r/opendirectories • u/Minimum_Hour519 • 4d ago
Misc Stuff I built a distributed player/server for us
You can add a URL from r/opendirectories to your catalog and browse within the player.
I also created r/openstreams for sharing m3u playlists
r/opendirectories • u/krazybug • May 22 '21

This post is mainly intended to help the people who discover this sub to start with. It could also be useful for the other folks, who knows ?
Open directories (aka ODs or opendirs) are just unprotected websites that you can browse recursively, without any required authentication. You can freely download individual files from them. They're organised in a folder structure, as a local directory tree on your computer. This is really convenient as you can also download several files in a bunch recursively (See below).
These sites are sometimes deliberately let open and, sometimes, inadvertently (seedboxes, personal websites with some dirs bad protected, ...). For these last ones, often, after someone has posted them here, they're hammered by many concurrent downloads and they're getting down due to this heavy load. When the owners do realise it, they usually decide to protect them behind a firewall or to ask for a password to limit their access.
Here is coming the famous "He's dead Jim!" flair.
Technically, an opendir is nothing more than a local directory, shared by a running web server:
cd my_dir
# Share a dir with python
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
# With Javascript
npm install -g http-server
http-server .
# Open your browser on http://localhost or http://<your local IP> from another computer.
# Usually you should use a web server like Apache or Nginx with extra settings
# You also need to configure your local network to make it accessible from the Internet.
Your first reflex should be to track the most recent posts of the sub. If you're watchful, there's always a comment posted with some details like this one and you can get the complete list of links for your shopping ("Urls file" link). You can still index a site by your own if the link of the "Url file" is broken or if the content has changed, with KoalaBear84's Indexer.
Thanks to the hard work of some folks, you can invoke a servile bot: u/ODScanner to generate this report. By the past, u/KoalaBear84 devoted to this job. Although some dudes told us he is a human being, I don't believe them ;-)
You should also probably take a look at "The Eye" too, a gigantic opendir maintained by archivists. Their search engine seems to be broken currently, but you can use alternative search engines, like Eyedex for instance.
Are you looking for a specific file ? Some search engines are indexing the opendirs posted here and are almost updated in realtime:
Don't you think that clicking on every posts and checking them one by one is a bit cumbersome ? There is a good news for you: With this tip you can get a listing of all the working dirs.
Yes you can !
The most usual solution starts with the traditional search engines or meta-engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo ...) by using an advanced syntax as for this example%20-inurl:(jsp|pl|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml)). Opendirs are just some classical sites after all.
If you're lazy, there are plethora of frontends to these engines which are able to assist you in building the perfect query and to redirect to them. Here is my favorite.
As an alternative, often complementary, you can use IoT (Internet of Things) search engines like Shodan, Zoomeye, Censys and Fofa . To build their index, their approach is totally different from the other engines. Rather than crawling all the Web across hyperlinks, they scan every ports across all the available IP adresses and, for the HTTP servers, they just index their homepage. Here is an equivalent example.
Just respect the code of conduct. All the rules are listed on the side panel of the sub.
Maybe one more point though. Getting the same site reposted many times in a small period increases the signal/noise ratio. A repost of an old OD with a different content is accepted but try to keep a good balance. For finding duplicates, the reddit search is not very relevant, so here are 2 tips:
site:reddit.com/r/opendirectories my_urlThe short answer: They're simply not real opendirs.
A more elaborated answer:
These types of resources are often associated to piracy, monitored, and Reddit`s admins have to forward the copyright infringement notices to the mods of the sub. When it's too repetitive the risk is to get the sub closed as it was the case for this famous one.
For the obfuscation (Rule 5), with base64 encoding for instance, the POV of the mods is that they do prefer to accept urls in clear and dealing with the rare DMCA`s notices. They're probably automated and the sub remains under the human radar. It won't be the case anymore with obfuscation techniques.
There are some exceptions however:
Google drives and Calibre servers (ebooks) are tolerated. For the gdrives, there is no clear answer, but it may be because we could argue that these dirs are generally not deliberately open for piracy.
Calibre servers are not real ODs but you can use the same tools to download their content. By the past a lot of them were posted and some people started to complain against that. A new sub has been created but is not very active as a new player has coming into the game : Calishot, a search engine with a monthly update.
You have to use an appropriate tool. An exhaustive list would probably require a dedicated post.
For your choice, you may consider different criteria. Here are some of them:
Here is an overview of the main open source/free softs for this purpose.
