LINKCHECKERRC(5)

✨ LINKCHECKERRC(5) ✨

okay bestie, listen up — this is the linkcheckerrc page from the LinkChecker manual, and it's lowkey a whole vibe. no cap, it's giving "config file energy" and we're gonna get through it together 💖

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🌸 NAME 🌸

linkcheckerrc — the configuration file for LinkChecker. yep, that's the whole name. iconic.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so linkcheckerrc is literally the config file for LinkChecker. it's written in an INI-style format (iykyk, sections and key=value, super chill).

the default file location is:

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/linkchecker/linkcheckerrc — or else ~/.config/linkchecker/linkcheckerrc on Unix 🐧
• %HOMEPATH%\.config\linkchecker\linkcheckerrc on Windows systems 🪟

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👑 SETTINGS 👑

🔍 checking

• cookiefile=filename — read a file with initial cookie data 🍪. the cookie data format is explained over in linkchecker(1). Command line option: --cookiefile
• debugmemory=[0|1] — write memory allocation statistics to a file on exit, and heads up, it requires meliae. the default is not to write the file. Command line option: none
• localwebroot=STRING — when checking absolute URLs inside local files, the given root directory is used as base URL. note that the given directory must have URL syntax, so it must use a slash to join directories instead of a backslash. and the given directory must end with a slash. Command line option: none
• recursionlevel=NUMBER — check recursively all links up to given depth. a negative depth will enable infinite recursion ♾️. default depth is infinite. Command line option: --recursion-level
• threads=NUMBER — generate no more than the given number of threads. default number of threads is 10. to disable threading specify a non-positive number. Command line option: --threads
• timeout=NUMBER — set the timeout for connection attempts in seconds ⏳. the default timeout is 60 seconds. Command line option: --timeout
• aborttimeout=NUMBER — time to wait for checks to finish after the user aborts the first time (with Ctrl-C or the abort button). the default abort timeout is 300 seconds. Command line option: none
• useragent=STRING — specify the User-Agent string to send to the HTTP server, for example "Mozilla/4.0". the default is "LinkChecker/X.Y" where X.Y is the current version of LinkChecker. Command line option: --user-agent
• sslverify=[0|1|filename] — if set to zero disables SSL certificate checking. if set to one (the default) enables SSL certificate checking with the provided CA certificate file. if a filename is specified, it will be used as the certificate file 🔐. Command line option: none
• maxrunseconds=NUMBER — stop checking new URLs after the given number of seconds. same as if the user stops (by hitting Ctrl-C) after the given number of seconds. the default is not to stop until all URLs are checked. Command line option: none
• maxfilesizedownload=NUMBER — files larger than NUMBER bytes will be ignored, without downloading anything if accessed over http and an accurate Content-Length header was returned. no more than this amount of a file will be downloaded. the default is 5242880 (5 MB). Command line option: none
• maxfilesizeparse=NUMBER — files larger than NUMBER bytes will not be parsed for links. the default is 1048576 (1 MB). Command line option: none
• maxnumurls=NUMBER — maximum number of URLs to check. new URLs will not be queued after the given number of URLs is checked. the default is to queue and check all URLs. Command line option: none
• maxrequestspersecond=NUMBER — limit the maximum number of HTTP requests per second to one host. the average number of requests per second is approximately one third of the maximum. values less than 1 and at least 0.001 can be used. to use values greater than 10, the HTTP server must return a LinkChecker response header. the default is 10. Command line option: none
• robotstxt=[0|1] — when using http, fetch robots.txt, and confirm whether each URL should be accessed before checking 🤖. the default is to use robots.txt files. Command line option: --no-robots
• allowedschemes=NAME[,NAME...] — allowed URL schemes as comma-separated list. Command line option: none
• resultcachesize=NUMBER — set the result cache size. the default is 100 000 URLs. Command line option: none

