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.
416 Note that if you use `-c' on a file that's already downloaded
417 completely, `FILE' will not be changed, nor will a second `FILE.1'
421 Set the retrieval style to STYLE. Wget traces the retrieval of
422 each document by printing dots on the screen, each dot
423 representing a fixed amount of retrieved data. Any number of dots
424 may be separated in a "cluster", to make counting easier. This
425 option allows you to choose one of the pre-defined styles,
426 determining the number of bytes represented by a dot, the number
427 of dots in a cluster, and the number of dots on the line.
429 With the `default' style each dot represents 1K, there are ten dots
430 in a cluster and 50 dots in a line. The `binary' style has a more
431 "computer"-like orientation--8K dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots
432 per line (which makes for 384K lines). The `mega' style is
433 suitable for downloading very large files--each dot represents 64K
434 retrieved, there are eight dots in a cluster, and 48 dots on each
435 line (so each line contains 3M). The `micro' style is exactly the
436 reverse; it is suitable for downloading small files, with 128-byte
437 dots, 8 dots per cluster, and 48 dots (6K) per line.
441 Turn on time-stamping. *Note Time-Stamping:: for details.
445 Print the headers sent by HTTP servers and responses sent by FTP
449 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web "spider",
450 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that
451 they are there. You can use it to check your bookmarks, e.g. with:
453 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
455 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
456 functionality of real WWW spiders.
460 Set the read timeout to SECONDS seconds. Whenever a network read
461 is issued, the file descriptor is checked for a timeout, which
462 could otherwise leave a pending connection (uninterrupted read).
463 The default timeout is 900 seconds (fifteen minutes). Setting
464 timeout to 0 will disable checking for timeouts.
466 Please do not lower the default timeout value with this option
467 unless you know what you are doing.
471 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use
472 of this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by
473 making the requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the
474 time can be specified in minutes using the `m' suffix, in hours
475 using `h' suffix, or in days using `d' suffix.
477 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network
478 or the destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough
479 to reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the
482 `--waitretry=SECONDS'
483 If you don't want Wget to wait between *every* retrieval, but only
484 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option.
485 Wget will use "linear backoff", waiting 1 second after the first
486 failure on a given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second
487 failure on that file, up to the maximum number of SECONDS you
488 specify. Therefore, a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up
489 to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55 seconds per file.
491 Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
496 Turn proxy support on or off. The proxy is on by default if the
497 appropriate environmental variable is defined.
501 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
502 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with `k' suffix), or
503 megabytes (with `m' suffix).
505 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So
506 if you specify `wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz',
507 all of the `ls-lR.gz' will be downloaded. The same goes even when
508 several URLs are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
509 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input
510 file. Thus you may safely type `wget -Q2m -i sites'--download
511 will be aborted when the quota is exceeded.
513 Setting quota to 0 or to `inf' unlimits the download quota.
516 File: wget.info, Node: Directory Options, Next: HTTP Options, Prev: Download Options, Up: Invoking
523 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving
524 recursively. With this option turned on, all files will get saved
525 to the current directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up
526 more than once, the filenames will get extensions `.n').
529 `--force-directories'
530 The opposite of `-nd'--create a hierarchy of directories, even if
531 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. `wget -x
532 http://fly.cc.fer.hr/robots.txt' will save the downloaded file to
533 `fly.cc.fer.hr/robots.txt'.
536 `--no-host-directories'
537 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default,
538 invoking Wget with `-r http://fly.cc.fer.hr/' will create a
539 structure of directories beginning with `fly.cc.fer.hr/'. This
540 option disables such behavior.
543 Ignore NUMBER directory components. This is useful for getting a
544 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval
547 Take, for example, the directory at
548 `ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/'. If you retrieve it with `-r',
549 it will be saved locally under `ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/'.
