How to back up your LJ with Xjournal or ljdump if you’re using Mac OS X
A friend asked me how to backup her LJ using ljdump. Here’s what I sent her:
ljdump.py is a command line program, so you would run it like you run old fashioned dos programs. I’ve included
instructions for running it below.
However, you might like xjournal better. It’s a binary application that you install and use in a fashion similar to
other Mac programs. It allows you to better see and edit your old entries than ljdump.py, which simply stores them as
XML files. Note that I’ve experienced crashes running both programs today-I suspect a lot of people are backing up
their LJ’s right now, which may be putting an unusual amount of load on the server. So don’t give up if either program
crashes. Try again later today, or later this week. Note that xjournal only stores entries, whereas ljdump.py also
stores comments.
You can download xjournal here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80934
Community support:
http://community.livejournal.com/xjournal/profile
How to back up your LJ with Xjournal
* Save the downloaded file to your Desktop
* Double-click on the file to unzip it.
* Double-click on the app to open it.
* Enter your loginname and password.
* After you’re logged into your account, select “Window” > “History” from the top menu.
* Click Download
* This should start a download of your LJ’s entire history.
* After it finishes, you may need to close the program and re-open it to see your entries. Go the History page by
selecting “Window” > “History”. If all goes well, you should see something like this screenshot:
* The actual entries are physically stored in this file: ~/Library/Application Support/Xjournal/history.plist
How to use ljdump.py to back up your lj:
* Double click on the ljdump-1.2.zip file, and unzip it. This should create a folder labeled ljdump-1.2 on your
Desktop. To confirm, open the ljdump-1.2 directory. You should see the following files inside:
ChangeLog
ljdump.config.sample
ljdump.py
* Open the ljdump.config.sample file with TextEdit. You can find the TextEdit program in the Applications directory.
(Select “Go” > “Applications”) from the Finder menu. Scroll to the bottom and doubleclick on TextEdit.app. From the
File menu select “Open” > “Desktop” > “ljdump-1.2″ > “ljdump.config.sample”.
* Substitute your username and password for the sample username and password.
* Save the file in the same directory as “ljdump.config”.
* Open a terminal. You can find the Terminal program in the Utilities directory (select “Go” > “Utilities” from the
Finder menu). Scroll to the bottom of the directory. Double click on Terminal.app.
* Now you can actually run the program. ljdump.py is command line program, so you first have to go to the directory
where it is located. Click on the terminal, then type:
cd ~/Desktop/ljdump-1.2
This command means “Go to the ljdump-1.2 directory on my Desktop”
* Confirm that you are in the correct directory by typing “ls -1″. This will list the files in the directory. You
should see something like this:
ChangeLog
ljdump.config
ljdump.py
* Run the ljdump.py command by typing the following:
./ljdump.py
* This should cause the program to start downloading your journal. You entries will be stored in a directory with the
same name as your lj handle. If that directory doesn’t already exist, it will be created. As the program runs, you
should see output like this:
crasch2:~/Desktop/ljdump-1.2 crasch$ ./ljdump.py
Fetching journal entries for: crasch
Created subdirectory: crasch
Fetching journal entry L-1 (create)
Fetching journal entry L-2 (create)
Fetching journal entry L-3 (create)
Fetching journal entry L-4 (create)
Fetching journal entry L-5 (create)
Fetching journal entry L-6 (create)
Fetching journal entry L-7 (create)
….
Each entry is a day in your LJ.
If all goes well, the last message you see from the program should be:
Fetching journal entry L-2915 (update)
Fetching journal entry L-2913 (update)
Fetching journal entry L-2916 (create)
Fetching journal comments for: crasch
2853 new entries, 16151 new comments
If you have questions, there’s also a community for LJdump:
http://community.livejournal.com/ljdump/
Original: craschworks - comments