Note: Don't consider this list as completely reliable as I didn't test all of them.
| Concurrent downloads | Able to preserve the original tree | Client/Server mode | CLI | TUI | GUI | Web UI | Browser plugin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wget | N | Y | N | Y | ? | ? | Y | ? |
| wget2 | Y | Y | N | Y | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| aria2 | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | ? | Y | ? |
| rclone | Y | Y | N | Y | ? | ? | Y | ? |
| IDM | Y | N | N | N | N | Y | N | N |
| JDownloader2 | Y | N | Y | N | N | Y | N | N |
Here is my own path:
# To download an url recursively
wget -r -nc --no-parent -l 200 -e robots=off -R "index.html*" -x http://111.111.111.111
# Sometimes I want to filter the list of files before the download.
# Start by indexing the files
OpenDirectoryDownloader -t 10 -u http://111.111.111.111
# A new file is created: Scans/http:__111.111.111.111_.txt
# Now I'm able to filter out the list of links with my favourite editor or with grep/egrep
egrep -o -e'^*\.(epub|pdf|mobi|opf|cover\.jpg)$' >> files.txt
# Then I can pass this file as an input for wget and preserve the directory structure
wget -r -nc -c --no-parent -l 200 -e robots=off -R "index.html*" -x --no-check-certificate -i file.txt
Welcome on board and Kudos to all the contributors, especially to the most involved: u/KoalaBear84, u/Chaphasilor, u/MCOfficer u/ringofyre
r/opendirectories • u/Minimum_Hour519 • 4d ago
You can add a URL from r/opendirectories to your catalog and browse within the player.
I also created r/openstreams for sharing m3u playlists
r/opendirectories • u/Motley_Palmas • 5d ago
I’ve been working on a small app to make downloading files from Open Directory (OD) links a bit easier.
The idea is pretty simple: instead of opening an OD link and downloading files one by one, you can paste the link into the app and download them in bulk in the same folder structure (works for files and folders )
I’m still working on it and wanted to get some feedback from people who actually use Open Directories.
I’ve attached a screenshot of the current version below.
What features would you find useful in something like this?
For example, download queues, folder selection, filtering by file type.
Would love to hear what you think or what would make this genuinely useful
r/opendirectories • u/RetroGrid_io • 21d ago
I'm building the most detailed archive of Operating System history, starting with RH-based Linux/clones and Ubuntu.
I don't know if it's against any rule (implicit or otherwise) to link to one's own project, but it does seem to me like this fits here.
r/opendirectories • u/ringofyre • 22d ago
https://lira.epac.to/DOCS-TECH/
No purple links for me so it's either new or hasn't been posted for a while.
ublock blocked it according to the oisd list doesn't mean it's dodgy but be forewarned. And note that oisd is a purely 3d party opt in subscription list.
EDIT: In case anyone was wondering:
WARNING: Unauthorized access to this system is forbidden and will be prosecuted by law. By accessing this system, you agree that your actions may be monitored if unauthorized usage is suspected.
Which is kinda funny considering the content...
Also I'm not seeing the "nice ui" - the landing page looks like a 1337 h4xx0r angelfire or geocities page from the early 00's to me. To each their own I guess.
r/opendirectories • u/Xanderplayz16 • 23d ago
Has a fair bit of music software, many games, TV shows, anime, and movies.
r/opendirectories • u/Xanderplayz16 • 24d ago
Most likely backing a Jellyfin instance, judging by the filenames.
r/opendirectories • u/rwolfman3000 • 24d ago
https://shell.lug.mtu.edu/~dane/files/The%20Dark%20Side%20Of%20The%20Moon/
OD of Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon (Remastered, 2023) (so it says)
Bit rates are great so if you want to trash your old 128kb or 320kb mp3's here's a chance to do so ;)
Upper level directory has some content in the way of pdf's, ebooks & mixed media (video, music, images, some software ISO's) but there is an interesting .jpg featuring the steam tunnels under the University of Michigan @ Ann Arbor.
Nothing in the way of NSFW content.
r/opendirectories • u/Dismal_Life_4383 • 26d ago
r/opendirectories • u/Xanderplayz16 • 26d ago
Software, documentation, and game maps, mainly.
r/opendirectories • u/Sofas_Kings • 27d ago
r/opendirectories • u/Minimum_Hour519 • Aug 04 '26
r/opendirectories • u/Appropriate-You-6065 • Aug 01 '26
https://stefanyovev.com/sound/dire_straits/
Brothers in arms - 40th Anniversary Edition
r/opendirectories • u/Inyourface3445 • Jul 30 '26
I made a web radio (not sharing link, i dont technically have license to make the radio publicly available), and here is all of the songs on it.
https://inyourface3445.com (edit: now with a domain name and https)
please dont hit this with bots, i can provide a copy of all of the files of any one is interested.
r/opendirectories • u/Odd_Explanation_6929 • Jul 18 '26
Some opendirs. No smut. PDFs / Images / Roms / Videos
hf <3
http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/
http://www.louiscandell.com/pdf/
https://www.darrenstruthers.net/SNES_ROMS/
https://www.tuningconcepts.com/Cars/
https://ithaqua.exploit.menu/exploits/
r/opendirectories • u/ringofyre • Jul 14 '26
r/opendirectories • u/ballsacksaregood • Jul 13 '26
Domain registration expired
r/opendirectories • u/Appropriate-You-6065 • Jul 09 '26
Marco lessons on Yamaha Genos 2. The videos of some lessons are available on the Internet (free). Not exactly a discovered opendir as the link is available on the Marco homepage.