1 This is Info file wget.info, produced by Makeinfo version 1.68 from the
2 input file ./wget.texi.
4 INFO-DIR-SECTION Net Utilities
5 INFO-DIR-SECTION World Wide Web
7 * Wget: (wget). The non-interactive network downloader.
10 This file documents the the GNU Wget utility for downloading network
13 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
15 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
16 manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
17 preserved on all copies.
19 Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of
20 this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also
21 that the sections entitled "Copying" and "GNU General Public License"
22 are included exactly as in the original, and provided that the entire
23 resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission
24 notice identical to this one.
27 File: wget.info, Node: Top, Next: Overview, Prev: (dir), Up: (dir)
32 This manual documents version 1.5.3+dev of GNU Wget, the freely
33 available utility for network download.
35 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
39 * Overview:: Features of Wget.
40 * Invoking:: Wget command-line arguments.
41 * Recursive Retrieval:: Description of recursive retrieval.
42 * Following Links:: The available methods of chasing links.
43 * Time-Stamping:: Mirroring according to time-stamps.
44 * Startup File:: Wget's initialization file.
45 * Examples:: Examples of usage.
46 * Various:: The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.
47 * Appendices:: Some useful references.
48 * Copying:: You may give out copies of Wget.
49 * Concept Index:: Topics covered by this manual.
52 File: wget.info, Node: Overview, Next: Invoking, Prev: Top, Up: Top
57 GNU Wget is a freely available network utility to retrieve files from
58 the World Wide Web, using HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) and FTP
59 (File Transfer Protocol), the two most widely used Internet protocols.
60 It has many useful features to make downloading easier, some of them
63 * Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the
64 background, while the user is not logged on. This allows you to
65 start a retrieval and disconnect from the system, letting Wget
66 finish the work. By contrast, most of the Web browsers require
67 constant user's presence, which can be a great hindrance when
68 transferring a lot of data.
70 * Wget is capable of descending recursively through the structure of
71 HTML documents and FTP directory trees, making a local copy of the
72 directory hierarchy similar to the one on the remote server. This
73 feature can be used to mirror archives and home pages, or traverse
74 the web in search of data, like a WWW robot (*Note Robots::). In
75 that spirit, Wget understands the `norobots' convention.
77 * File name wildcard matching and recursive mirroring of directories
78 are available when retrieving via FTP. Wget can read the
79 time-stamp information given by both HTTP and FTP servers, and
80 store it locally. Thus Wget can see if the remote file has
81 changed since last retrieval, and automatically retrieve the new
82 version if it has. This makes Wget suitable for mirroring of FTP
83 sites, as well as home pages.
85 * Wget works exceedingly well on slow or unstable connections,
86 retrying the document until it is fully retrieved, or until a
87 user-specified retry count is surpassed. It will try to resume the
88 download from the point of interruption, using `REST' with FTP and
89 `Range' with HTTP servers that support them.
91 * By default, Wget supports proxy servers, which can lighten the
92 network load, speed up retrieval and provide access behind
93 firewalls. However, if you are behind a firewall that requires
94 that you use a socks style gateway, you can get the socks library
95 and build wget with support for socks. Wget also supports the
96 passive FTP downloading as an option.
98 * Builtin features offer mechanisms to tune which links you wish to
99 follow (*Note Following Links::).
101 * The retrieval is conveniently traced with printing dots, each dot
102 representing a fixed amount of data received (1KB by default).
103 These representations can be customized to your preferences.
105 * Most of the features are fully configurable, either through
106 command line options, or via the initialization file `.wgetrc'
107 (*Note Startup File::). Wget allows you to define "global"
108 startup files (`/usr/local/etc/wgetrc' by default) for site
111 * Finally, GNU Wget is free software. This means that everyone may
112 use it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the
113 GNU General Public License, as published by the Free Software
114 Foundation (*Note Copying::).
117 File: wget.info, Node: Invoking, Next: Recursive Retrieval, Prev: Overview, Up: Top
122 By default, Wget is very simple to invoke. The basic syntax is:
124 wget [OPTION]... [URL]...
126 Wget will simply download all the URLs specified on the command
127 line. URL is a "Uniform Resource Locator", as defined below.