🎀 filtering

• ignore=REGEX (MULTILINE) — only check syntax of URLs matching the given regular expressions. Command line option: --ignore-url
• ignorewarnings=NAME[,NAME...] — ignore the comma-separated list of warnings. see WARNINGS for the list of supported warnings. messages are logged as information. Command line option: none
• ignorewarningsforurls=URL_REGEX [NAME_REGEX] (MULTILINE) — specify regular expressions to ignore warnings for matching URLs, one per line. on each line, you can specify a second regular expression, ensuring that only the warnings with names matching the second expression will be ignored for that URL. if the second expression is omitted, all warnings are ignored for that URL.

default is to not ignore any warnings. see WARNINGS for the list of supported warnings. messages are logged as information. Command line option: none

example, bestie:

[filtering]
ignorewarningsforurls=
  ^https://redirected\.example\.com ^http-redirected

• internlinks=REGEX — regular expression to add more URLs recognized as internal links. default is that URLs given on the command line are internal. Command line option: none
• nofollow=REGEX (MULTILINE) — check but do not recurse into URLs matching the given regular expressions. Command line option: --no-follow-url
• checkextern=[0|1] — check external links. default is to check internal links only. Command line option: --check-extern

🔑 authentication

• entry=REGEX USER [PASS] (MULTILINE) — provide individual username/password pairs for different links. in addition to a single login page specified with loginurl, multiple FTP and HTTP (Basic Authentication) links are supported. entries are a triple (URL regex, username, password) or a tuple (URL regex, username), where the entries are separated by whitespace. the password is optional and if missing it has to be entered at the commandline. if the regular expression matches the checked URL, the given username/password pair is used for authentication. the command line options -u and -p match every link and therefore override the entries given here. the first match wins. Command line option: -u, -p
• loginurl=URL — the URL of a login page to be visited before link checking. the page is expected to contain an HTML form to collect credentials and submit them to the address in its action attribute using an HTTP POST request. the name attributes of the input elements of the form and the values to be submitted need to be available (see entry for an explanation of username and password values).
• loginuserfield=STRING — the name attribute of the username input element. default: login.
• loginpasswordfield=STRING — the name attribute of the password input element. default: password.
• loginextrafields=NAME:VALUE (MULTILINE) — optionally the name attributes of any additional input elements and the values to populate them with. note that these are submitted without checking whether matching input elements exist in the HTML form 🙈.

🌈 output

💅 URL checking results

• fileoutput=TYPE[,TYPE...] — output to a file linkchecker-out.TYPE, or $XDG_DATA_HOME/linkchecker/failures for the failures output type. valid file output types are text, html, sql, csv, gml, dot, xml, none or failures. default is no file output. the various output types are documented below. note that you can suppress all console output with output=none. Command line option: --file-output
• log=TYPE[/ENCODING] — specify the console output type as text, html, sql, csv, gml, dot, xml, none or failures. default type is text. the various output types are documented below. the ENCODING specifies the output encoding, the default is that of your locale. valid encodings are listed at https://docs.python.org/library/codecs.html#standard-encodings. Command line option: --output
• verbose=[0|1] — if set log all checked URLs once, overriding warnings. default is to log only errors and warnings. Command line option: --verbose
• warnings=[0|1] — if set log warnings. default is to log warnings. Command line option: --no-warnings
• ignoreerrors=URL_REGEX [MESSAGE_REGEX] (MULTILINE) — specify regular expressions to ignore errors for matching URLs, one per line. a second regular expression can be specified per line to only ignore matching error messages per corresponding URL. if the second expression is omitted, all errors are ignored. in contrast to filtering, this happens after checking, which allows checking URLs despite certain expected and tolerable errors. default is to not ignore any errors. example:

[output]
ignoreerrors=
  ^https://deprecated\.example\.com ^410 Gone
  # ignore all errors (no second expression), also for syntax check:
  ^mailto:.*@example\.com$

⏱️ Progress updates

• status=[0|1] — control printing URL checker status messages. default is 1. Command line option: --no-status

🧚 Application

• debug=STRING[,STRING...] — print debugging output for the given logger. available debug loggers are cmdline, checking, cache, plugin and all. all is an alias for all available loggers. Command line option: --debug

