1 \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
6 @settitle GNU Wget @value{VERSION} Manual
7 @c Disable the monstrous rectangles beside overfull hbox-es.
9 @c Use `odd' to print double-sided.
14 @c Remove this if you don't use A4 paper.
18 @c Title for man page. The weird way texi2pod.pl is written requires
19 @c the preceding @set.
21 @c man title Wget The non-interactive network downloader.
23 @dircategory Network Applications
25 * Wget: (wget). The non-interactive network downloader.
29 This file documents the GNU Wget utility for downloading network
32 @c man begin COPYRIGHT
33 Copyright @copyright{} 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
34 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
37 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
38 this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
39 are preserved on all copies.
43 Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the
44 results, provided the printed document carries a copying permission
45 notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
46 (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
48 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
49 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
50 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
51 Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A
52 copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free
53 Documentation License''.
58 @title GNU Wget @value{VERSION}
59 @subtitle The non-interactive download utility
60 @subtitle Updated for Wget @value{VERSION}, @value{UPDATED}
61 @author by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} and others
65 Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
66 Currently maintained by Micah Cowan <micah@cowan.name>.
69 This is @strong{not} the complete manual for GNU Wget.
70 For more complete information, including more detailed explanations of
71 some of the options, and a number of commands available
72 for use with @file{.wgetrc} files and the @samp{-e} option, see the GNU
73 Info entry for @file{wget}.
78 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
86 @top Wget @value{VERSION}
92 * Overview:: Features of Wget.
93 * Invoking:: Wget command-line arguments.
94 * Recursive Download:: Downloading interlinked pages.
95 * Following Links:: The available methods of chasing links.
96 * Time-Stamping:: Mirroring according to time-stamps.
97 * Startup File:: Wget's initialization file.
98 * Examples:: Examples of usage.
99 * Various:: The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.
100 * Appendices:: Some useful references.
101 * Copying this manual:: You may give out copies of Wget and of this manual.
102 * Concept Index:: Topics covered by this manual.
110 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
111 GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from
112 the Web. It supports @sc{http}, @sc{https}, and @sc{ftp} protocols, as
113 well as retrieval through @sc{http} proxies.
116 This chapter is a partial overview of Wget's features.
120 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
121 Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background,
122 while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval
123 and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By
124 contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user's presence,
125 which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
130 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
134 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
135 Wget can follow links in @sc{html}, @sc{xhtml}, and @sc{css} pages, to
136 create local versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the
137 directory structure of the original site. This is sometimes referred to
138 as ``recursive downloading.'' While doing that, Wget respects the Robot
139 Exclusion Standard (@file{/robots.txt}). Wget can be instructed to
140 convert the links in downloaded files to point at the local files, for
145 File name wildcard matching and recursive mirroring of directories are
146 available when retrieving via @sc{ftp}. Wget can read the time-stamp
147 information given by both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} servers, and store it
148 locally. Thus Wget can see if the remote file has changed since last
149 retrieval, and automatically retrieve the new version if it has. This
150 makes Wget suitable for mirroring of @sc{ftp} sites, as well as home
155 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
159 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
160 Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network
161 connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will
162 keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server
163 supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the
164 download from where it left off.
168 Wget supports proxy servers, which can lighten the network load, speed
169 up retrieval and provide access behind firewalls. Wget uses the passive
170 @sc{ftp} downloading by default, active @sc{ftp} being an option.
173 Wget supports IP version 6, the next generation of IP. IPv6 is
174 autodetected at compile-time, and can be disabled at either build or
175 run time. Binaries built with IPv6 support work well in both
176 IPv4-only and dual family environments.
179 Built-in features offer mechanisms to tune which links you wish to follow
180 (@pxref{Following Links}).
183 The progress of individual downloads is traced using a progress gauge.
184 Interactive downloads are tracked using a ``thermometer''-style gauge,
185 whereas non-interactive ones are traced with dots, each dot
186 representing a fixed amount of data received (1KB by default). Either
187 gauge can be customized to your preferences.
190 Most of the features are fully configurable, either through command line
191 options, or via the initialization file @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup
192 File}). Wget allows you to define @dfn{global} startup files
193 (@file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default) for site settings.
198 @item /usr/local/etc/wgetrc
199 Default location of the @dfn{global} startup file.
208 Finally, GNU Wget is free software. This means that everyone may use
209 it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
210 Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation (see the
211 file @file{COPYING} that came with GNU Wget, for details).
221 By default, Wget is very simple to invoke. The basic syntax is:
224 @c man begin SYNOPSIS
225 wget [@var{option}]@dots{} [@var{URL}]@dots{}
229 Wget will simply download all the @sc{url}s specified on the command
230 line. @var{URL} is a @dfn{Uniform Resource Locator}, as defined below.
232 However, you may wish to change some of the default parameters of
233 Wget. You can do it two ways: permanently, adding the appropriate
234 command to @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup File}), or specifying it on
240 * Basic Startup Options::
241 * Logging and Input File Options::
243 * Directory Options::
245 * HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options::
247 * Recursive Retrieval Options::
248 * Recursive Accept/Reject Options::
256 @dfn{URL} is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
257 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
258 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the @sc{url} syntax as per
259 @sc{rfc1738}. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
263 http://host[:port]/directory/file
264 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
267 You can also encode your username and password within a @sc{url}:
270 ftp://user:password@@host/path
271 http://user:password@@host/path
274 Either @var{user} or @var{password}, or both, may be left out. If you
275 leave out either the @sc{http} username or password, no authentication
276 will be sent. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} username, @samp{anonymous}
277 will be used. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} password, your email
278 address will be supplied as a default password.@footnote{If you have a
279 @file{.netrc} file in your home directory, password will also be
282 @strong{Important Note}: if you specify a password-containing @sc{url}
283 on the command line, the username and password will be plainly visible
284 to all users on the system, by way of @code{ps}. On multi-user systems,
285 this is a big security risk. To work around it, use @code{wget -i -}
286 and feed the @sc{url}s to Wget's standard input, each on a separate
287 line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
289 You can encode unsafe characters in a @sc{url} as @samp{%xy}, @code{xy}
290 being the hexadecimal representation of the character's @sc{ascii}
291 value. Some common unsafe characters include @samp{%} (quoted as
292 @samp{%25}), @samp{:} (quoted as @samp{%3A}), and @samp{@@} (quoted as
293 @samp{%40}). Refer to @sc{rfc1738} for a comprehensive list of unsafe
296 Wget also supports the @code{type} feature for @sc{ftp} @sc{url}s. By
297 default, @sc{ftp} documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type
298 @samp{i}), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another
299 useful mode is the @samp{a} (@dfn{ASCII}) mode, which converts the line
300 delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful
301 for text files. Here is an example:
304 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
307 Two alternative variants of @sc{url} specification are also supported,
308 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
310 @sc{ftp}-only syntax (supported by @code{NcFTP}):
315 @sc{http}-only syntax (introduced by @code{Netscape}):
320 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
321 supported in the future.
323 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
324 not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
325 with your favorite browser, like @code{Lynx} or @code{Netscape}.
330 @section Option Syntax
331 @cindex option syntax
332 @cindex syntax of options
334 Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process command-line arguments, every
335 option has a long form along with the short one. Long options are
336 more convenient to remember, but take time to type. You may freely
337 mix different option styles, or specify options after the command-line
338 arguments. Thus you may write:
341 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ -o log
344 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may
345 be omitted. Instead of @samp{-o log} you can write @samp{-olog}.