129 However, you may wish to change some of the default parameters of
130 Wget. You can do it two ways: permanently, adding the appropriate
131 command to `.wgetrc' (*Note Startup File::), or specifying it on the
138 * Basic Startup Options::
139 * Logging and Input File Options::
141 * Directory Options::
144 * Recursive Retrieval Options::
145 * Recursive Accept/Reject Options::
148 File: wget.info, Node: URL Format, Next: Option Syntax, Prev: Invoking, Up: Invoking
153 "URL" is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
154 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
155 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the URL syntax as per
156 RFC1738. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
159 http://host[:port]/directory/file
160 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
162 You can also encode your username and password within a URL:
164 ftp://user:password@host/path
165 http://user:password@host/path
167 Either USER or PASSWORD, or both, may be left out. If you leave out
168 either the HTTP username or password, no authentication will be sent.
169 If you leave out the FTP username, `anonymous' will be used. If you
170 leave out the FTP password, your email address will be supplied as a
173 You can encode unsafe characters in a URL as `%xy', `xy' being the
174 hexadecimal representation of the character's ASCII value. Some common
175 unsafe characters include `%' (quoted as `%25'), `:' (quoted as `%3A'),
176 and `@' (quoted as `%40'). Refer to RFC1738 for a comprehensive list
177 of unsafe characters.
179 Wget also supports the `type' feature for FTP URLs. By default, FTP
180 documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type `i'), which means that
181 they are downloaded unchanged. Another useful mode is the `a'
182 ("ASCII") mode, which converts the line delimiters between the
183 different operating systems, and is thus useful for text files. Here
186 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
188 Two alternative variants of URL specification are also supported,
189 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
191 FTP-only syntax (supported by `NcFTP'):
194 HTTP-only syntax (introduced by `Netscape'):
197 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
198 supported in the future.
200 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or
201 do not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
202 with your favorite browser, like `Lynx' or `Netscape'.
204 ---------- Footnotes ----------
206 (1) If you have a `.netrc' file in your home directory, password
207 will also be searched for there.
210 File: wget.info, Node: Option Syntax, Next: Basic Startup Options, Prev: URL Format, Up: Invoking
215 Since Wget uses GNU getopts to process its arguments, every option
216 has a short form and a long form. Long options are more convenient to
217 remember, but take time to type. You may freely mix different option
218 styles, or specify options after the command-line arguments. Thus you
221 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -o log
223 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument
224 may be omitted. Instead `-o log' you can write `-olog'.
226 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
231 This is a complete equivalent of:
235 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
236 terminate them with `--'. So the following will try to download URL
237 `-x', reporting failure to `log':
241 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the
242 convention that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be
243 useful to clear the `.wgetrc' settings. For instance, if your `.wgetrc'
244 sets `exclude_directories' to `/cgi-bin', the following example will
245 first reset it, and then set it to exclude `/~nobody' and `/~somebody'.
246 You can also clear the lists in `.wgetrc' (*Note Wgetrc Syntax::).
248 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
251 File: wget.info, Node: Basic Startup Options, Next: Logging and Input File Options, Prev: Option Syntax, Up: Invoking
253 Basic Startup Options
254 =====================
258 Display the version of Wget.
262 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
266 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
267 specified via the `-o', output is redirected to `wget-log'.
271 Execute COMMAND as if it were a part of `.wgetrc' (*Note Startup
272 File::). A command thus invoked will be executed *after* the
273 commands in `.wgetrc', thus taking precedence over them.
276 File: wget.info, Node: Logging and Input File Options, Next: Download Options, Prev: Basic Startup Options, Up: Invoking
278 Logging and Input File Options
279 ==============================
282 `--output-file=LOGFILE'
283 Log all messages to LOGFILE. The messages are normally reported
287 `--append-output=LOGFILE'
288 Append to LOGFILE. This is the same as `-o', only it appends to
289 LOGFILE instead of overwriting the old log file. If LOGFILE does
290 not exist, a new file is created.
294 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
295 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
296 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug
297 support, in which case `-d' will not work. Please note that
298 compiling with debug support is always safe--Wget compiled with
299 the debug support will *not* print any debug info unless requested
300 with `-d'. *Note Reporting Bugs:: for more information on how to
301 use `-d' for sending bug reports.
305 Turn off Wget's output.
309 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default
314 Non-verbose output--turn off verbose without being completely quiet
315 (use `-q' for that), which means that error messages and basic
316 information still get printed.
320 Read URLs from FILE, in which case no URLs need to be on the
321 command line. If there are URLs both on the command line and in
322 an input file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to
323 be retrieved. The FILE need not be an HTML document (but no harm
324 if it is)--it is enough if the URLs are just listed sequentially.