550 While the `-nH' option can remove the `ftp.xemacs.org/' part, you
551 are still stuck with `pub/xemacs'. This is where `--cut-dirs'
552 comes in handy; it makes Wget not "see" NUMBER remote directory
553 components. Here are several examples of how `--cut-dirs' option
556 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
558 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
559 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
561 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
564 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this
565 option is similar to a combination of `-nd' and `-P'. However,
566 unlike `-nd', `--cut-dirs' does not lose with subdirectories--for
567 instance, with `-nH --cut-dirs=1', a `beta/' subdirectory will be
568 placed to `xemacs/beta', as one would expect.
571 `--directory-prefix=PREFIX'
572 Set directory prefix to PREFIX. The "directory prefix" is the
573 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved
574 to, i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is `.' (the
578 File: wget.info, Node: HTTP Options, Next: FTP Options, Prev: Directory Options, Up: Invoking
584 `--http-passwd=PASSWORD'
585 Specify the username USER and password PASSWORD on an HTTP server.
586 According to the type of the challenge, Wget will encode them
587 using either the `basic' (insecure) or the `digest' authentication
590 Another way to specify username and password is in the URL itself
591 (*Note URL Format::). For more information about security issues
592 with Wget, *Note Security Considerations::.
596 When set to off, disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget
597 will send the remote server an appropriate directive (`Pragma:
598 no-cache') to get the file from the remote service, rather than
599 returning the cached version. This is especially useful for
600 retrieving and flushing out-of-date documents on proxy servers.
602 Caching is allowed by default.
605 Unfortunately, some HTTP servers (CGI programs, to be more
606 precise) send out bogus `Content-Length' headers, which makes Wget
607 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can
608 spot this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again
609 and again, each time claiming that the (otherwise normal)
610 connection has closed on the very same byte.
612 With this option, Wget will ignore the `Content-Length' header--as
615 `--header=ADDITIONAL-HEADER'
616 Define an ADDITIONAL-HEADER to be passed to the HTTP servers.
617 Headers must contain a `:' preceded by one or more non-blank
618 characters, and must not contain newlines.
620 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
621 `--header' more than once.
623 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
624 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
625 http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
627 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
628 previous user-defined headers.
631 `--proxy-passwd=PASSWORD'
632 Specify the username USER and password PASSWORD for authentication
633 on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the `basic'
634 authentication scheme.
637 Include `Referer: URL' header in HTTP request. Useful for
638 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they
639 are always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only
640 come out properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that
645 Save the headers sent by the HTTP server to the file, preceding the
646 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
649 `--user-agent=AGENT-STRING'
650 Identify as AGENT-STRING to the HTTP server.
652 The HTTP protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
653 `User-Agent' header field. This enables distinguishing the WWW
654 software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
655 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as `Wget/VERSION',
656 VERSION being the current version number of Wget.
658 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of
659 tailoring the output according to the `User-Agent'-supplied
660 information. While conceptually this is not such a bad idea, it
661 has been abused by servers denying information to clients other
662 than `Mozilla' or Microsoft `Internet Explorer'. This option
663 allows you to change the `User-Agent' line issued by Wget. Use of
664 this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
667 *NOTE* that Netscape Communications Corp. has claimed that false
668 transmissions of `Mozilla' as the `User-Agent' are a copyright
669 infringement, which will be prosecuted. *DO NOT* misrepresent
673 File: wget.info, Node: FTP Options, Next: Recursive Retrieval Options, Prev: HTTP Options, Up: Invoking
679 Retrieve symbolic links on FTP sites as if they were plain files,
680 i.e. don't just create links locally.
684 Turn FTP globbing on or off. Globbing means you may use the
685 shell-like special characters ("wildcards"), like `*', `?', `['
686 and `]' to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
689 wget ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/*.msg
691 By default, globbing will be turned on if the URL contains a
692 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on
695 You may have to quote the URL to protect it from being expanded by
696 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing,
697 which is system-specific. This is why it currently works only
698 with Unix FTP servers (and the ones emulating Unix `ls' output).
701 Use the "passive" FTP retrieval scheme, in which the client
702 initiates the data connection. This is sometimes required for FTP
703 to work behind firewalls.