347 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
354 This is a complete equivalent of:
357 wget -d -r -c @var{URL}
360 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
361 terminate them with @samp{--}. So the following will try to download
362 @sc{url} @samp{-x}, reporting failure to @file{log}:
368 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
369 that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be useful to
370 clear the @file{.wgetrc} settings. For instance, if your @file{.wgetrc}
371 sets @code{exclude_directories} to @file{/cgi-bin}, the following
372 example will first reset it, and then set it to exclude @file{/~nobody}
373 and @file{/~somebody}. You can also clear the lists in @file{.wgetrc}
374 (@pxref{Wgetrc Syntax}).
377 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
380 Most options that do not accept arguments are @dfn{boolean} options,
381 so named because their state can be captured with a yes-or-no
382 (``boolean'') variable. For example, @samp{--follow-ftp} tells Wget
383 to follow FTP links from HTML files and, on the other hand,
384 @samp{--no-glob} tells it not to perform file globbing on FTP URLs. A
385 boolean option is either @dfn{affirmative} or @dfn{negative}
386 (beginning with @samp{--no}). All such options share several
389 Unless stated otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is
390 the opposite of what the option accomplishes. For example, the
391 documented existence of @samp{--follow-ftp} assumes that the default
392 is to @emph{not} follow FTP links from HTML pages.
394 Affirmative options can be negated by prepending the @samp{--no-} to
395 the option name; negative options can be negated by omitting the
396 @samp{--no-} prefix. This might seem superfluous---if the default for
397 an affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide a way
398 to explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in fact change
399 the default. For instance, using @code{follow_ftp = off} in
400 @file{.wgetrc} makes Wget @emph{not} follow FTP links by default, and
401 using @samp{--no-follow-ftp} is the only way to restore the factory
402 default from the command line.
404 @node Basic Startup Options
405 @section Basic Startup Options
410 Display the version of Wget.
414 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
418 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
419 specified via the @samp{-o}, output is redirected to @file{wget-log}.
421 @cindex execute wgetrc command
422 @item -e @var{command}
423 @itemx --execute @var{command}
424 Execute @var{command} as if it were a part of @file{.wgetrc}
425 (@pxref{Startup File}). A command thus invoked will be executed
426 @emph{after} the commands in @file{.wgetrc}, thus taking precedence over
427 them. If you need to specify more than one wgetrc command, use multiple
428 instances of @samp{-e}.
432 @node Logging and Input File Options
433 @section Logging and Input File Options
438 @item -o @var{logfile}
439 @itemx --output-file=@var{logfile}
440 Log all messages to @var{logfile}. The messages are normally reported
443 @cindex append to log
444 @item -a @var{logfile}
445 @itemx --append-output=@var{logfile}
446 Append to @var{logfile}. This is the same as @samp{-o}, only it appends
447 to @var{logfile} instead of overwriting the old log file. If
448 @var{logfile} does not exist, a new file is created.
453 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
454 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
455 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in
456 which case @samp{-d} will not work. Please note that compiling with
457 debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will
458 @emph{not} print any debug info unless requested with @samp{-d}.
459 @xref{Reporting Bugs}, for more information on how to use @samp{-d} for
465 Turn off Wget's output.
470 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output
475 Turn off verbose without being completely quiet (use @samp{-q} for
476 that), which means that error messages and basic information still get
481 @itemx --input-file=@var{file}
482 Read @sc{url}s from a local or external @var{file}. If @samp{-} is
483 specified as @var{file}, @sc{url}s are read from the standard input.
484 (Use @samp{./-} to read from a file literally named @samp{-}.)
486 If this function is used, no @sc{url}s need be present on the command
487 line. If there are @sc{url}s both on the command line and in an input
488 file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to be
489 retrieved. The @var{file} need not be an @sc{html} document (but no
490 harm if it is)---it is enough if the @sc{url}s are just listed
493 However, if you specify @samp{--force-html}, the document will be
494 regarded as @samp{html}. In that case you may have problems with
495 relative links, which you can solve either by adding @code{<base
496 href="@var{url}">} to the documents or by specifying
497 @samp{--base=@var{url}} on the command line.
499 If the @var{file} is an external one, the document will be automatically
500 treated as @samp{html} if the Content-Type matches @samp{text/html}.
501 Furthermore, the @var{file}'s location will be implicitly used as base
502 href if none was specified.
507 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an @sc{html}
508 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
509 @sc{html} files on your local disk, by adding @code{<base
510 href="@var{url}">} to @sc{html}, or using the @samp{--base} command-line
513 @cindex base for relative links in input file
515 @itemx --base=@var{URL}
516 Prepends @var{URL} to relative links read from the file specified with
517 the @samp{-i} option.
520 @node Download Options
521 @section Download Options
525 @cindex client IP address
526 @cindex IP address, client
527 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
528 When making client TCP/IP connections, bind to @var{ADDRESS} on
529 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
530 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
535 @cindex number of retries
536 @item -t @var{number}
537 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
538 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
539 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
540 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
541 which are not retried.
544 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
545 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all
546 will be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @samp{-}
547 is used as @var{file}, documents will be printed to standard output,
548 disabling link conversion. (Use @samp{./-} to print to a file
549 literally named @samp{-}.)
551 Use of @samp{-O} is @emph{not} intended to mean simply ``use the name
552 @var{file} instead of the one in the URL;'' rather, it is
553 analogous to shell redirection:
554 @samp{wget -O file http://foo} is intended to work like
555 @samp{wget -O - http://foo > file}; @file{file} will be truncated
556 immediately, and @emph{all} downloaded content will be written there.
558 For this reason, @samp{-N} (for timestamp-checking) is not supported
559 in combination with @samp{-O}: since @var{file} is always newly
560 created, it will always have a very new timestamp. A warning will be
561 issued if this combination is used.
563 Similarly, using @samp{-r} or @samp{-p} with @samp{-O} may not work as
564 you expect: Wget won't just download the first file to @var{file} and
565 then download the rest to their normal names: @emph{all} downloaded
566 content will be placed in @var{file}. This was disabled in version
567 1.11, but has been reinstated (with a warning) in 1.11.2, as there are
568 some cases where this behavior can actually have some use.
570 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only permitted when
571 downloading a single document, as in that case it will just convert
572 all relative URIs to external ones; @samp{-k} makes no sense for
573 multiple URIs when they're all being downloaded to a single file.
575 @cindex clobbering, file
576 @cindex downloading multiple times
580 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
581 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
582 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
583 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
585 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, @samp{-r}, or @samp{p},
586 downloading the same file in the same directory will result in the
587 original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy being
588 named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet again, the
589 third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on. When
590 @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will
591 refuse to download newer copies of @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore,
592 ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a misnomer in this mode---it's not
593 clobbering that's prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
594 preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version saving that's
597 When running Wget with @samp{-r} or @samp{-p}, but without @samp{-N}
598 or @samp{-nc}, re-downloading a file will result in the new copy
599 simply overwriting the old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent this
600 behavior, instead causing the original version to be preserved and any
601 newer copies on the server to be ignored.
