Running Crawls¶
Running crawls can be modified from the crawl workflow Latest Crawl tab. You may want to modify a running crawl if you find that the workflow is crawling pages that you didn't intend to archive, or if you want a boost of speed.
Crawl Workflow Status¶
A crawl workflow that is in progress can be in one of the following states:
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Waiting | The workflow can't start running yet but it is queued to run when resources are available. |
| Starting | New resources are starting up. Crawling should begin shortly. |
| Running | The crawler is finding and capturing pages! |
| Pausing | The workflow is in the process of being paused. |
| Paused | The workflow is currently paused. |
| Resuming | The workflow is in the process of resuming after being paused. |
| Stopping | A user has instructed this workflow to stop. Finishing capture of the current pages. |
| Finishing Downloads | The workflow has finished crawling and is finalizing downloads. |
| Generating WACZ | Data is being packaged into WACZ files. |
| Uploading WACZ | WACZ files have been created and are being transferred to storage. |
Watch Crawl¶
You can watch the current state of the browser windows as the crawler visits pages in the Watch tab of Latest Crawl. A list of queued URLs are displayed below in the Upcoming Pages section.
Live Exclusion Editing¶
While exclusions can be set before running a crawl workflow, sometimes while crawling the crawler may find new parts of the site that weren't previously known about and shouldn't be crawled, or get stuck browsing parts of a website that automatically generate URLs known as "crawler traps".
If the crawl queue is filled with URLs that should not be crawled, use the Edit Exclusions button in the Watch tab to instruct the crawler what pages should be excluded from the queue.
Exclusions added while crawling are applied to the same exclusion table saved in the workflow's settings and will be used the next time the crawl workflow is run unless they are manually removed.
Changing the Number of Browser Windows¶
Like exclusions, the number of browser windows can also be adjusted while crawling. On the Watch tab, press the +/- button next to the Running in N browser windows text and set the desired value.
Unlike exclusions, this change will not be applied to future workflow runs.
Pausing and Resuming Crawls¶
If you need to reassess or rescope your crawl at any point after it has started, you can pause the running crawl.
To pause a running crawl, click the Pause button. The crawl status will change from Running to Pausing as in-progress pages are completed, and then to Paused once the crawler is successful paused. Paused crawls do not continue to accrue execution time.
While a crawl is paused, it is possible to replay the pages crawled up to that point and to download the WACZ files from the Latest Crawl tab.
To resume a paused crawl, simply click the Resume button. The crawl status will update from Resuming to Running to indicate that the crawler has started crawling again. Any changes to the workflow settings will be applied in the the resumed crawl.
Note
Paused crawls that are not resumed within 7 days of being paused are automatically updated to Stopped. Once stopped, the crawl is finished and can no longer be resumed.
End a Crawl¶
If a crawl workflow is not crawling websites as intended it may be preferable to end crawling operations and update the crawl workflow's settings before trying again. There are two operations to end crawls, available both on the workflow's details page, or as part of the actions menu in the workflow list.
Stopping¶
Stopping a crawl will throw away the crawl queue but otherwise gracefully end the process and save anything that has been collected. Stopped crawls show up in Archived Items and can be used like any other item in the app.
Canceling¶
Canceling a crawl will throw away all data collected and immediately end the process. Canceled crawls do not show up in Archived Items, though a record of the runtime and workflow settings can be found in the crawl workflow's list of crawls.