326 However, if you specify `--force-html', the document will be
327 regarded as `html'. In that case you may have problems with
328 relative links, which you can solve either by adding `<base
329 href="URL">' to the documents or by specifying `--base=URL' on the
334 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an HTML
335 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
336 HTML files on your local disk, by adding `<base href="URL">' to
337 HTML, or using the `--base' command-line option.
340 File: wget.info, Node: Download Options, Next: Directory Options, Prev: Logging and Input File Options, Up: Invoking
347 Set number of retries to NUMBER. Specify 0 or `inf' for infinite
351 `--output-document=FILE'
352 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but
353 all will be concatenated together and written to FILE. If FILE
354 already exists, it will be overwritten. If the FILE is `-', the
355 documents will be written to standard output. Including this
356 option automatically sets the number of tries to 1.
360 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory,
361 wget's behavior depends on a few options, including `-nc'. In
362 certain cases, the local file will be "clobbered", or overwritten,
363 upon repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
365 When running wget without `-N', `-nc', or `-r', downloading the
366 same file in the same directory will result in the original copy
367 of `FILE' being preserved and the second copy being named
368 `FILE.1'. If that file is downloaded yet again, the third copy
369 will be named `FILE.2', and so on. When `-nc' is specified, this
370 behavior is suppressed, and wget will refuse to download newer
371 copies of `FILE'. Therefore, "no-clobber" is actually a misnomer
372 in this mode - it's not clobbering that's prevented (as the
373 numeric suffixes were already preventing clobbering), but rather
374 the multiple version saving that's prevented.
376 When running wget with `-r', but without `-N' or `-nc',
377 re-downloading a file will result in the new copy simply
378 overwriting the old. Adding `-nc' will prevent this behavior,
379 instead causing the original version to be preserved and any newer
380 copies on the server to be ignored.
382 When running wget with `-N', with or without `-r', the decision as
383 to whether or not to download a newer copy of a file depends on
384 the local and remote timestamp and size of the file (*Note
385 Time-Stamping::). `-nc' may not be specified at the same time as
388 Note that when `-nc' is specified, files with the suffixes `.html'
389 or (yuck) `.htm' will be loaded from the local disk and parsed as
390 if they had been retrieved from the Web.
394 Continue getting an existing file. This is useful when you want to
395 finish up the download started by another program, or a previous
396 instance of Wget. Thus you can write:
398 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
400 If there is a file name `ls-lR.Z' in the current directory, Wget
401 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and
402 will require the server to continue the retrieval from an offset
403 equal to the length of the local file.
405 Note that you need not specify this option if all you want is Wget
406 to continue retrieving where it left off when the connection is
407 lost--Wget does this by default. You need this option only when
408 you want to continue retrieval of a file already halfway
409 retrieved, saved by another FTP client, or left by Wget being
412 Without `-c', the previous example would just begin to download the
413 remote file to `ls-lR.Z.1'. The `-c' option is also applicable
414 for HTTP servers that support the `Range' header.
417 Set the retrieval style to STYLE. Wget traces the retrieval of
418 each document by printing dots on the screen, each dot
419 representing a fixed amount of retrieved data. Any number of dots
420 may be separated in a "cluster", to make counting easier. This
421 option allows you to choose one of the pre-defined styles,
422 determining the number of bytes represented by a dot, the number
423 of dots in a cluster, and the number of dots on the line.
425 With the `default' style each dot represents 1K, there are ten dots
426 in a cluster and 50 dots in a line. The `binary' style has a more
427 "computer"-like orientation--8K dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots
428 per line (which makes for 384K lines). The `mega' style is
429 suitable for downloading very large files--each dot represents 64K
430 retrieved, there are eight dots in a cluster, and 48 dots on each
431 line (so each line contains 3M). The `micro' style is exactly the
432 reverse; it is suitable for downloading small files, with 128-byte
433 dots, 8 dots per cluster, and 48 dots (6K) per line.
437 Turn on time-stamping. *Note Time-Stamping:: for details.
441 Print the headers sent by HTTP servers and responses sent by FTP
445 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web "spider",
446 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that
447 they are there. You can use it to check your bookmarks, e.g. with:
449 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
451 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
452 functionality of real WWW spiders.
456 Set the read timeout to SECONDS seconds. Whenever a network read
457 is issued, the file descriptor is checked for a timeout, which
458 could otherwise leave a pending connection (uninterrupted read).