603 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r} or
604 @samp{-p}, the decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy
605 of a file depends on the local and remote timestamp and size of the
606 file (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the
607 same time as @samp{-N}.
609 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
610 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
611 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
613 @cindex continue retrieval
614 @cindex incomplete downloads
615 @cindex resume download
618 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
619 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
620 by another program. For instance:
623 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
626 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
627 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
628 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
629 length of the local file.
631 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
632 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
633 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
634 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
635 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
637 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
638 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
641 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
642 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
643 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
644 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
645 start from scratch, remove the file.
647 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
648 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
649 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
650 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
651 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
652 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
654 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
655 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
656 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
657 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
658 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
659 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
660 collection or log file.
662 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
663 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
664 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
665 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
666 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
667 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
669 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
670 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
671 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
672 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
674 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
675 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
677 @cindex progress indicator
679 @item --progress=@var{type}
680 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
681 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
683 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
684 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
685 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
688 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
689 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
690 fixed amount of downloaded data.
692 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
693 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
694 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
695 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
696 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
697 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
698 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
699 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
700 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
702 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
703 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
704 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
705 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
706 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
709 @itemx --timestamping
710 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
712 @cindex server response, print
714 @itemx --server-response
715 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
718 @cindex Wget as spider
721 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
722 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
723 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
726 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
729 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
730 functionality of real web spiders.
734 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
735 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
736 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
737 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
739 When interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and
740 abort the operation if it takes too long. This prevents anomalies
741 like hanging reads and infinite connects. The only timeout enabled by
742 default is a 900-second read timeout. Setting a timeout to 0 disables
743 it altogether. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to
744 change the default timeout settings.
746 All timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as
747 subsecond values. For example, @samp{0.1} seconds is a legal (though
748 unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts are useful for checking
749 server response times or for testing network latency.
753 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
754 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
755 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
756 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
759 @cindex connect timeout
760 @cindex timeout, connect
761 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
762 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
763 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
764 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
767 @cindex timeout, read
768 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
769 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. The
770 ``time'' of this timeout refers to @dfn{idle time}: if, at any point in
771 the download, no data is received for more than the specified number
772 of seconds, reading fails and the download is restarted. This option
773 does not directly affect the duration of the entire download.
775 Of course, the remote server may choose to terminate the connection
776 sooner than this option requires. The default read timeout is 900
779 @cindex bandwidth, limit
781 @cindex limit bandwidth
782 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
783 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
784 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
785 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
786 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for whatever
787 reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available bandwidth.
789 This option allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction
790 with power suffixes; for example, @samp{--limit-rate=2.5k} is a legal
793 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
794 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
795 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
796 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
797 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
798 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
802 @item -w @var{seconds}
803 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
804 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
805 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
806 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
807 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
808 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
810 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
811 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
812 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry. The
813 waiting interval specified by this function is influenced by
814 @code{--random-wait}, which see.
816 @cindex retries, waiting between
817 @cindex waiting between retries
818 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
819 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
820 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
821 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
822 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
823 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify. Therefore,
824 a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55
827 Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
833 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
834 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
835 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
836 to vary between 0.5 and 1.5 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
837 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
838 presence from such analysis.
840 A 2001 article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
841 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
842 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
843 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
846 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
847 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
852 Don't use proxies, even if the appropriate @code{*_proxy} environment
856 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
861 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
862 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
863 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
864 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
866 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
867 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
868 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
869 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
870 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
871 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
872 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
874 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
877 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
879 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
880 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
881 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
882 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
885 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
886 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
887 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
888 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
889 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
890 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
891 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
894 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
897 @cindex file names, restrict
898 @cindex Windows file names
899 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{mode}
900 Change which characters found in remote URLs may show up in local file
901 names generated from those URLs. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
902 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
903 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
906 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid as part of
907 file names on your operating system, as well as control characters that
908 are typically unprintable. This option is useful for changing these
909 defaults, either because you are downloading to a non-native partition,
910 or because you want to disable escaping of the control characters.
912 When mode is set to ``unix'', Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
913 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
914 default on Unix-like OS'es.
916 When mode is set to ``windows'', Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
917 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
918 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
919 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
920 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
921 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
922 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
923 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
924 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
925 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
927 If you append @samp{,nocontrol} to the mode, as in
928 @samp{unix,nocontrol}, escaping of the control characters is also
929 switched off. You can use @samp{--restrict-file-names=nocontrol} to
930 turn off escaping of control characters without affecting the choice of
931 the OS to use as file name restriction mode.
938 Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With @samp{--inet4-only}
939 or @samp{-4}, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA
940 records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in
941 URLs. Conversely, with @samp{--inet6-only} or @samp{-6}, Wget will
942 only connect to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
944 Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware
945 Wget will use the address family specified by the host's DNS record.
946 If the DNS responds with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, Wget will try
947 them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to. (Also see
948 @code{--prefer-family} option described below.)
950 These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or
951 IPv6 address families on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging
952 or to deal with broken network configuration. Only one of
953 @samp{--inet6-only} and @samp{--inet4-only} may be specified at the
954 same time. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without IPv6
957 @item --prefer-family=none/IPv4/IPv6
958 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
959 with specified address family first. The address order returned by
960 DNS is used without change by default.
962 This avoids spurious errors and connect attempts when accessing hosts
963 that resolve to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4 networks. For
964 example, @samp{www.kame.net} resolves to
965 @samp{2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085} and to
966 @samp{203.178.141.194}. When the preferred family is @code{IPv4}, the
967 IPv4 address is used first; when the preferred family is @code{IPv6},
968 the IPv6 address is used first; if the specified value is @code{none},
969 the address order returned by DNS is used without change.
971 Unlike @samp{-4} and @samp{-6}, this option doesn't inhibit access to
972 any address family, it only changes the @emph{order} in which the
973 addresses are accessed. Also note that the reordering performed by
974 this option is @dfn{stable}---it doesn't affect order of addresses of
975 the same family. That is, the relative order of all IPv4 addresses
976 and of all IPv6 addresses remains intact in all cases.
978 @item --retry-connrefused
979 Consider ``connection refused'' a transient error and try again.
980 Normally Wget gives up on a URL when it is unable to connect to the
981 site because failure to connect is taken as a sign that the server is
982 not running at all and that retries would not help. This option is
983 for mirroring unreliable sites whose servers tend to disappear for
984 short periods of time.
988 @cindex authentication
989 @item --user=@var{user}
990 @itemx --password=@var{password}
991 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for both
992 @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval. These parameters can be overridden
993 using the @samp{--ftp-user} and @samp{--ftp-password} options for
994 @sc{ftp} connections and the @samp{--http-user} and @samp{--http-password}
995 options for @sc{http} connections.
998 Prompt for a password for each connection established. Cannot be specified
999 when @samp{--password} is being used, because they are mutually exclusive.