🤫 Quiet

• quiet=[0|1] — if set, operate quiet. an alias for log=none that also hides application information messages. this is only useful with fileoutput, else no results will be output. Command line option: --quiet

text 🌸

• filename=STRING — where your text log goes. Default filename is linkchecker-out.txt. Command line option: --file-output
• parts=STRING — comma-separated list of the parts you actually wanna log. Check LOGGER PARTS below, bestie. Command line option: none
• encoding=STRING — all the valid encodings are listed over at https://docs.python.org/library/codecs.html#standard-encodings. Default encoding is the system default locale encoding.
• wraplength=NUMBER — how many characters before each message line wraps. Default is 65. Command line option: none
• color* — color settings for the various log parts, syntax is color or type;color. The type can be bold, light, blink, invert. The color can be default, black, red, green, yellow, blue, purple, cyan, white, Black, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Purple, Cyan or White. Command line option: none
• colorparent=STRING — set parent color. Default is white.
• colorurl=STRING — set URL color. Default is default.
• colorname=STRING — set name color. Default is default.
• colorreal=STRING — set real URL color. Default is cyan.
• colorbase=STRING — set base URL color. Default is purple.
• colorvalid=STRING — set valid color. Default is bold;green.
• colorinvalid=STRING — set invalid color. Default is bold;red.
• colorinfo=STRING — set info color. Default is default.
• colorwarning=STRING — set warning color. Default is bold;yellow.
• colordltime=STRING — set download time color. Default is default.
• colorreset=STRING — set reset color. Default is default.

gml 🎀

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above, bb.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.

dot 🦋

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.

csv ✨

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• separator=CHAR — set CSV separator. Default is a semicolon (;).
• quotechar=CHAR — set CSV quote character. Default is a double quote (").
• dialect=STRING — controls the output formatting. Peep https://docs.python.org/3/library/csv.html#csv.Dialect. Default is excel.

sql 💅

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• dbname=STRING — set database name to store into. Default is linksdb.
• separator=CHAR — set SQL command separator character. Default is a semicolon (;).

html 👑

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• colorbackground=COLOR — set HTML background color. Default is #fff7e5.
• colorurl= — set HTML URL color. Default is #dcd5cf.
• colorborder= — set HTML border color. Default is #000000.
• colorlink= — set HTML link color. Default is #191c83.
• colorwarning= — set HTML warning color. Default is #e0954e.
• colorerror= — set HTML error color. Default is #db4930.
• colorok= — set HTML valid color. Default is #3ba557.

failures 😭

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.

xml 🌈

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.

gxml ⭐

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.

sitemap 🧚

• filename=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• parts=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• encoding=STRING — see the [text] section above.
• priority=FLOAT — a number between 0.0 and 1.0 determining the priority. The default priority for the first URL is 1.0, for all child URLs 0.5.
• frequency=[always|hourly|daily|weekly|monthly|yearly|never] — how frequently pages are changing. Default is daily.

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🔍 LOGGER PARTS 🔍

• all — for all parts
• id — a unique ID for each logentry
• realurl — the full url link
• result — valid or invalid, with messages
• extern — 1 or 0, only in some logger types reported
• base — base href=...
• name — <a href=...>name</a> and <img alt="name">
• parenturl — if any
• info — some additional info, e.g. FTP welcome messages
• warning — warnings
• dltime — download time
• checktime — check time
• url — the original url name, can be relative
• intro — the blurb at the beginning, "starting at ..."
• outro — the blurb at the end, "found x errors ..."

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📜 MULTILINE 📜

Some option values can span multiple lines. Each line has to be indented for that to work. Lines starting with a hash (#) will be ignored, though they must still be indented. Not me being picky, that's just the rules 💅

ignore=
  lconline
  bookmark
  # a comment
  ^mailto:

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🌟 EXAMPLE 🌟

[output]
log=html

[checking]
threads=5

[filtering]
ignorewarnings=http-moved-permanent

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🧩 PLUGINS 🧩

All plugins have a separate section. If the section appears in the configuration file the plugin is enabled. Some plugins read extra options in their section. Obsessed, honestly.