459 The default timeout is 900 seconds (fifteen minutes). Setting
460 timeout to 0 will disable checking for timeouts.
462 Please do not lower the default timeout value with this option
463 unless you know what you are doing.
467 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use
468 of this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by
469 making the requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the
470 time can be specified in minutes using the `m' suffix, in hours
471 using `h' suffix, or in days using `d' suffix.
473 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network
474 or the destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough
475 to reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the
478 `--waitretry=SECONDS'
479 If you don't want Wget to wait between *every* retrieval, but only
480 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option.
481 Wget will use "linear backoff", waiting 1 second after the first
482 failure on a given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second
483 failure on that file, up to the maximum number of SECONDS you
484 specify. Therefore, a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up
485 to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55 seconds per file.
487 Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
492 Turn proxy support on or off. The proxy is on by default if the
493 appropriate environmental variable is defined.
497 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
498 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with `k' suffix), or
499 megabytes (with `m' suffix).
501 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So
502 if you specify `wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz',
503 all of the `ls-lR.gz' will be downloaded. The same goes even when
504 several URLs are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
505 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input
506 file. Thus you may safely type `wget -Q2m -i sites'--download
507 will be aborted when the quota is exceeded.
509 Setting quota to 0 or to `inf' unlimits the download quota.
512 File: wget.info, Node: Directory Options, Next: HTTP Options, Prev: Download Options, Up: Invoking
519 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving
520 recursively. With this option turned on, all files will get saved
521 to the current directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up
522 more than once, the filenames will get extensions `.n').
525 `--force-directories'
526 The opposite of `-nd'--create a hierarchy of directories, even if
527 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. `wget -x
528 http://fly.cc.fer.hr/robots.txt' will save the downloaded file to
529 `fly.cc.fer.hr/robots.txt'.
532 `--no-host-directories'
533 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default,
534 invoking Wget with `-r http://fly.cc.fer.hr/' will create a
535 structure of directories beginning with `fly.cc.fer.hr/'. This
536 option disables such behavior.
539 Ignore NUMBER directory components. This is useful for getting a
540 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval
543 Take, for example, the directory at
544 `ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/'. If you retrieve it with `-r',
545 it will be saved locally under `ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/'.
546 While the `-nH' option can remove the `ftp.xemacs.org/' part, you
547 are still stuck with `pub/xemacs'. This is where `--cut-dirs'
548 comes in handy; it makes Wget not "see" NUMBER remote directory
549 components. Here are several examples of how `--cut-dirs' option
552 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
554 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
555 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
557 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
560 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this
561 option is similar to a combination of `-nd' and `-P'. However,
562 unlike `-nd', `--cut-dirs' does not lose with subdirectories--for
563 instance, with `-nH --cut-dirs=1', a `beta/' subdirectory will be
564 placed to `xemacs/beta', as one would expect.
567 `--directory-prefix=PREFIX'
568 Set directory prefix to PREFIX. The "directory prefix" is the
569 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved
570 to, i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is `.' (the
574 File: wget.info, Node: HTTP Options, Next: FTP Options, Prev: Directory Options, Up: Invoking
580 `--http-passwd=PASSWORD'
581 Specify the username USER and password PASSWORD on an HTTP server.
582 According to the type of the challenge, Wget will encode them
583 using either the `basic' (insecure) or the `digest' authentication
586 Another way to specify username and password is in the URL itself
587 (*Note URL Format::). For more information about security issues
588 with Wget, *Note Security Considerations::.
592 When set to off, disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget
593 will send the remote server an appropriate directive (`Pragma:
594 no-cache') to get the file from the remote service, rather than
595 returning the cached version. This is especially useful for
596 retrieving and flushing out-of-date documents on proxy servers.
598 Caching is allowed by default.
601 Unfortunately, some HTTP servers (CGI programs, to be more
602 precise) send out bogus `Content-Length' headers, which makes Wget
603 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can
604 spot this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again
605 and again, each time claiming that the (otherwise normal)
606 connection has closed on the very same byte.
608 With this option, Wget will ignore the `Content-Length' header--as
611 `--header=ADDITIONAL-HEADER'
612 Define an ADDITIONAL-HEADER to be passed to the HTTP servers.
613 Headers must contain a `:' preceded by one or more non-blank
614 characters, and must not contain newlines.
616 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
617 `--header' more than once.
619 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
620 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
621 http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
623 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
624 previous user-defined headers.