1002 @node Directory Options
1003 @section Directory Options
1007 @itemx --no-directories
1008 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
1009 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
1010 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
1011 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
1014 @itemx --force-directories
1015 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
1016 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
1017 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
1018 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
1021 @itemx --no-host-directories
1022 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
1023 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
1024 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
1027 @item --protocol-directories
1028 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
1029 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
1030 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
1032 @cindex cut directories
1033 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
1034 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
1035 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
1038 Take, for example, the directory at
1039 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
1040 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
1041 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
1042 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
1043 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
1044 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
1045 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
1049 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
1051 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
1052 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
1054 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
1059 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
1060 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
1061 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
1062 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
1063 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
1065 @cindex directory prefix
1066 @item -P @var{prefix}
1067 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
1068 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
1069 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
1070 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
1075 @section HTTP Options
1078 @cindex default page name
1080 @item --default-page=@var{name}
1081 Use @var{name} as the default file name when it isn't known (i.e., for
1082 URLs that end in a slash), instead of @file{index.html}.
1084 @cindex .html extension
1086 @itemx --html-extension
1087 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
1088 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
1089 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
1090 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
1091 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
1092 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1093 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1094 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1095 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1097 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1098 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1099 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1100 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1101 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1102 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1103 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1104 Retrieval Options}).
1106 As of version 1.12, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files of
1107 type @samp{text/css} end in the suffix @samp{.css}. Obviously, this
1108 makes the name @samp{--html-extension} misleading; a better name is
1109 expected to be offered as an alternative in the near future.
1112 @cindex http password
1113 @cindex authentication
1114 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1115 @itemx --http-password=@var{password}
1116 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1117 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1118 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure),
1119 the @code{digest}, or the Windows @code{NTLM} authentication scheme.
1121 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1122 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1123 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1124 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1125 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1126 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1127 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1130 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1134 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1135 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1136 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1137 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1138 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1139 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1140 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1141 the load on the server.
1143 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1144 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1145 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1150 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1151 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1152 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1153 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1154 documents on proxy servers.
1156 Caching is allowed by default.
1160 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1161 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1162 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1163 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1164 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1165 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1166 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1168 @cindex loading cookies
1169 @cindex cookies, loading
1170 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1171 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1172 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1173 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1175 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1176 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1177 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1178 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1179 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1180 proves your identity.
1182 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1183 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1184 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1185 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1186 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1187 cookie files in different locations:
1191 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1193 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1194 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1195 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1196 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1197 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1199 @item Internet Explorer.
1200 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1201 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1202 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1204 @item Other browsers.
1205 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1206 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1207 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1210 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1211 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1212 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1213 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1214 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1217 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1220 @cindex saving cookies
1221 @cindex cookies, saving
1222 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1223 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1224 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1225 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1227 @cindex cookies, session
1228 @cindex session cookies
1229 @item --keep-session-cookies
1230 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1231 cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they are
1232 meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit the browser.
1233 Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
1234 the home page before you can access some pages. With this option,
1235 multiple Wget runs are considered a single browser session as far as
1236 the site is concerned.
1238 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1239 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1240 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1241 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1242 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1243 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1244 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1246 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1247 @cindex ignore length
1248 @item --ignore-length
1249 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1250 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1251 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1252 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1253 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1256 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1257 if it never existed.
1260 @item --header=@var{header-line}
1261 Send @var{header-line} along with the rest of the headers in each
1262 @sc{http} request. The supplied header is sent as-is, which means it
1263 must contain name and value separated by colon, and must not contain
1266 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1267 @samp{--header} more than once.
1271 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1272 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1273 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1277 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1278 previous user-defined headers.
1280 As of Wget 1.10, this option can be used to override headers otherwise
1281 generated automatically. This example instructs Wget to connect to
1282 localhost, but to specify @samp{foo.bar} in the @code{Host} header:
1285 wget --header="Host: foo.bar" http://localhost/
1288 In versions of Wget prior to 1.10 such use of @samp{--header} caused
1289 sending of duplicate headers.
1292 @item --max-redirect=@var{number}
1293 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
1294 The default is 20, which is usually far more than necessary. However, on
1295 those occasions where you want to allow more (or fewer), this is the
1299 @cindex proxy password
1300 @cindex proxy authentication
1301 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1302 @itemx --proxy-password=@var{password}
1303 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1304 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1305 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1307 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-password}
1308 pertain here as well.
1310 @cindex http referer
1311 @cindex referer, http
1312 @item --referer=@var{url}
1313 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1314 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1315 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1316 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1318 @cindex server response, save
1319 @item --save-headers
1320 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1321 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1324 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1325 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1326 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1328 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1329 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1330 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1331 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1332 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1335 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1336 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1337 While this is not such a bad idea in theory, it has been abused by
1338 servers denying information to clients other than (historically)
1339 Netscape or, more frequently, Microsoft Internet Explorer. This
1340 option allows you to change the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget.
1341 Use of this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
1344 Specifying empty user agent with @samp{--user-agent=""} instructs Wget
1345 not to send the @code{User-Agent} header in @sc{http} requests.
1348 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1349 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1350 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data
1351 in the request body. @code{--post-data} sends @var{string} as data,
1352 whereas @code{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}. Other than
1353 that, they work in exactly the same way.
1355 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1356 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1357 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1358 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1359 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1360 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1361 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1362 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1363 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1365 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it
1366 will not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because
1367 URLs that process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular
1368 page, which does not desire or accept POST. It is not completely
1369 clear that this behavior is optimal; if it doesn't work out, it might
1370 be changed in the future.
1372 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1373 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1378 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1379 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1380 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1381 http://server.com/auth.php
1383 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1384 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1385 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1389 If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication,
1390 the above will not work because @samp{--save-cookies} will not save
1391 them (and neither will browsers) and the @file{cookies.txt} file will
1392 be empty. In that case use @samp{--keep-session-cookies} along with
1393 @samp{--save-cookies} to force saving of session cookies.
1395 @cindex Content-Disposition
1396 @item --content-disposition
1398 If this is set to on, experimental (not fully-functional) support for
1399 @code{Content-Disposition} headers is enabled. This can currently result in
1400 extra round-trips to the server for a @code{HEAD} request, and is known
1401 to suffer from a few bugs, which is why it is not currently enabled by default.
1403 This option is useful for some file-downloading CGI programs that use
1404 @code{Content-Disposition} headers to describe what the name of a
1405 downloaded file should be.
1407 @cindex authentication
1408 @item --auth-no-challenge
1410 If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication
1411 information (plaintext username and password) for all requests, just
1412 like Wget 1.10.2 and prior did by default.
1414 Use of this option is not recommended, and is intended only to support
1415 some few obscure servers, which never send HTTP authentication
1416 challenges, but accept unsolicited auth info, say, in addition to
1417 form-based authentication.
1421 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1422 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1425 To support encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1426 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1427 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1430 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1431 @item --secure-protocol=@var{protocol}
1432 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto},
1433 @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. If @samp{auto} is used,
1434 the SSL library is given the liberty of choosing the appropriate
1435 protocol automatically, which is achieved by sending an SSLv2 greeting
1436 and announcing support for SSLv3 and TLSv1. This is the default.
1438 Specifying @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, or @samp{TLSv1} forces the use
1439 of the corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old and
1440 buggy SSL server implementations that make it hard for OpenSSL to
1441 choose the correct protocol version. Fortunately, such servers are
1444 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1445 @item --no-check-certificate
1446 Don't check the server certificate against the available certificate
1447 authorities. Also don't require the URL host name to match the common
1448 name presented by the certificate.
1450 As of Wget 1.10, the default is to verify the server's certificate
1451 against the recognized certificate authorities, breaking the SSL
1452 handshake and aborting the download if the verification fails.