706 File: wget.info, Node: Recursive Retrieval Options, Next: Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Prev: FTP Options, Up: Invoking
708 Recursive Retrieval Options
709 ===========================
713 Turn on recursive retrieving. *Note Recursive Retrieval:: for more
718 Specify recursion maximum depth level DEPTH (*Note Recursive
719 Retrieval::). The default maximum depth is 5.
722 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
723 *after* having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
724 pages through proxy, e.g.:
726 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
728 The `-r' option is to retrieve recursively, and `-nd' not to
733 Convert the non-relative links to relative ones locally. Only the
734 references to the documents actually downloaded will be converted;
735 the rest will be left unchanged.
737 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which
738 links have been downloaded. Because of that, much of the work
739 done by `-k' will be performed at the end of the downloads.
743 When converting a file, back up the original version with a `.orig'
744 suffix. Affects the behavior of `-N' (*Note HTTP Time-Stamping
749 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on
750 recursion and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and
751 keeps FTP directory listings. It is currently equivalent to `-r
755 `--dont-remove-listing'
756 Don't remove the temporary `.listing' files generated by FTP
757 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory
758 listings received from FTP servers. Not removing them can be
759 useful to access the full remote file list when running a mirror,
760 or for debugging purposes.
763 File: wget.info, Node: Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Prev: Recursive Retrieval Options, Up: Invoking
765 Recursive Accept/Reject Options
766 ===============================
768 `-A ACCLIST --accept ACCLIST'
769 `-R REJLIST --reject REJLIST'
770 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
771 accept or reject (*Note Types of Files:: for more details).
774 `--domains=DOMAIN-LIST'
775 Set domains to be accepted and DNS looked-up, where DOMAIN-LIST is
776 a comma-separated list. Note that it does *not* turn on `-H'.
777 This option speeds things up, even if only one host is spanned
778 (*Note Domain Acceptance::).
780 `--exclude-domains DOMAIN-LIST'
781 Exclude the domains given in a comma-separated DOMAIN-LIST from
782 DNS-lookup (*Note Domain Acceptance::).
785 Follow FTP links from HTML documents. Without this option, Wget
786 will ignore all the FTP links.
789 Wget has an internal table of HTML tag / attribute pairs that it
790 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
791 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
792 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
793 comma-separated LIST with this option.
797 This is the opposite of the `--follow-tags' option. To skip
798 certain HTML tags when recursively looking for documents to
799 download, specify them in a comma-separated LIST. The author of
800 this option likes to use the following command to download a
801 single HTML page and all files (e.g. images, sounds, and
802 stylesheets) necessary to display it properly:
804 wget -Ga,area -H -k -K -nh -r http://SITE/DOCUMENT
808 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
813 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home
814 page without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
815 (*Note Relative Links::).
818 `--include-directories=LIST'
819 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow
820 when downloading (*Note Directory-Based Limits:: for more
821 details.) Elements of LIST may contain wildcards.
824 `--exclude-directories=LIST'
825 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude
826 from download (*Note Directory-Based Limits:: for more details.)
827 Elements of LIST may contain wildcards.
831 Disable the time-consuming DNS lookup of almost all hosts (*Note
837 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving
838 recursively. This is a useful option, since it guarantees that
839 only the files *below* a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
840 *Note Directory-Based Limits:: for more details.
843 File: wget.info, Node: Recursive Retrieval, Next: Following Links, Prev: Invoking, Up: Top
848 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single HTTP
849 or FTP server), depth-first following links and directory structure.
850 This is called "recursive" retrieving, or "recursion".
852 With HTTP URLs, Wget retrieves and parses the HTML from the given
853 URL, documents, retrieving the files the HTML document was referring
854 to, through markups like `href', or `src'. If the freshly downloaded
855 file is also of type `text/html', it will be parsed and followed
858 The maximum "depth" to which the retrieval may descend is specified
859 with the `-l' option (the default maximum depth is five layers). *Note
860 Recursive Retrieval::.
862 When retrieving an FTP URL recursively, Wget will retrieve all the
863 data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up to
864 the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
865 locally. FTP retrieval is also limited by the `depth' parameter.