627 `--proxy-passwd=PASSWORD'
628 Specify the username USER and password PASSWORD for authentication
629 on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the `basic'
630 authentication scheme.
633 Include `Referer: URL' header in HTTP request. Useful for
634 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they
635 are always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only
636 come out properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that
641 Save the headers sent by the HTTP server to the file, preceding the
642 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
645 `--user-agent=AGENT-STRING'
646 Identify as AGENT-STRING to the HTTP server.
648 The HTTP protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
649 `User-Agent' header field. This enables distinguishing the WWW
650 software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
651 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as `Wget/VERSION',
652 VERSION being the current version number of Wget.
654 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of
655 tailoring the output according to the `User-Agent'-supplied
656 information. While conceptually this is not such a bad idea, it
657 has been abused by servers denying information to clients other
658 than `Mozilla' or Microsoft `Internet Explorer'. This option
659 allows you to change the `User-Agent' line issued by Wget. Use of
660 this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
663 *NOTE* that Netscape Communications Corp. has claimed that false
664 transmissions of `Mozilla' as the `User-Agent' are a copyright
665 infringement, which will be prosecuted. *DO NOT* misrepresent
669 File: wget.info, Node: FTP Options, Next: Recursive Retrieval Options, Prev: HTTP Options, Up: Invoking
675 Retrieve symbolic links on FTP sites as if they were plain files,
676 i.e. don't just create links locally.
680 Turn FTP globbing on or off. Globbing means you may use the
681 shell-like special characters ("wildcards"), like `*', `?', `['
682 and `]' to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
685 wget ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/*.msg
687 By default, globbing will be turned on if the URL contains a
688 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on
691 You may have to quote the URL to protect it from being expanded by
692 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing,
693 which is system-specific. This is why it currently works only
694 with Unix FTP servers (and the ones emulating Unix `ls' output).
697 Use the "passive" FTP retrieval scheme, in which the client
698 initiates the data connection. This is sometimes required for FTP
699 to work behind firewalls.
702 File: wget.info, Node: Recursive Retrieval Options, Next: Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Prev: FTP Options, Up: Invoking
704 Recursive Retrieval Options
705 ===========================
709 Turn on recursive retrieving. *Note Recursive Retrieval:: for more
714 Specify recursion maximum depth level DEPTH (*Note Recursive
715 Retrieval::). The default maximum depth is 5.
718 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
719 *after* having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
720 pages through proxy, e.g.:
722 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
724 The `-r' option is to retrieve recursively, and `-nd' not to
729 Convert the non-relative links to relative ones locally. Only the
730 references to the documents actually downloaded will be converted;
731 the rest will be left unchanged.
733 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which
734 links have been downloaded. Because of that, much of the work
735 done by `-k' will be performed at the end of the downloads.
739 When converting a file, back up the original version with a `.orig'
740 suffix. Affects the behavior of `-N' (*Note HTTP Time-Stamping
745 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on
746 recursion and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and
747 keeps FTP directory listings. It is currently equivalent to `-r
751 `--dont-remove-listing'
752 Don't remove the temporary `.listing' files generated by FTP
753 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory
754 listings received from FTP servers. Not removing them can be
755 useful to access the full remote file list when running a mirror,
756 or for debugging purposes.
759 File: wget.info, Node: Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Prev: Recursive Retrieval Options, Up: Invoking
761 Recursive Accept/Reject Options
762 ===============================
764 `-A ACCLIST --accept ACCLIST'
765 `-R REJLIST --reject REJLIST'
766 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
767 accept or reject (*Note Types of Files:: for more details).
770 `--domains=DOMAIN-LIST'
771 Set domains to be accepted and DNS looked-up, where DOMAIN-LIST is
772 a comma-separated list. Note that it does *not* turn on `-H'.
773 This option speeds things up, even if only one host is spanned
774 (*Note Domain Acceptance::).
776 `--exclude-domains DOMAIN-LIST'
777 Exclude the domains given in a comma-separated DOMAIN-LIST from
778 DNS-lookup (*Note Domain Acceptance::).
781 Follow FTP links from HTML documents. Without this option, Wget
782 will ignore all the FTP links.
785 Wget has an internal table of HTML tag / attribute pairs that it
786 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
787 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
788 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
789 comma-separated LIST with this option.
