the PATTERN (perl-type regular expression). Like the -x flag, though
this option will cause webcheck to not check the link matched by regex whereas -x will check the
link but not its children. Can be used multiple times. Note that the PATTERN is matched against
the full URL.

-b, --base-only
Consider any URL not starting with the base URL to be external. For example, if you run
webcheck -b http://www.example.com/foo
then http://www.example.com/foo/bar will be considered internal whereas http://www.example.com/
will be considered external. By default all the pages on the site will be considered internal.

-a, --avoid-external
Avoid external links. Normally if webcheck is examining an HTML page and it finds a link that
points to an external document, it will check to see if that external document exists. This flag
disables that action.

--ignore-robots
Do not retrieve and parse robots.txt files. By default robots.txt files are retrieved and
honored. If you are sure you want to ignore and override the webmaster's decision this option can
be used.
For more information on robots.txt handling see the NOTES section below.

-q, --quiet, --silent
Do not print out progress as webcheck traverses a site.

-d, --debug
Print debugging information while crawling the site. This option is mainly useful for developers.

-o, --output=DIRECTORY
Output directory. Use to specify the directory where webcheck will dump its reports. The default
is the current directory or as specified by config.py. If this directory does not exist it will be
created for you (if possible).

-c, --continue
Try to continue from a previous run. When using this option webcheck will look for a webcheck.dat
in the output directory. This file is read to restore the state from the previous run. This
allows webcheck to continue a previously interrupted run. When this option is used, the
--internal, --external and --yank options will be ignored as well as any URL arguments. The
--base-only and --avoid-external options should be the same as the previous run.
Note that this option is experimental and it's semantics may change with coming releases
(especially in relation to other options). Also note that the stored files are not guaranteed to
be compatible between releases.

-f, --force
Overwrite files without asking. This option is required for running webcheck non-interactively.

-r, --redirects=N
Redirect depth. the number of redirects webcheck should follow when following a link. 0 implies to
follow all redirects.

-u, --userpass=URL
Specify a URL with username and password information to use for basic authentication when visiting
the site.
e.g. http://test:secret@example.com/
This option may be specified multiple times.

-w, --wait=SECONDS
Wait SECONDS between document retrievals. Usually webcheck will process a url and immediately move
on to the next. However on some loaded systems it may be desirable to have webcheck pause between
requests. This option can be set to any non-negative number.

-v, --version
Show version of program.

-h, --help
Show short summary of options.

URL CLASSES

       URLs are divided into two classes:

       Internal  URLs  are  retrieved and the retrieved item is checked for syntax.  Also, the retrieved item is
       searched for links to other items (of any class) and these links are followed.

       External URLs are only retrieved to test whether they are valid and to gather some basic information from
       them (title, size, content-type, etc).  The retrieved items are not inspected for links to other items.

       Apart  from  their  class,  URLs  can  also  be  considered  yanked  (as  specified  with  the  --yank or
       --avoid-external options).  The URLs can be either internal or external and  will  not  be  retrieved  or
       checked at all.  URLs of unsupported schemes are also considered yanked.

EXAMPLES

       Check the site www.example.com but consider any path with "/webcheck" in it to be external.
           webcheck http://www.example.com/ -x /webcheck

NOTES

       When  checking  internal  URLs  webcheck  honors  the  robots.txt  file, identifying itself as user-agent
       webcheck. Disallowed links will not be checked at all as if the -y option was specified for that URL.  To
       allow webcheck to crawl parts of a site that other robots are disallowed, use something like:
           User-agent: *
           Disallow: /foo

           User-agent: webcheck
           Allow: /foo

ENVIRONMENT

       <scheme>_proxy
              Proxy url for <scheme>.

REPORTING BUGS

       Bug reports shoult be sent to the mailing list <webcheck-users@lists.arthurdejong.org>.  More information
       on reporting bugs can be found on the webcheck homepage:
       http://arthurdejong.org/webcheck/

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 1998, 1999 Albert Hopkins (marduk)
       Copyright © 2002 Mike W. Meyer
       Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Arthur de Jong
       webcheck is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO  warranty;  not  even  for
       MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       The  files  produced  as  output  from  the software do not automatically fall under the copyright of the
       software, unless explicitly stated otherwise.