1453 Although this provides more secure downloads, it does break
1454 interoperability with some sites that worked with previous Wget
1455 versions, particularly those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise
1456 invalid certificates. This option forces an ``insecure'' mode of
1457 operation that turns the certificate verification errors into warnings
1458 and allows you to proceed.
1460 If you encounter ``certificate verification'' errors or ones saying
1461 that ``common name doesn't match requested host name'', you can use
1462 this option to bypass the verification and proceed with the download.
1463 @emph{Only use this option if you are otherwise convinced of the
1464 site's authenticity, or if you really don't care about the validity of
1465 its certificate.} It is almost always a bad idea not to check the
1466 certificates when transmitting confidential or important data.
1468 @cindex SSL certificate
1469 @item --certificate=@var{file}
1470 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1471 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1472 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1475 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1476 @item --certificate-type=@var{type}
1477 Specify the type of the client certificate. Legal values are
1478 @samp{PEM} (assumed by default) and @samp{DER}, also known as
1481 @item --private-key=@var{file}
1482 Read the private key from @var{file}. This allows you to provide the
1483 private key in a file separate from the certificate.
1485 @item --private-key-type=@var{type}
1486 Specify the type of the private key. Accepted values are @samp{PEM}
1487 (the default) and @samp{DER}.
1489 @item --ca-certificate=@var{file}
1490 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities
1491 (``CA'') to verify the peers. The certificates must be in PEM format.
1493 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1494 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1496 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1497 @item --ca-directory=@var{directory}
1498 Specifies directory containing CA certificates in PEM format. Each
1499 file contains one CA certificate, and the file name is based on a hash
1500 value derived from the certificate. This is achieved by processing a
1501 certificate directory with the @code{c_rehash} utility supplied with
1502 OpenSSL. Using @samp{--ca-directory} is more efficient than
1503 @samp{--ca-certificate} when many certificates are installed because
1504 it allows Wget to fetch certificates on demand.
1506 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1507 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1509 @cindex entropy, specifying source of
1510 @cindex randomness, specifying source of
1511 @item --random-file=@var{file}
1512 Use @var{file} as the source of random data for seeding the
1513 pseudo-random number generator on systems without @file{/dev/random}.
1515 On such systems the SSL library needs an external source of randomness
1516 to initialize. Randomness may be provided by EGD (see
1517 @samp{--egd-file} below) or read from an external source specified by
1518 the user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random data
1519 in @code{$RANDFILE} or, if that is unset, in @file{$HOME/.rnd}. If
1520 none of those are available, it is likely that SSL encryption will not
1523 If you're getting the ``Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG; disabling SSL.''
1524 error, you should provide random data using some of the methods
1528 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1529 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1530 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1531 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1532 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1533 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1534 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1536 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1537 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1538 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1539 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1541 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1542 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1543 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1547 @section FTP Options
1551 @cindex ftp password
1552 @cindex ftp authentication
1553 @item --ftp-user=@var{user}
1554 @itemx --ftp-password=@var{password}
1555 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1556 @sc{ftp} server. Without this, or the corresponding startup option,
1557 the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, normally used for anonymous
1560 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1561 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1562 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1563 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1564 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1565 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1566 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1569 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1573 @cindex .listing files, removing
1574 @item --no-remove-listing
1575 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1576 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1577 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1578 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1579 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1580 you're running is complete).
1582 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1583 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1584 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1585 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1586 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1587 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1588 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1589 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1590 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1592 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1593 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1594 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1595 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1596 will be overwritten.
1598 @cindex globbing, toggle
1600 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1601 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1602 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1606 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1609 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1610 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1613 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1614 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1615 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1616 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1619 @item --no-passive-ftp
1620 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1621 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1622 connection rather than the other way around.
1624 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1625 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1626 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1627 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1628 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1629 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1631 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1632 @item --retr-symlinks
1633 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1634 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1635 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1636 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1637 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1639 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1640 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1641 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1642 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1645 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1646 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1647 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1651 @node Recursive Retrieval Options
1652 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1657 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1660 @item -l @var{depth}
1661 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1662 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1663 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1665 @cindex proxy filling
1666 @cindex delete after retrieval
1667 @cindex filling proxy cache
1668 @item --delete-after
1669 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1670 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1671 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1674 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1677 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1680 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1681 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1682 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1683 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1684 created in the first place.
1686 @cindex conversion of links
1687 @cindex link conversion
1689 @itemx --convert-links
1690 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1691 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1692 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1693 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1696 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1700 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1701 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1703 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1704 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1705 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1706 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1709 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1710 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1712 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1713 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1714 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1715 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1718 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1719 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1720 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1721 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1722 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1725 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1726 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1727 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1729 @cindex backing up converted files
1731 @itemx --backup-converted
1732 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1733 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1738 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1739 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1740 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1741 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1743 @cindex page requisites
1744 @cindex required images, downloading
1746 @itemx --page-requisites
1747 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1748 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1749 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1751 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1752 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1753 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1754 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1755 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1758 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1759 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1760 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1761 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1762 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1764 If one executes the command:
1767 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1770 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1771 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1772 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1773 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1774 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1777 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1780 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1781 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1784 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1787 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1788 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1791 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1794 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1795 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1796 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1797 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1798 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1799 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1802 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1805 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1806 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1807 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1808 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1809 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1810 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1813 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1816 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1817 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1818 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1821 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1822 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1823 @item --strict-comments
1824 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1825 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1827 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1828 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1829 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1830 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1831 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1832 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1833 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1835 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1836 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1837 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1838 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1839 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1840 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1841 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1842 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1843 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1845 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1846 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1847 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1848 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1849 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1852 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1853 option to turn it on.
1856 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1857 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1860 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1861 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1862 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1863 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files}). Note that if
1864 any of the wildcard characters, @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[} or
1865 @samp{]}, appear in an element of @var{acclist} or @var{rejlist},
1866 it will be treated as a pattern, rather than a suffix.
1868 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1869 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1870 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1871 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1873 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1874 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed.
1875 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1877 @cindex follow FTP links
1879 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1880 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1882 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1883 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1884 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1885 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1886 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1887 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1888 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1890 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1891 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1892 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1893 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
1895 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
1896 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
1899 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1902 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
1903 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
1904 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
1905 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
1906 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
1907 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
1912 Ignore case when matching files and directories. This influences the
1913 behavior of -R, -A, -I, and -X options, as well as globbing
1914 implemented when downloading from FTP sites. For example, with this
1915 option, @samp{-A *.txt} will match @samp{file1.txt}, but also
1916 @samp{file2.TXT}, @samp{file3.TxT}, and so on.
1920 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
1921 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1925 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
1926 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
1927 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
1930 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
1931 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
1932 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements
1933 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1936 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
1937 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
1938 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements of
1939 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1943 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
1944 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
1945 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
1946 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
1951 @node Recursive Download
1952 @chapter Recursive Download
1955 @cindex recursive download
1957 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
1958 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
1959 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
1961 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} or
1962 @sc{css} from the given @sc{url}, retrieving the files the document
1963 refers to, through markup like @code{href} or @code{src}, or @sc{css}
1964 @sc{uri} values specified using the @samp{url()} functional notation.
1965 If the freshly downloaded file is also of type @code{text/html},
1966 @code{application/xhtml+xml}, or @code{text/css}, it will be parsed
1967 and followed further.
1969 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html}/@sc{css} content is
1970 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
1971 document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
1972 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
1973 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
1974 until the specified maximum depth.