793 This is the opposite of the `--follow-tags' option. To skip
794 certain HTML tags when recursively looking for documents to
795 download, specify them in a comma-separated LIST. The author of
796 this option likes to use the following command to download a
797 single HTML page and all files (e.g. images, sounds, and
798 stylesheets) necessary to display it properly:
800 wget -Ga,area -H -k -K -nh -r http://SITE/DOCUMENT
804 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
809 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home
810 page without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
811 (*Note Relative Links::).
814 `--include-directories=LIST'
815 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow
816 when downloading (*Note Directory-Based Limits:: for more
817 details.) Elements of LIST may contain wildcards.
820 `--exclude-directories=LIST'
821 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude
822 from download (*Note Directory-Based Limits:: for more details.)
823 Elements of LIST may contain wildcards.
827 Disable the time-consuming DNS lookup of almost all hosts (*Note
833 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving
834 recursively. This is a useful option, since it guarantees that
835 only the files *below* a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
836 *Note Directory-Based Limits:: for more details.
839 File: wget.info, Node: Recursive Retrieval, Next: Following Links, Prev: Invoking, Up: Top
844 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single HTTP
845 or FTP server), depth-first following links and directory structure.
846 This is called "recursive" retrieving, or "recursion".
848 With HTTP URLs, Wget retrieves and parses the HTML from the given
849 URL, documents, retrieving the files the HTML document was referring
850 to, through markups like `href', or `src'. If the freshly downloaded
851 file is also of type `text/html', it will be parsed and followed
854 The maximum "depth" to which the retrieval may descend is specified
855 with the `-l' option (the default maximum depth is five layers). *Note
856 Recursive Retrieval::.
858 When retrieving an FTP URL recursively, Wget will retrieve all the
859 data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up to
860 the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
861 locally. FTP retrieval is also limited by the `depth' parameter.
863 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
864 the one found on the remote server.
866 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
867 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for WWW
868 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
869 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
871 You should be warned that invoking recursion may cause grave
872 overloading on your system, because of the fast exchange of data
873 through the network; all of this may hamper other users' work. The
874 same stands for the foreign server you are mirroring--the more requests
875 it gets in a rows, the greater is its load.
877 Careless retrieving can also fill your file system uncontrollably,
878 which can grind the machine to a halt.
880 The load can be minimized by lowering the maximum recursion level
881 (`-l') and/or by lowering the number of retries (`-t'). You may also
882 consider using the `-w' option to slow down your requests to the remote
883 servers, as well as the numerous options to narrow the number of
884 followed links (*Note Following Links::).
886 Recursive retrieval is a good thing when used properly. Please take
887 all precautions not to wreak havoc through carelessness.
890 File: wget.info, Node: Following Links, Next: Time-Stamping, Prev: Recursive Retrieval, Up: Top
895 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
896 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
897 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
899 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
900 `fly.cc.fer.hr', you will not want to download all the home pages that
901 happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
903 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
904 links it will follow.
908 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
909 * Host Checking:: Follow links on the same host.
910 * Domain Acceptance:: Check on a list of domains.
911 * All Hosts:: No host restrictions.
912 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
913 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
914 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
917 File: wget.info, Node: Relative Links, Next: Host Checking, Prev: Following Links, Up: Following Links
922 When only relative links are followed (option `-L'), recursive
923 retrieving will never span hosts. No time-expensive DNS-lookups will
924 be performed, and the process will be very fast, with the minimum
925 strain of the network. This will suit your needs often, especially when
926 mirroring the output of various `x2html' converters, since they
927 generally output relative links.
930 File: wget.info, Node: Host Checking, Next: Domain Acceptance, Prev: Relative Links, Up: Following Links
935 The drawback of following the relative links solely is that humans
936 often tend to mix them with absolute links to the very same host, and
937 the very same page. In this mode (which is the default mode for
938 following links) all URLs that refer to the same host will be retrieved.
940 The problem with this option are the aliases of the hosts and
941 domains. Thus there is no way for Wget to know that `regoc.srce.hr' and
942 `www.srce.hr' are the same host, or that `fly.cc.fer.hr' is the same as
943 `fly.cc.etf.hr'. Whenever an absolute link is encountered, the host is
944 DNS-looked-up with `gethostbyname' to check whether we are maybe
945 dealing with the same hosts. Although the results of `gethostbyname'
946 are cached, it is still a great slowdown, e.g. when dealing with large
947 indices of home pages on different hosts (because each of the hosts
948 must be DNS-resolved to see whether it just *might* be an alias of the
951 To avoid the overhead you may use `-nh', which will turn off
952 DNS-resolving and make Wget compare hosts literally. This will make
953 things run much faster, but also much less reliable (e.g. `www.srce.hr'
954 and `regoc.srce.hr' will be flagged as different hosts).