867 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
868 the one found on the remote server.
870 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
871 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for WWW
872 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
873 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
875 You should be warned that invoking recursion may cause grave
876 overloading on your system, because of the fast exchange of data
877 through the network; all of this may hamper other users' work. The
878 same stands for the foreign server you are mirroring--the more requests
879 it gets in a rows, the greater is its load.
881 Careless retrieving can also fill your file system uncontrollably,
882 which can grind the machine to a halt.
884 The load can be minimized by lowering the maximum recursion level
885 (`-l') and/or by lowering the number of retries (`-t'). You may also
886 consider using the `-w' option to slow down your requests to the remote
887 servers, as well as the numerous options to narrow the number of
888 followed links (*Note Following Links::).
890 Recursive retrieval is a good thing when used properly. Please take
891 all precautions not to wreak havoc through carelessness.
894 File: wget.info, Node: Following Links, Next: Time-Stamping, Prev: Recursive Retrieval, Up: Top
899 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
900 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
901 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
903 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
904 `fly.cc.fer.hr', you will not want to download all the home pages that
905 happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
907 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
908 links it will follow.
912 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
913 * Host Checking:: Follow links on the same host.
914 * Domain Acceptance:: Check on a list of domains.
915 * All Hosts:: No host restrictions.
916 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
917 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
918 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
921 File: wget.info, Node: Relative Links, Next: Host Checking, Prev: Following Links, Up: Following Links
926 When only relative links are followed (option `-L'), recursive
927 retrieving will never span hosts. No time-expensive DNS-lookups will
928 be performed, and the process will be very fast, with the minimum
929 strain of the network. This will suit your needs often, especially when
930 mirroring the output of various `x2html' converters, since they
931 generally output relative links.
934 File: wget.info, Node: Host Checking, Next: Domain Acceptance, Prev: Relative Links, Up: Following Links
939 The drawback of following the relative links solely is that humans
940 often tend to mix them with absolute links to the very same host, and
941 the very same page. In this mode (which is the default mode for
942 following links) all URLs that refer to the same host will be retrieved.
944 The problem with this option are the aliases of the hosts and
945 domains. Thus there is no way for Wget to know that `regoc.srce.hr' and
946 `www.srce.hr' are the same host, or that `fly.cc.fer.hr' is the same as
947 `fly.cc.etf.hr'. Whenever an absolute link is encountered, the host is
948 DNS-looked-up with `gethostbyname' to check whether we are maybe
949 dealing with the same hosts. Although the results of `gethostbyname'
950 are cached, it is still a great slowdown, e.g. when dealing with large
951 indices of home pages on different hosts (because each of the hosts
952 must be DNS-resolved to see whether it just *might* be an alias of the
955 To avoid the overhead you may use `-nh', which will turn off
956 DNS-resolving and make Wget compare hosts literally. This will make
957 things run much faster, but also much less reliable (e.g. `www.srce.hr'
958 and `regoc.srce.hr' will be flagged as different hosts).
960 Note that modern HTTP servers allow one IP address to host several
961 "virtual servers", each having its own directory hierarchy. Such
962 "servers" are distinguished by their hostnames (all of which point to
963 the same IP address); for this to work, a client must send a `Host'
964 header, which is what Wget does. However, in that case Wget *must not*
965 try to divine a host's "real" address, nor try to use the same hostname
966 for each access, i.e. `-nh' must be turned on.
968 In other words, the `-nh' option must be used to enable the
969 retrieval from virtual servers distinguished by their hostnames. As the
970 number of such server setups grow, the behavior of `-nh' may become the
971 default in the future.
