CODfiles (Filefront) Closes

CODfiles (Filefront) has officially closed as of 21st September. The site was a good resource for older mods for the Call of Duty series, going right back to 2003. I saw some of my old mods in there for COD1 and UO, dating from 2004.

Thus ends another era.

Another one bites the dust.
Noo where will I get my patch files now when I reinstalled my OS again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by php

Another one bites the dust.
Noo where will I get my patch files now when I reinstalled my OS again.

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You can still download some files that were added to GamersHell.com.

http://www.gamershell.com/pc/call_of...odern_warfare/
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/call_of_duty_2/
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/call_of_duty/

So sad.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mitch

You can still download some files that were added to GamersHell.com.

http://www.gamershell.com/pc/call_of...odern_warfare/
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/call_of_duty_2/
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/call_of_duty/

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Maybe I need to scrape all those files and put them on my FTP in case they go down as well. Space is not an issue

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Originally Posted by CaptainSlow

So sad.



Maybe I need to scrape all those files and put them on my FTP in case they go down as well. Space is not an issue

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Was thinking the same thing, also for the tutorial(s) which I'm afraid of will vanish eventually when all sites atm go down.

The thing is, whatever you put on your FTP site, it has to be there for years and years. I have old links to FTP sites that once hosted the patches, but they have been dead for many, many years.

Yeah if you can host the tutorials?

As long we make us dependent on centralized servers/services, we will always be vulnerable to single point of failures.

Solution might be something out of this: https://www.google.com/search?q=bitt...ralized+backup

So everybody could join the "backup network" and as soon somebody adds a file, the others will backup/sync it too.

Though that might introduce some problems:
- collecting files
- sync scripts
- managing of illegal files
- malicious backup providers in general
- collecting of backup ip:port's
- categorizing of data to give a nice user interface for normal users

Maybe the only thing needed at first is some trust and 2-3 ppl who sync each other with some simple rsync script and http-dir-listing for users. When somebody kills his root coz > reasons, it's no big deal.

Would be nice if Filefront would rsync the CoD files to one of our servers... but I guess that won't happen.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kung foo man

As long we make us dependent on centralized servers/services, we will always be vulnerable to single point of failures.

Solution might be something out of this: https://www.google.com/search?q=bitt...ralized+backup

So everybody could join the "backup network" and as soon somebody adds a file, the others will backup/sync it too.
Maybe the only thing needed at first is some trust and 2-3 ppl who sync each other with some simple rsync script and http-dir-listing for users. When somebody kills his root coz > reasons, it's no big deal.

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Maybe a shared folder on Dropbox or related services?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kung foo man

Would be nice if Filefront would rsync the CoD files to one of our servers... but I guess that won't happen.

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It couldn't hurt to ask. But i don't think i have enough free space for that on my VPS. Maybe on my own drives.

I don't think file front closed entirely they just stopped their front end sites and moved them all to gamefront.

See: http://www.gamefront.com/files/listi...all_of_Duty_2/

Edit: http://forums.filefront.com/announce...y-offline.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tally

The thing is, whatever you put on your FTP site, it has to be there for years and years. I have old links to FTP sites that once hosted the patches, but they have been dead for many, many years.

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True, very true and I do realize that. A big plus is that the server I use as file mirror, is also my own personal storage server for documents and pictures. This way I won't let it go down that quickly, else I lose my own personal data as well ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kung foo man

As long we make us dependent on centralized servers/services, we will always be vulnerable to single point of failures.

Solution might be something out of this: https://www.google.com/search?q=bitt...ralized+backup

So everybody could join the "backup network" and as soon somebody adds a file, the others will backup/sync it too.

Though that might introduce some problems:
- collecting files
- sync scripts
- managing of illegal files
- malicious backup providers in general
- collecting of backup ip:port's
- categorizing of data to give a nice user interface for normal users

Maybe the only thing needed at first is some trust and 2-3 ppl who sync each other with some simple rsync script and http-dir-listing for users. When somebody kills his root coz > reasons, it's no big deal.

Would be nice if Filefront would rsync the CoD files to one of our servers... but I guess that won't happen.

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The solution you pose is indeed robust but also comes with some drawbacks, some of which are easier to overcome than others. For some problems in your list I have a solution in mind, for others I do not have a quick solution at hand.
Bittorrent Sync might be an option to sync between backup hosts, as an easy alternative to rsync. Drawback is that it's still beta software in my opinion. I've been using Bittorrent Sync for about a year now to sync my files between my computers and my server. Often files remain locked for no reason and won't be synced which is really annoying. Also, it uses a lot of RAM.
That still leaves us with the other issues on your list, for example a directory listing. In order to know which files can be downloaded and be able to download the files, you first must download and install BTSync and get access to the folder using the secret key. Of course I could install BTSync and have it sync into a IIS inetpub folder with directory listing enabled, but it ain't pretty.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mitch

Maybe a shared folder on Dropbox or related services?


It couldn't hurt to ask. But i don't think i have enough free space for that on my VPS. Maybe on my own drives.

I don't think file front closed entirely they just stopped their front end sites and moved them all to gamefront.

See: http://www.gamefront.com/files/listi...all_of_Duty_2/

Edit: http://forums.filefront.com/announce...y-offline.html

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MEGA is a Dropbox alternative/clone and gives 50GB of free storage, the most you can get for free at any cloud sharing service. Another option is to buy Office365 for a year, you'll get 1TB of OneDrive for free. Both still have the same issue when it comes to indexing.