956 Note that modern HTTP servers allow one IP address to host several
957 "virtual servers", each having its own directory hierarchy. Such
958 "servers" are distinguished by their hostnames (all of which point to
959 the same IP address); for this to work, a client must send a `Host'
960 header, which is what Wget does. However, in that case Wget *must not*
961 try to divine a host's "real" address, nor try to use the same hostname
962 for each access, i.e. `-nh' must be turned on.
964 In other words, the `-nh' option must be used to enable the
965 retrieval from virtual servers distinguished by their hostnames. As the
966 number of such server setups grow, the behavior of `-nh' may become the
967 default in the future.
970 File: wget.info, Node: Domain Acceptance, Next: All Hosts, Prev: Host Checking, Up: Following Links
975 With the `-D' option you may specify the domains that will be
976 followed. The hosts the domain of which is not in this list will not be
977 DNS-resolved. Thus you can specify `-Dmit.edu' just to make sure that
978 *nothing outside of MIT gets looked up*. This is very important and
979 useful. It also means that `-D' does *not* imply `-H' (span all
980 hosts), which must be specified explicitly. Feel free to use this
981 options since it will speed things up, with almost all the reliability
982 of checking for all hosts. Thus you could invoke
984 wget -r -D.hr http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
986 to make sure that only the hosts in `.hr' domain get DNS-looked-up
987 for being equal to `fly.cc.fer.hr'. So `fly.cc.etf.hr' will be checked
988 (only once!) and found equal, but `www.gnu.ai.mit.edu' will not even be
991 Of course, domain acceptance can be used to limit the retrieval to
992 particular domains with spanning of hosts in them, but then you must
993 specify `-H' explicitly. E.g.:
995 wget -r -H -Dmit.edu,stanford.edu http://www.mit.edu/
997 will start with `http://www.mit.edu/', following links across MIT
1000 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
1001 with `--exclude-domains', which accepts the same type of arguments of
1002 `-D', but will *exclude* all the listed domains. For example, if you
1003 want to download all the hosts from `foo.edu' domain, with the
1004 exception of `sunsite.foo.edu', you can do it like this:
1006 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu http://www.foo.edu/
1009 File: wget.info, Node: All Hosts, Next: Types of Files, Prev: Domain Acceptance, Up: Following Links
1014 When `-H' is specified without `-D', all hosts are freely spanned.
1015 There are no restrictions whatsoever as to what part of the net Wget
1016 will go to fetch documents, other than maximum retrieval depth. If a
1017 page references `www.yahoo.com', so be it. Such an option is rarely
1021 File: wget.info, Node: Types of Files, Next: Directory-Based Limits, Prev: All Hosts, Up: Following Links
1026 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to
1027 restrict the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you
1028 are interested in downloading GIFs, you will not be overjoyed to get
1029 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
1031 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
1032 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
1038 The argument to `--accept' option is a list of file suffixes or
1039 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A
1040 suffix is the ending part of a file, and consists of "normal"
1041 letters, e.g. `gif' or `.jpg'. A matching pattern contains
1042 shell-like wildcards, e.g. `books*' or `zelazny*196[0-9]*'.
1044 So, specifying `wget -A gif,jpg' will make Wget download only the
1045 files ending with `gif' or `jpg', i.e. GIFs and JPEGs. On the
1046 other hand, `wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"' will download only files
1047 beginning with `zelazny' and containing numbers from 1960 to 1969
1048 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for a
1049 description of how pattern matching works.
1051 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined
1052 into a comma-separated list, and given as an argument to `-A'.
1057 The `--reject' option works the same way as `--accept', only its
1058 logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files *except* the
1059 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
1061 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
1062 MPEGs and .AU files, you can use `wget -R mpg,mpeg,au'.
1063 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
1064 `bjork', use `wget -R "bjork*"'. The quotes are to prevent
1065 expansion by the shell.
1067 The `-A' and `-R' options may be combined to achieve even better
1068 fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. `wget -A "*zelazny*" -R
1069 .ps' will download all the files having `zelazny' as a part of their
1070 name, but *not* the PostScript files.
1072 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of HTML
1073 files; Wget must load all the HTMLs to know where to go at
1074 all--recursive retrieval would make no sense otherwise.