974 File: wget.info, Node: Domain Acceptance, Next: All Hosts, Prev: Host Checking, Up: Following Links
979 With the `-D' option you may specify the domains that will be
980 followed. The hosts the domain of which is not in this list will not be
981 DNS-resolved. Thus you can specify `-Dmit.edu' just to make sure that
982 *nothing outside of MIT gets looked up*. This is very important and
983 useful. It also means that `-D' does *not* imply `-H' (span all
984 hosts), which must be specified explicitly. Feel free to use this
985 options since it will speed things up, with almost all the reliability
986 of checking for all hosts. Thus you could invoke
988 wget -r -D.hr http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
990 to make sure that only the hosts in `.hr' domain get DNS-looked-up
991 for being equal to `fly.cc.fer.hr'. So `fly.cc.etf.hr' will be checked
992 (only once!) and found equal, but `www.gnu.ai.mit.edu' will not even be
995 Of course, domain acceptance can be used to limit the retrieval to
996 particular domains with spanning of hosts in them, but then you must
997 specify `-H' explicitly. E.g.:
999 wget -r -H -Dmit.edu,stanford.edu http://www.mit.edu/
1001 will start with `http://www.mit.edu/', following links across MIT
1004 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
1005 with `--exclude-domains', which accepts the same type of arguments of
1006 `-D', but will *exclude* all the listed domains. For example, if you
1007 want to download all the hosts from `foo.edu' domain, with the
1008 exception of `sunsite.foo.edu', you can do it like this:
1010 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu http://www.foo.edu/
1013 File: wget.info, Node: All Hosts, Next: Types of Files, Prev: Domain Acceptance, Up: Following Links
1018 When `-H' is specified without `-D', all hosts are freely spanned.
1019 There are no restrictions whatsoever as to what part of the net Wget
1020 will go to fetch documents, other than maximum retrieval depth. If a
1021 page references `www.yahoo.com', so be it. Such an option is rarely
1025 File: wget.info, Node: Types of Files, Next: Directory-Based Limits, Prev: All Hosts, Up: Following Links
1030 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to
1031 restrict the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you
1032 are interested in downloading GIFs, you will not be overjoyed to get
1033 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
1035 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
1036 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
1042 The argument to `--accept' option is a list of file suffixes or
1043 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A
1044 suffix is the ending part of a file, and consists of "normal"
1045 letters, e.g. `gif' or `.jpg'. A matching pattern contains
1046 shell-like wildcards, e.g. `books*' or `zelazny*196[0-9]*'.
1048 So, specifying `wget -A gif,jpg' will make Wget download only the
1049 files ending with `gif' or `jpg', i.e. GIFs and JPEGs. On the
1050 other hand, `wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"' will download only files
1051 beginning with `zelazny' and containing numbers from 1960 to 1969
1052 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for a
1053 description of how pattern matching works.
1055 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined
1056 into a comma-separated list, and given as an argument to `-A'.
1061 The `--reject' option works the same way as `--accept', only its
1062 logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files *except* the
1063 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
1065 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
1066 MPEGs and .AU files, you can use `wget -R mpg,mpeg,au'.
1067 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
1068 `bjork', use `wget -R "bjork*"'. The quotes are to prevent
1069 expansion by the shell.
1071 The `-A' and `-R' options may be combined to achieve even better
1072 fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. `wget -A "*zelazny*" -R
1073 .ps' will download all the files having `zelazny' as a part of their
1074 name, but *not* the PostScript files.
1076 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of HTML
1077 files; Wget must load all the HTMLs to know where to go at
1078 all--recursive retrieval would make no sense otherwise.
1081 File: wget.info, Node: Directory-Based Limits, Next: FTP Links, Prev: Types of Files, Up: Following Links
1083 Directory-Based Limits
1084 ======================
1086 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
1087 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
1088 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this--the
1089 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
1090 directories may contain useless information, e.g. `/cgi-bin' or `/dev'
1093 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement.
1094 Each option description lists a short name, a long name, and the
1095 equivalent command in `.wgetrc'.
1099 `include_directories = LIST'
1100 `-I' option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
1101 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored.