AnchorCheck ⚓

Checks validity of HTML anchors. When checking local files, URLs with anchors that link to directories e.g. "example/#anchor" are not supported. There is no such limitation when using http(s).

LocationInfo 🌍

Adds the country and if possible city name of the URL host as info. Needs GeoIP or pygeoip and a local country or city lookup DB installed.

RegexCheck 🔎

Define a regular expression which prints a warning if it matches any content of the checked link. This applies only to valid pages, so we can get their content.

• warningregex=REGEX — use this to check for pages that contain some form of error message, for example "This page has moved" or "Oracle Application error". REGEX should be unquoted.

Note that multiple values can be combined in the regular expression, for example "(This page has moved|Oracle Application error)".

SslCertificateCheck 🔒

Check SSL certificate expiration date. Only internal https: links will be checked. A domain will only be checked once to avoid duplicate warnings.

• sslcertwarndays=NUMBER — configures the expiration warning time in days.

HtmlSyntaxCheck 📄

Check the syntax of HTML pages by submitting their URLs to the online W3C HTML validator. If a page URL is not accessible to the validator no check is performed and no warning given. See https://validator.w3.org/docs/api.html.

NOTE: The HtmlSyntaxCheck plugin is currently broken and is disabled. 💀

HttpHeaderInfo 📬

Print HTTP headers in URL info.

• prefixes=prefix1[,prefix2]... — list of comma separated header prefixes. For example to display all HTTP headers that start with "X-".

CssSyntaxCheck 🎨

Check the syntax of CSS stylesheets by submitting their URLs to the online W3C CSS validator. If a stylesheet URL is not accessible to the validator no check is performed and no warning given. See https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/manual.html#expert.

VirusCheck 🦠

Checks the page content for virus infections with clamav. A local clamav daemon must be installed.

• clamavconf=filename — filename of clamd.conf config file.

NOTE: The VirusCheck plugin does not support ClamAV >= 1.0 and is disabled. 🙈

PdfParser 📕

Parse PDF files for URLs to check. Needs the pdfminer.six Python package installed.

WordParser 📘

Parse Word files for URLs to check. Needs the pywin32 Python extension installed.

MarkdownCheck 📝

Parse Markdown files for URLs to check.

• filename_re=REGEX — regular expression matching the names of Markdown files.

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⚠️ WARNINGS ⚠️

The following warnings are recognized by ignorewarnings and ignorewarningsforurls:

• file-anchorcheck-directory — a local directory with an anchor, not supported by AnchorCheck.
• file-missing-slash — the file: URL is missing a trailing slash.
• file-system-path — the file: path is not the same as the system specific path.
• ftp-missing-slash — the ftp: URL is missing a trailing slash.
• http-cookie-store-error — an error occurred while storing a cookie.
• http-empty-content — the URL had no content.
• http-rate-limited — too many HTTP requests.
• http-redirected — redirected to a different URL.
• mail-no-mx-host — the mail MX host could not be found.
• url-content-size-zero — the URL content size is zero.
• url-content-too-large — the URL content size is too large.
• url-content-type-unparseable — the URL content type is not parseable.
• url-effective-url — the effective URL is different from the original.
• url-error-getting-content — could not get the content of the URL.
• url-obfuscated-ip — the IP is obfuscated.
• url-whitespace — the URL contains leading or trailing whitespace.

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

linkchecker(1)

🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

Bastian Kleineidam <bastian.kleineidam@web.de>

💖 COPYRIGHT 💖

2000-2016 Bastian Kleineidam, 2010-2025 LinkChecker Authors

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and that's the whole page bestie, we ate and left no crumbs 🍓 this was version 10.5.0.post14+g8c3a6f77, dated July 28, 2025, for LINKCHECKERRC(5) — periodt 💅✨