1077 File: wget.info, Node: Directory-Based Limits, Next: FTP Links, Prev: Types of Files, Up: Following Links
1079 Directory-Based Limits
1080 ======================
1082 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
1083 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
1084 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this--the
1085 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
1086 directories may contain useless information, e.g. `/cgi-bin' or `/dev'
1089 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement.
1090 Each option description lists a short name, a long name, and the
1091 equivalent command in `.wgetrc'.
1095 `include_directories = LIST'
1096 `-I' option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
1097 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored.
1098 The directories are absolute paths.
1100 So, if you wish to download from `http://host/people/bozo/'
1101 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the `/people'
1102 directory and the bogus scripts in `/cgi-bin', you can specify:
1104 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
1108 `exclude_directories = LIST'
1109 `-X' option is exactly the reverse of `-I'--this is a list of
1110 directories *excluded* from the download. E.g. if you do not want
1111 Wget to download things from `/cgi-bin' directory, specify `-X
1112 /cgi-bin' on the command line.
1114 The same as with `-A'/`-R', these two options can be combined to
1115 get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if
1116 you want to load all the files from `/pub' hierarchy except for
1117 `/pub/worthless', specify `-I/pub -X/pub/worthless'.
1122 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
1123 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
1124 "above" than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to
1125 the parent directory/directories.
1127 The `--no-parent' option (short `-np') is useful in this case.
1128 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing
1129 hierarchy. Supposing you issue Wget with:
1131 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
1133 You may rest assured that none of the references to
1134 `/~his-girls-homepage/' or `/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/' will be
1135 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be
1136 downloaded. Essentially, `--no-parent' is similar to
1137 `-I/~luzer/my-archive', only it handles redirections in a more
1138 intelligent fashion.
1141 File: wget.info, Node: FTP Links, Prev: Directory-Based Limits, Up: Following Links
1146 The rules for FTP are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for them
1147 to be. FTP links in HTML documents are often included for purposes of
1148 reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them by default.
1150 To have FTP links followed from HTML documents, you need to specify
1151 the `--follow-ftp' option. Having done that, FTP links will span hosts
1152 regardless of `-H' setting. This is logical, as FTP links rarely point
1153 to the same host where the HTTP server resides. For similar reasons,
1154 the `-L' options has no effect on such downloads. On the other hand,
1155 domain acceptance (`-D') and suffix rules (`-A' and `-R') apply
1158 Also note that followed links to FTP directories will not be
1159 retrieved recursively further.
1162 File: wget.info, Node: Time-Stamping, Next: Startup File, Prev: Following Links, Up: Top
1167 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
1168 Internet is updating your archives.
1170 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
1171 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
1172 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
1173 offer the option of incremental updating.
1175 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
1176 search of "new" files. Only those new files will be downloaded in the
1177 place of the old ones.
1179 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
1181 1. A file of that name does not already exist locally.
1183 2. A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified
1184 more recently than the local file.
1186 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
1187 modification of both remote and local files. Such information are
1188 called the "time-stamps".
1190 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using `--timestamping'
1191 (`-N') option, or through `timestamping = on' directive in `.wgetrc'.
1192 With this option, for each file it intends to download, Wget will check
1193 whether a local file of the same name exists. If it does, and the
1194 remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
1196 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
1197 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
1202 * Time-Stamping Usage::
1203 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
1204 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
1207 File: wget.info, Node: Time-Stamping Usage, Next: HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Prev: Time-Stamping, Up: Time-Stamping
1212 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to
1213 download a file so that it keeps its date of modification.
1215 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
1217 A simple `ls -l' shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
1218 the state of the `Last-Modified' header, as returned by the server. As
1219 you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even without
1222 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file
1223 has changed, and download it if it has.
1225 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
1227 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local
1228 file is newer, the remote file will not be re-fetched. However, if the
1229 remote file is more recent, Wget will proceed fetching it normally.
1231 The same goes for FTP. For example:
1233 wget ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*
1235 `ls' will show that the timestamps are set according to the state on
1236 the remote server. Reissuing the command with `-N' will make Wget
1237 re-fetch *only* the files that have been modified.
1239 In both HTTP and FTP retrieval Wget will time-stamp the local file
1240 correctly (with or without `-N') if it gets the stamps, i.e. gets the
1241 directory listing for FTP or the `Last-Modified' header for HTTP.
1243 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use the
1244 following command every week:
1246 wget --timestamping -r ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/