1976 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
1977 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
1979 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
1980 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
1981 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
1982 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
1983 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
1986 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
1987 the one found on the remote server.
1989 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
1990 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
1991 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
1992 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
1994 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
1995 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
1996 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
1997 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
1998 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
1999 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
2000 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
2002 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
2003 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
2004 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
2005 consume memory and CPU.
2007 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
2008 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
2009 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
2010 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
2011 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
2012 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
2013 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
2016 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
2019 @node Following Links
2020 @chapter Following Links
2022 @cindex following links
2024 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
2025 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
2026 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
2028 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
2029 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
2030 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
2032 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
2033 links it will follow.
2036 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
2037 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
2038 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
2039 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
2040 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
2043 @node Spanning Hosts
2044 @section Spanning Hosts
2045 @cindex spanning hosts
2046 @cindex hosts, spanning
2048 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
2049 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
2050 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
2051 your Wget into a small version of google.
2053 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
2054 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
2055 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
2056 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
2057 pages refer to both interchangeably.
2060 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
2062 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
2063 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
2064 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
2065 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
2066 up much more data than you have intended.
2068 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
2070 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
2071 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
2072 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
2073 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
2074 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
2075 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
2078 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
2081 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
2082 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
2084 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
2086 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
2087 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
2088 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
2089 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
2090 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
2094 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
2100 @node Types of Files
2101 @section Types of Files
2102 @cindex types of files
2104 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
2105 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
2106 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
2107 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
2109 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
2110 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
2113 @cindex accept wildcards
2114 @cindex accept suffixes
2115 @cindex wildcards, accept
2116 @cindex suffixes, accept
2118 @item -A @var{acclist}
2119 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
2120 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
2121 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
2122 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
2123 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
2124 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
2125 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
2127 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
2128 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
2129 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
2130 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
2131 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
2132 a description of how pattern matching works.
2134 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
2135 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
2137 @cindex reject wildcards
2138 @cindex reject suffixes
2139 @cindex wildcards, reject
2140 @cindex suffixes, reject
2141 @item -R @var{rejlist}
2142 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
2143 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
2144 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
2145 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
2146 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
2148 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
2149 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
2150 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
2151 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
2152 expansion by the shell.
2156 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
2157 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
2158 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
2159 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
2161 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
2162 files (as determined by a @samp{.htm} or @samp{.html} filename
2163 prefix). This behavior may not be desirable for all users, and may be
2164 changed for future versions of Wget.
2166 Note, too, that query strings (strings at the end of a URL beginning
2167 with a question mark (@samp{?}) are not included as part of the
2168 filename for accept/reject rules, even though these will actually
2169 contribute to the name chosen for the local file. It is expected that
2170 a future version of Wget will provide an option to allow matching
2171 against query strings.
2173 Finally, it's worth noting that the accept/reject lists are matched
2174 @emph{twice} against downloaded files: once against the URL's filename
2175 portion, to determine if the file should be downloaded in the first
2176 place; then, after it has been accepted and successfully downloaded,
2177 the local file's name is also checked against the accept/reject lists
2178 to see if it should be removed. The rationale was that, since
2179 @samp{.htm} and @samp{.html} files are always downloaded regardless of
2180 accept/reject rules, they should be removed @emph{after} being
2181 downloaded and scanned for links, if they did match the accept/reject
2182 lists. However, this can lead to unexpected results, since the local
2183 filenames can differ from the original URL filenames in the following
2184 ways, all of which can change whether an accept/reject rule matches:
2188 If the local file already exists and @samp{--no-directories} was
2189 specified, a numeric suffix will be appended to the original name.
2191 If @samp{--html-extension} was specified, the local filename will have
2192 @samp{.html} appended to it. If Wget is invoked with @samp{-E -A.php},
2193 a filename such as @samp{index.php} will match be accepted, but upon
2194 download will be named @samp{index.php.html}, which no longer matches,
2195 and so the file will be deleted.
2197 Query strings do not contribute to URL matching, but are included in
2198 local filenames, and so @emph{do} contribute to filename matching.
2202 This behavior, too, is considered less-than-desirable, and may change
2203 in a future version of Wget.
2205 @node Directory-Based Limits
2206 @section Directory-Based Limits
2208 @cindex directory limits
2210 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
2211 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
2212 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
2213 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
2214 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
2215 @file{/dev} directories.
2217 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
2218 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
2219 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
2221 @cindex directories, include
2222 @cindex include directories
2223 @cindex accept directories
2226 @itemx --include @var{list}
2227 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
2228 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
2229 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
2230 directories are absolute paths.
2232 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
2233 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
2234 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
2237 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
2240 @cindex directories, exclude
2241 @cindex exclude directories
2242 @cindex reject directories
2244 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
2245 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
2246 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
2247 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
2248 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
2249 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
2251 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
2252 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
2253 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
2254 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
2259 @itemx no_parent = on
2260 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
2261 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
2262 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
2263 parent directory/directories.
2265 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
2266 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
2267 Supposing you issue Wget with:
2270 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
2273 You may rest assured that none of the references to
2274 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
2275 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
2276 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
2277 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
2278 intelligent fashion.
2280 @strong{Note} that, for HTTP (and HTTPS), the trailing slash is very
2281 important to @samp{--no-parent}. HTTP has no concept of a ``directory''---Wget
2282 relies on you to indicate what's a directory and what isn't. In
2283 @samp{http://foo/bar/}, Wget will consider @samp{bar} to be a
2284 directory, while in @samp{http://foo/bar} (no trailing slash),
2285 @samp{bar} will be considered a filename (so @samp{--no-parent} would be
2286 meaningless, as its parent is @samp{/}).
2289 @node Relative Links
2290 @section Relative Links
2291 @cindex relative links
2293 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2294 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2295 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2299 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2300 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2303 These links are not relative:
2307 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2308 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2311 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2312 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2313 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2315 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2319 @section Following FTP Links
2320 @cindex following ftp links
2322 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2323 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2324 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2327 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2328 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2329 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2330 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2331 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2332 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2333 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2335 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2336 retrieved recursively further.
2339 @chapter Time-Stamping
2340 @cindex time-stamping
2341 @cindex timestamping
2342 @cindex updating the archives
2343 @cindex incremental updating
2345 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2346 Internet is updating your archives.
2348 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2349 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2350 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2351 offer the option of incremental updating.
2353 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2354 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2355 the place of the old ones.
2357 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2361 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2364 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2365 recently than the local file.
2368 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2369 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2370 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2372 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2373 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2374 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2375 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2376 does, and the remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
2378 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2379 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2383 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2384 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2385 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2388 @node Time-Stamping Usage
2389 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2390 @cindex time-stamping usage
2391 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2393 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2394 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2397 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2400 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2401 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2402 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2403 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2405 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2406 changed, and download it if it has.
2409 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2412 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2413 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2414 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2415 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2417 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2420 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2423 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2424 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2426 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2427 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2428 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2429 since the last download.
2431 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2432 command like the following, weekly:
2435 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2438 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2439 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2440 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2441 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2442 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2444 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2445 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2446 @cindex http time-stamping
2448 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2449 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2450 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2451 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2452 retrieved unconditionally.
