Aquarium

Aquarium is a cookiecuter template for hassle-free Docker Compose + Splash setup. Think of it as a Splash instance with extra features and without common pitfalls.

Usage

First, make sure Docker and Docker Compose are installed.

Then install cookiecutter:

pip install cookiecutter

or (on OS X + homebrew):

brew install cookiecutter

Then generate a folder with config files:

cookiecutter gh:Adeptmind/aquarium

With all default options it'll create an aquarium folder in the current path. Go to this folder and start the Splash cluster:

cd ./aquarium
docker-compose up

Then use http://<host>:8050 as a regular Splash instance. On Linux http://0.0.0.0:8050 should work; on OS X and Windows IP address depends on boot2docker or docker-machine.

Check Splash Script

This script is intended to be run as a cron job. Every time it is run it will check if each splash server is reponsive and restart ones if the response from a health check is non-200. This is needed because the official splash docker image is prone to gettign into a state where it just hangs, meaning the docker restart always option is not enough. Right now the script must be changed if the number of splash servers in the cluster changes. Current Crontab */10 * * * * bash /home/ocod/check_splash

Options

When generating a config, cookiecutter will ask a bunch of questions.

• folder_name (default is "aquarium") - a name of the target folder.

• num_splashes (default is "3") - a number of Splash instances to create. To utilize full server capacity it makes sense to create slightly more Splash instances than CPU cores - e.g. on 2-core machine 3 instances often work best.

• health_check_period (default is "2") - time to wait between health check calls

• splash_version (default is "3.0") - a version of scrapighub/splash Docker image.

• auth_user (default is "user"), auth_password (default is "userpass") - HTTP Basic Auth credentials for Splash.

• splash_verbosity (default is "1") - Splash log verbosity, from 0 to 5.

• disable_private_mode (default is "false") - splash browsing setting, set to "true" to add this flag for splash

• max_timeout (default is "3600") - maximum allowed timeout.

• maxrss_mb (default is "3000") - a soft memory limit, in MB. Splash container will be restarted after some time if it starts to use more memory then this value.

• splash_slots (default is 5) - a number of Splash slots to use, i.e. how many render jobs to run in parallel in a single Splash process.

• stats_enabled (default is "1") - whether to enable HAProxy stats. If stats are enabled visit http://<host>:8036 to see stats page.

• stats_auth (default is "admin:adminpass") - HTTP Basic Auth credentials for HAProxy stats.

• tor (default is "1") - enter 0 to disable Tor support. When Tor support is enabled, all .onion links are opened using Tor. In addition to that, there is tor Splash proxy profile which you can use to render any page using Tor.

• adblock (default is "1") - Enter 0 to disable AdBlock Plus

  request filters (FIXME: this option is not working yet; filters are always available). By default, the following filters are available:

  • easylist: default set of EasyList filters for English;
  • easyprivacy: EasyPrivacy filters remove tracking scripts;
  • easylist_noadult: EasyList variant without filters for adult domains;
  • fanboy-social: removes social media content such as the Facebook like buttons and other widgets.
  • fanboy-annoyance: blocks Social Media content, in-page pop-ups and other annoyances; use it to decrease loading times and uncluttering pages. fanboy-social is already included in this filter.

Contributing

• Source code: https://github.com/TeamHG-Memex/aquarium
• Bug tracker: https://github.com/TeamHG-Memex/aquarium/issues

License is MIT.

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