Ex.ua
| ex.ua | |
| URL | ex.ua |
| Status | Upcoming... |
| Archiving status | Template:Not started |
| Archiving type | Unknown |
| IRC channel | #archiveteam-bs (on hackint) |
ex.ua was the 11th largest website in Ukraine. It allowed you to create user accounts then store files of almost any size under that account.
Critical info
ex.ua was like what.cd, except the data is not floating around DHT with the potential to be re-found one day.
ALL SITE DATA WILL BE DELETED ON THE 31ST OF DECEMBER 2016.
The site was shut down on the 18th of November, and is currently in a "user data takeout" phase. Public access was officially made impossible on the 1st of December.
However, the API has not been turned off. It may be wise to keep this quiet?
$ wget ex.ua/filelist/71339549.xspf
--2016-12-08 15:47:23-- http://ex.ua/filelist/71339549.xspf
Resolving ex.ua (ex.ua)... 190.115.31.5
Connecting to ex.ua (ex.ua)|190.115.31.5|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 4587 (4.5K) [application/xspf+xml]
Saving to: '71339549.xspf'
71339549.xspf 100%[======================================================>] 4.48K --.-KB/s in 0s
2016-12-08 15:47:26 (141 MB/s) - '71339549.xspf' saved [4587/4587]
$ cat 71339549.xspf
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<playlist version="1" xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/">
<title>A State Of Trance 2011 (Unmixed) [FLAC]</title>
<location>http://www.ex.ua/view/71339549</location>
<trackList>
<track>
<title>01 - Max Graham feat. Neev Kennedy - So Caught Up (Original Mix).flac</title>
<location>http://www.ex.ua/get/65282356</location>
</track>
<track>
<title>01. Anhken - Always Look Back (Original Mix).flac</title>
<location>http://www.ex.ua/get/65282029</location>
</track>
...many more XML nodes...
</trackList>
</playlist>
$ wget http://www.ex.ua/get/65282356
--2016-12-08 15:47:46-- http://www.ex.ua/get/65282356
Resolving www.ex.ua (www.ex.ua)... 190.115.31.5
Connecting to www.ex.ua (www.ex.ua)|190.115.31.5|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved
Location: http://fs35.www.ex.ua/get/9d8dfe85ddb7dbf55366349b67d32186/65282356/01%20-%20Max%20Graham%20feat.%20Neev%20Kennedy%20-%20So%20Caught%20Up%20(Original%20Mix).flac [following]
--2016-12-08 15:47:47-- http://fs35.www.ex.ua/get/9d8dfe85ddb7dbf55366349b67d32186/65282356/01%20-%20Max%20Graham%20feat.%20Neev%20Kennedy%20-%20So%20Caught%20Up%20(Original%20Mix).flac
Resolving fs35.www.ex.ua (fs35.www.ex.ua)... 194.106.216.35
Connecting to fs35.www.ex.ua (fs35.www.ex.ua)|194.106.216.35|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 60879619 (58M) [audio/x-flac]
Saving to: '65282356'
65282356 2%[=> ] 1.69M 377KB/s eta 2m 33s ^C
Technical considerations:
- The ID number I used in the first wget request came from a bookmark I made months ago. You need to bruteforce the ID.
- Note that the XML format says <trackList> and <track> for all folder types, not just music. You can s/xspf/txt/ with the file extension, but the XSPF format gives you the folder title - quite critical.
- The /get/..... URLs *always* give you a 301 Moved, but (I can't reproduce this right now) IIRC it can also send you to something *other* than the file URL if the file has actually been silently deleted (quite common with 5GB+ files I found). I think it sends you to a /view/ link in that case. Crawlers would need to handle this.
Some good news
The Wayback Machine's user agent was allowed past the redirect, and has indexed quite a lot of the site!!
So the what.cd-like indexing and organization has been preserved to an unknown extent.
If someone wants to archive up a full copy of IA's dump (maybe some users may be able to do this in a way that stresses IA less?) that would be a great resource to have.
"Give me some incentive to help."
This technique will work really well if you do it ASAP before search engine caches get purged.
Prefix site:ex.ua to search engine queries of your choice. Clicking the links will not work (public access has been turned down) but you'll likely be able to retrieve the files of your choice using the method shown above. :D
This is to give you a taste of what the site provided - please do note that search engines were only ever able to index a few % of it.
(Unfortunately the site search feature has been turned off.)
Other tidbits
This is nicely concise and will take 3-5 mins to read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EX.UA
Here's info about the Nov 18 shutdown (the comments at the end are insightful): https://torrentfreak.com/major-cyberlocker-ex-ua-to-shut-down-amid-police-crackdown-161118/
My (i336_'s) experiences: in 2010 the site went Ukraine-only (see Wikipedia article), but the developers quietly left in some easter eggs to allow users willing to do a bit of digging to continue to access the site. I learned this by accident when I clicked Translate on a search results page one day and found I'd bypassed the usual redirect-to-/ the site normally did. It was the user agent - Translate used Googlebot. The rest was history.
(Edits/updates/layout improvements welcome)