2454 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2455 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2456 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2459 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2460 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2461 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2462 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2463 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2464 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2467 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2468 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2469 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2470 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2471 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2473 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2474 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2476 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2477 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2478 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2480 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2481 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2484 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2485 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2486 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2487 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2488 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2489 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2490 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2491 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2493 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2494 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2495 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2496 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2497 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2498 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2500 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2501 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2502 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2503 Wget may support this command in the future.
2506 @chapter Startup File
2507 @cindex startup file
2513 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2514 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2515 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2516 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2518 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2519 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2520 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2521 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2523 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2527 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2528 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2529 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2530 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2533 @node Wgetrc Location
2534 @section Wgetrc Location
2535 @cindex wgetrc location
2536 @cindex location of wgetrc
2538 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2539 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2540 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2541 from there, if it exists.
2543 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2544 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2545 further attempts will be made.
2547 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2549 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2550 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2551 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2552 Fascist admins, away!
2555 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2556 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2557 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2559 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2565 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2566 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2568 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2569 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2570 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2573 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2574 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2575 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2581 @node Wgetrc Commands
2582 @section Wgetrc Commands
2583 @cindex wgetrc commands
2585 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2586 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2587 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}.
2589 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2590 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2591 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2592 values can be any non-empty string.
2594 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2595 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2596 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2599 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2600 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2602 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2603 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2605 @item background = on/off
2606 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2609 @item backup_converted = on/off
2610 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2611 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2613 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2614 @c #### Document me!
2616 @item base = @var{string}
2617 Consider relative @sc{url}s in @sc{url} input files forced to be
2618 interpreted as @sc{html} as being relative to @var{string}---the same as
2619 @samp{--base=@var{string}}.
2621 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2622 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address=@var{address}}.
2624 @item ca_certificate = @var{file}
2625 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{file}. The same
2626 as @samp{--ca-certificate=@var{file}}.
2628 @item ca_directory = @var{directory}
2629 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2630 @samp{--ca-directory=@var{directory}}.
2632 @item cache = on/off
2633 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2636 @item certificate = @var{file}
2637 Set the client certificate file name to @var{file}. The same as
2638 @samp{--certificate=@var{file}}.
2640 @item certificate_type = @var{string}
2641 Specify the type of the client certificate, legal values being
2642 @samp{PEM} (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2643 @samp{--certificate-type=@var{string}}.
2645 @item check_certificate = on/off
2646 If this is set to off, the server certificate is not checked against
2647 the specified client authorities. The default is ``on''. The same as
2648 @samp{--check-certificate}.
2650 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2651 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2653 @item content_disposition = on/off
2654 Turn on recognition of the (non-standard) @samp{Content-Disposition}
2655 HTTP header---if set to @samp{on}, the same as @samp{--content-disposition}.
2657 @item continue = on/off
2658 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2659 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2661 @item convert_links = on/off
2662 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2664 @item cookies = on/off
2665 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2667 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2668 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components. Equivalent to
2669 @samp{--cut-dirs=@var{n}}.
2671 @item debug = on/off
2672 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2674 @item default_page = @var{string}
2675 Default page name---the same as @samp{--default-page=@var{string}}.
2677 @item delete_after = on/off
2678 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2680 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2681 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P @var{string}}.
2683 @item dirstruct = on/off
2684 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2687 @item dns_cache = on/off
2688 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2689 option is normally used to turn it off and is equivalent to
2690 @samp{--no-dns-cache}.
2692 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2693 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2695 @item domains = @var{string}
2696 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2698 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2699 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2700 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2701 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2702 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2703 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2704 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2706 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2707 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2709 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2710 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2711 the retrieval (50 by default).
2713 @item egd_file = @var{file}
2714 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2715 @samp{--egd-file=@var{file}}.
2717 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2718 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2719 download---the same as @samp{-X @var{string}} (@pxref{Directory-Based
2722 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2723 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains=@var{string}} (@pxref{Spanning
2726 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2727 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2728 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2730 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2731 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval,
2732 just like @samp{--follow-tags=@var{string}}.
2734 @item force_html = on/off
2735 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2736 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2738 @item ftp_password = @var{string}
2739 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2740 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2741 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2743 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2745 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2746 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2749 @item ftp_user = @var{string}
2750 Set @sc{ftp} user to @var{string}.
2752 This command used to be named @code{login} prior to Wget 1.10.
2755 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2757 @item header = @var{string}
2758 Define a header for HTTP downloads, like using
2759 @samp{--header=@var{string}}.
2761 @item html_extension = on/off
2762 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2763 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files without it, or a @samp{.css}
2764 extension to @samp{text/css} files without it, like @samp{-E}.
2766 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2767 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). Turning it
2768 off is equivalent to @samp{--no-http-keep-alive}.
2770 @item http_password = @var{string}
2771 Set @sc{http} password, equivalent to
2772 @samp{--http-password=@var{string}}.
2774 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2775 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2778 @item http_user = @var{string}
2779 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}, equivalent to
2780 @samp{--http-user=@var{string}}.
2782 @item https_proxy = @var{string}
2783 Use @var{string} as @sc{https} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2786 @item ignore_case = on/off
2787 When set to on, match files and directories case insensitively; the
2788 same as @samp{--ignore-case}.
2790 @item ignore_length = on/off
2791 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2792 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2794 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2795 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, like
2796 @samp{--ignore-tags=@var{string}}.
2798 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2799 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2800 downloading---the same as @samp{-I @var{string}}.
2802 @item inet4_only = on/off
2803 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2804 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2805 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2806 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2808 @item inet6_only = on/off
2809 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2810 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2813 @item input = @var{file}
2814 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i @var{file}}.
2816 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2817 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
2818 The same as @samp{--limit-rate=@var{rate}}.
2820 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
2821 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies @var{file}}.
2823 @item logfile = @var{file}
2824 Set logfile to @var{file}, the same as @samp{-o @var{file}}.
2826 @item max_redirect = @var{number}
2827 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
2828 See @samp{--max-redirect=@var{number}}.
2830 @item mirror = on/off
2831 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
2833 @item netrc = on/off
2834 Turn reading netrc on or off.
2836 @item no_clobber = on/off
2839 @item no_parent = on/off
2840 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
2841 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2843 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
2844 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
2845 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
2847 @item output_document = @var{file}
2848 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O @var{file}}.
2850 @item page_requisites = on/off
2851 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
2852 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
2854 @item passive_ftp = on/off
2855 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
2856 @samp{--passive-ftp} option.
2858 @itemx password = @var{string}
2859 Specify password @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
2860 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_password} and
2861 @samp{http_password} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
2863 @item post_data = @var{string}
2864 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
2865 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data=@var{string}}.
2867 @item post_file = @var{file}
2868 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
2869 @var{file} in the request body. The same as
2870 @samp{--post-file=@var{file}}.
2872 @item prefer_family = none/IPv4/IPv6
2873 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
2874 with specified address family first. The address order returned by
2875 DNS is used without change by default. The same as @samp{--prefer-family},
2876 which see for a detailed discussion of why this is useful.
2878 @item private_key = @var{file}
2879 Set the private key file to @var{file}. The same as
2880 @samp{--private-key=@var{file}}.
2882 @item private_key_type = @var{string}
2883 Specify the type of the private key, legal values being @samp{PEM}
2884 (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2885 @samp{--private-type=@var{string}}.
2887 @item progress = @var{string}
2888 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are @samp{dot}
2889 and @samp{bar}. Equivalent to @samp{--progress=@var{string}}.
