Kiwix fails to display archived ZIMs of websites based on Vuepress/Vitepress

[loomweaver]

Not entirely sure where exactly this issue belongs to, but I couldn't find any similar issues open.

Issue occurs when attempting to open any ZIM of a website based on Vuepress/Vitepress static site generators.
Inspecting the ZIM file, it seems like all of the contents of the website are present in the ZIM (you can also momentarily see the proper contents of the page while website is being loaded from ZIM), but Kiwix just fails to display them due to website behavior changing when archived to ZIM.

Attempted archiving using both zimit.kiwix.org, and local Zimit Docker image - playing with Browsertrix Crawler/Puppeteer settings didn't help (and I doubt it will, since I'm guessing that the problem is that internal JS attempts some kind of network request, and defaults to showing 404 error when it fails, as per NotFound.vue component of Vitepress).

It's possible that there is a workaround based on blockRules or other Zimit settings I'm not aware of, but I wasn't able to find one.

Websites I've tested and confirmed this behavior on:

• hacks.guide family of websites (https://3ds.hacks.guide, https://vita.hacks.guide etc.)
• https://grammy.dev
• https://v7.fakerjs.dev

[kelson42]

@loomweaver Thank you for reporting your issue. This is the right place, at least as this stage.

We will have to check a few things to be sure to identify if this is a problem with the ZIM or with the reader.

Can you please verify which version of Kiwix do you use? If you don't use version 2.4, I would recommend to give a try with latest version to see of you still have the issue.

[loomweaver]

@kelson42 I've tested with Kiwix-Desktop for Windows 2.4.1 (latest), and Kiwix-Desktop 2.3.1 for Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS respectively, the behavior is the same.
Attached the video for your convenience, you can see that the page contents are available momentarily before crashing to 404 page.

Screencast.from.2025-01-12.13-48-28.webm

[kelson42]

@benoit74 Maybe you have straight a comment to make at this point?

[benoit74]

This is definitely a scraper issue, but I have no clue what the problem is.

I've opened openzim/zimit#452 to have a look into it.

I will close this issue since this is not a scraper problem.