1102 The directories are absolute paths.
1104 So, if you wish to download from `http://host/people/bozo/'
1105 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the `/people'
1106 directory and the bogus scripts in `/cgi-bin', you can specify:
1108 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
1112 `exclude_directories = LIST'
1113 `-X' option is exactly the reverse of `-I'--this is a list of
1114 directories *excluded* from the download. E.g. if you do not want
1115 Wget to download things from `/cgi-bin' directory, specify `-X
1116 /cgi-bin' on the command line.
1118 The same as with `-A'/`-R', these two options can be combined to
1119 get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if
1120 you want to load all the files from `/pub' hierarchy except for
1121 `/pub/worthless', specify `-I/pub -X/pub/worthless'.
1126 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
1127 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
1128 "above" than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to
1129 the parent directory/directories.
1131 The `--no-parent' option (short `-np') is useful in this case.
1132 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing
1133 hierarchy. Supposing you issue Wget with:
1135 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
1137 You may rest assured that none of the references to
1138 `/~his-girls-homepage/' or `/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/' will be
1139 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be
1140 downloaded. Essentially, `--no-parent' is similar to
1141 `-I/~luzer/my-archive', only it handles redirections in a more
1142 intelligent fashion.
1145 File: wget.info, Node: FTP Links, Prev: Directory-Based Limits, Up: Following Links
1150 The rules for FTP are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for them
1151 to be. FTP links in HTML documents are often included for purposes of
1152 reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them by default.
1154 To have FTP links followed from HTML documents, you need to specify
1155 the `--follow-ftp' option. Having done that, FTP links will span hosts
1156 regardless of `-H' setting. This is logical, as FTP links rarely point
1157 to the same host where the HTTP server resides. For similar reasons,
1158 the `-L' options has no effect on such downloads. On the other hand,
1159 domain acceptance (`-D') and suffix rules (`-A' and `-R') apply
1162 Also note that followed links to FTP directories will not be
1163 retrieved recursively further.
1166 File: wget.info, Node: Time-Stamping, Next: Startup File, Prev: Following Links, Up: Top
1171 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
1172 Internet is updating your archives.
1174 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
1175 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
1176 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
1177 offer the option of incremental updating.
1179 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
1180 search of "new" files. Only those new files will be downloaded in the
1181 place of the old ones.
1183 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
1185 1. A file of that name does not already exist locally.
1187 2. A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified
1188 more recently than the local file.
1190 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
1191 modification of both remote and local files. Such information are
1192 called the "time-stamps".
1194 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using `--timestamping'
1195 (`-N') option, or through `timestamping = on' directive in `.wgetrc'.
1196 With this option, for each file it intends to download, Wget will check
1197 whether a local file of the same name exists. If it does, and the
1198 remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
1200 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
1201 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
1206 * Time-Stamping Usage::
1207 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
1208 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
1211 File: wget.info, Node: Time-Stamping Usage, Next: HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Prev: Time-Stamping, Up: Time-Stamping
1216 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to
1217 download a file so that it keeps its date of modification.
1219 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
1221 A simple `ls -l' shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
1222 the state of the `Last-Modified' header, as returned by the server. As
1223 you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even without
1226 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file
1227 has changed, and download it if it has.
1229 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
1231 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local
1232 file is newer, the remote file will not be re-fetched. However, if the
1233 remote file is more recent, Wget will proceed fetching it normally.
1235 The same goes for FTP. For example:
1237 wget ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*
1239 `ls' will show that the timestamps are set according to the state on
1240 the remote server. Reissuing the command with `-N' will make Wget
1241 re-fetch *only* the files that have been modified.
1243 In both HTTP and FTP retrieval Wget will time-stamp the local file
1244 correctly (with or without `-N') if it gets the stamps, i.e. gets the
1245 directory listing for FTP or the `Last-Modified' header for HTTP.
1247 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use the
1248 following command every week:
1250 wget --timestamping -r ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/