Anyway, currently I have 6.18TB (that's 6180GB) free on my server. I think that should suffice for now.
http://i.imgur.com/KL29TSc.png
Background info: 2 years ago I bought a Synology RS814+ with 4x3TB in RAID10 and co-located it in a datacenter. It's connected using 1Gbps and I have a bandwidth allowance of 5TB (5000GB) every month.I got rid of all cloud services and use it as my personal file storage server. Using BTSync I sync my files. Additionally it automatically downloads my favorite TV shows etc. It's pretty much overkill but hey, never can have enough space!

Let me know if you guys are interested, maybe we can work something out.

I had another look at this and I don't see an easy way of scraping either gamershell or gamefront. Both use an unique key which is generated for each download request, making automatic scraping impossible as far as I can see :(

IzNoGoD just had some problem some days ago, he wanted e.g. to download: http://www.gamefront.com/files/5125790

You do the initial http request:

Code:

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printf "GET /files/5125790 HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: www.gamefront.com\r\n\r\n" | netcat gamefront.com 80 > 1.txt

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Check 1.txt, you gotta rip two lines:

Code:

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Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=1mcbhc3hv5h4iid1rddfr7vqk6; path=/
<a href="http://www.gamefront.com/files/service/thankyou?id=5125790" class="downloadNow premium-content" id="downloadLink">

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Second request will use this data:

Code:

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printf "GET /files/service/thankyou?id=5125790 HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: www.gamefront.com\r\nCookie: PHPSESSID=1mcbhc3hv5h4iid1rddfr7vqk6\r\n\r\n" | netcat gamefront.com 80 > 2.txt

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Check 2.txt, you gotta rip this:

Code:

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        var downloadUrl = 'http://media1.gamefront.com/pub2/Call_of_Duty_2/Official_Patches/v13/CallofDuty2Patchv1_3.exe?b17f4b620c6cf1393ffa644f10eea151c975f3a1042cbd46c310d68acbb5e5807a00095c2e30b1cb0c60fa18dc133ad4f7284fffc0c0ac5c176306165711ed57a1f1c14a5ba52be7c140b96bd330899e88548e2ad06cffb08c39eacc6099c1645c43ab564e08f60dcf20027ac61c264fb1df6e4510e4ff7a9dfbd6fc381ea077a55203a8dda6aba141b1&ext=.exe';

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And just download it:

Code:

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wget http://media1.gamefront.com/pub2/Call_of_Duty_2/Official_Patches/v13/CallofDuty2Patchv1_3.exe?b17f4b620c6cf1393ffa644f10eea151c975f3a1042cbd46c310d68acbb5e5807a00095c2e30b1cb0c60fa18dc133ad4f7284fffc0c0ac5c176306165711ed57a1f1c14a5ba52be7c140b96bd330899e88548e2ad06cffb08c39eacc6099c1645c43ab564e08f60dcf20027ac61c264fb1df6e4510e4ff7a9dfbd6fc381ea077a55203a8dda6aba141b1&ext=.exe > CallofDuty2Patchv1_3.exe

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Would probably be nice just to reconstruct the file structure based on "Call_of_Duty_2/Official_Patches/v13/CallofDuty2Patchv1_3.exe" in final dl link.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Also, about the total filesize, I wouldn't worry too much. According to the latest archived version (11 Aug) of codfiles.com by archive.org, these were the statistics on their webpage:

Site Statistics
Files: 5862
Archive Size: 71.85 GB

Should be easy ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CaptainSlow

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Also, about the total filesize, I wouldn't worry too much. According to the latest archived version (11 Aug) of codfiles.com by archive.org, these were the statistics on their webpage:

Site Statistics
Files: 5862
Archive Size: 71.85 GB

Should be easy ;)

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LOL that is so wrong. I was a staff member of Filefront for over 8 years, working on adding/removing COD mod files, and I can tell you now, the cache size of CODFiles is nearer 5 Tb of data. It's one of the reasons the site broke - the database was just too big. And so it wouldn't parse properly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tally

LOL that is so wrong. I was a staff member of Filefront for over 8 years, working on adding/removing COD mod files, and I can tell you now, the cache size of CODFiles is nearer 5 Tb of data. It's one of the reasons the site broke - the database was just too big. And so it wouldn't parse properly.

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Oh lol didn't know. 5TB should still fit on my NAS though.

Well, initial indexing of the filefront cod2 files shows approx 1600 files. Assuming the same average size-per-file as the archive.org reported, that should come to around 25gb.

Havent checked cod1/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11 etc

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IzNoGoD

Well, initial indexing of the filefront cod2 files shows approx 1600 files. Assuming the same average size-per-file as the archive.org reported, that should come to around 25gb.

Havent checked cod1/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11 etc

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Yeah, but whatever you do - don't believe a word I say, because I just make it up as I go along.

I'm done here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tally

Yeah, but whatever you do - don't believe a word I say, because I just make it up as I go along.

I'm done here.

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Just telling you what i see. codfiles might have contained a lot more (or redundant copies of everything infinite times over - i dont know), but the initial fetch of the filefront cod2 files shows 1648 files present in that category.