2891 @item protocol_directories = on/off
2892 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
2893 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
2895 @item proxy_password = @var{string}
2896 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like
2897 @samp{--proxy-password=@var{string}}.
2899 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
2900 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like
2901 @samp{--proxy-user=@var{string}}.
2903 @item quiet = on/off
2904 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
2906 @item quota = @var{quota}
2907 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
2908 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
2909 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
2910 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
2911 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
2912 to 5 megabytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
2915 @item random_file = @var{file}
2916 Use @var{file} as a source of randomness on systems lacking
2919 @item random_wait = on/off
2920 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
2921 @samp{--random-wait}.
2923 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
2924 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as
2925 @samp{--read-timeout=@var{n}}.
2927 @item reclevel = @var{n}
2928 Recursion level (depth)---the same as @samp{-l @var{n}}.
2930 @item recursive = on/off
2931 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
2933 @item referer = @var{string}
2934 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like
2935 @samp{--referer=@var{string}}. (Note that it was the folks who wrote
2936 the @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of ``referrer'' wrong.)
2938 @item relative_only = on/off
2939 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
2942 @item remove_listing = on/off
2943 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
2944 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
2946 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
2947 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
2948 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
2950 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
2951 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
2952 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
2954 @item retry_connrefused = on/off
2955 When set to on, consider ``connection refused'' a transient
2956 error---the same as @samp{--retry-connrefused}.
2958 @item robots = on/off
2959 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
2960 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
2961 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
2962 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
2965 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
2966 Save cookies to @var{file}. The same as @samp{--save-cookies
2969 @item save_headers = on/off
2970 Same as @samp{--save-headers}.
2972 @item secure_protocol = @var{string}
2973 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto}
2974 (the default), @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. The same
2975 as @samp{--secure-protocol=@var{string}}.
2977 @item server_response = on/off
2978 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
2979 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
2981 @item span_hosts = on/off
2984 @item spider = on/off
2985 Same as @samp{--spider}.
2987 @item strict_comments = on/off
2988 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
2990 @item timeout = @var{n}
2991 Set all applicable timeout values to @var{n}, the same as @samp{-T
2994 @item timestamping = on/off
2995 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
2997 @item tries = @var{n}
2998 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t @var{n}}.
3000 @item use_proxy = on/off
3001 When set to off, don't use proxy even when proxy-related environment
3002 variables are set. In that case it is the same as using
3005 @item user = @var{string}
3006 Specify username @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
3007 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_user} and
3008 @samp{http_user} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
3010 @item user_agent = @var{string}
3011 User agent identification sent to the HTTP Server---the same as
3012 @samp{--user-agent=@var{string}}.
3014 @item verbose = on/off
3015 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
3017 @item wait = @var{n}
3018 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w
3021 @item wait_retry = @var{n}
3022 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
3023 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry=@var{n}}. Note that this is
3024 turned on by default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
3028 @section Sample Wgetrc
3029 @cindex sample wgetrc
3031 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
3032 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
3033 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
3034 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
3036 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
3037 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
3041 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
3048 @c man begin EXAMPLES
3049 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
3053 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
3054 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
3055 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
3059 @section Simple Usage
3063 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
3066 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
3070 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
3071 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
3072 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
3073 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
3074 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
3075 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
3078 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
3082 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
3083 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
3084 shall use @samp{-t}.
3087 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
3090 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
3091 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
3094 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
3098 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
3102 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
3103 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
3106 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
3111 @node Advanced Usage
3112 @section Advanced Usage
3116 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
3123 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
3127 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
3128 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
3129 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
3132 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3136 The same as the above, but convert the links in the downloaded files to
3137 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
3140 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3144 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
3145 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
3146 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
3147 references the downloaded links.
3150 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3153 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
3154 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
3155 depending on where they were on the remote server.
3158 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
3159 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
3160 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
3161 subdirectory of the current directory.
3164 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
3165 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3169 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
3173 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
3177 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
3180 wget --save-headers http://www.lycos.com/
3185 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
3189 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
3193 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
3194 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
3195 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
3199 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
3202 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
3203 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
3204 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
3205 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
3206 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
3210 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
3211 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
3215 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
3219 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
3220 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
3223 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
3226 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
3227 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
3230 @cindex redirecting output
3232 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
3236 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
3239 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
3240 documents from remote hotlists:
3243 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
3247 @node Very Advanced Usage
3248 @section Very Advanced Usage
3253 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
3254 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
3255 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
3256 to recheck a site each Sunday:
3260 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3264 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
3265 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
3266 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
3267 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
3268 would look like this:
3271 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3272 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3276 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
3277 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
3278 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
3279 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
3280 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
3283 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3284 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
3288 Or, with less typing:
3291 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3300 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
3303 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers.
3304 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
3305 * Web Site:: GNU Wget's presence on the World Wide Web.
3306 * Mailing List:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
3307 * Internet Relay Chat:: Wget's presence on IRC.
3308 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
3309 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
3310 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
3317 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
3318 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
3319 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
3320 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
3321 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
3322 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
3323 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
3324 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
3325 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
3326 using an authorized proxy.
3328 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
3329 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
3330 the following environment variables:
3335 If set, the @code{http_proxy} and @code{https_proxy} variables should
3336 contain the @sc{url}s of the proxies for @sc{http} and @sc{https}
3337 connections respectively.
3340 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
3341 connections. It is quite common that @code{http_proxy} and
3342 @code{ftp_proxy} are set to the same @sc{url}.
3345 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
3346 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
3347 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
3351 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
3352 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3356 @itemx proxy = on/off
3357 This option and the corresponding command may be used to suppress the
3358 use of proxy, even if the appropriate environment variables are set.
3360 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3361 @itemx https_proxy = @var{URL}
3362 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3363 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3364 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3365 specified by the environment.
3368 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3369 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3370 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3371 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3372 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3374 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3375 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3376 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3377 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3381 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3384 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3385 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3386 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_password} to set the proxy
3387 username and password.
3390 @section Distribution
3391 @cindex latest version
3393 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3394 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3395 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3396 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3402 The official web site for GNU Wget is at
3403 @url{http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/}. However, most useful
3404 information resides at ``The Wget Wgiki'',
3405 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/}.
3408 @section Mailing List
3409 @cindex mailing list
3412 The primary mailinglist for discussion, bug-reports, or questions
3413 about GNU Wget is at @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}. To subscribe, send an
3414 email to @email{bug-wget-join@@gnu.org}, or visit
3415 @url{http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-wget}.
3417 Additionally, there is the @email{wget-notify@@addictivecode.org} mailing
3418 list. This is a non-discussion list that receives bug report
3419 notifications from the bug-tracker. To subscribe to this list,
3420 send an email to @email{wget-notify-join@@addictivecode.org},
3421 or visit @url{http://addictivecode.org/mailman/listinfo/wget-notify}.
3423 Previously, the mailing list @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} was used as the
3424 main discussion list, and another list,
3425 @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} was used for submitting and
3426 discussing patches to GNU Wget.
3428 Messages from @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3431 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3433 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}.
3436 Messages from @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3439 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3442 @node Internet Relay Chat
3443 @section Internet Relay Chat
3444 @cindex Internet Relay Chat
3448 In addition to the mailinglists, we also have a support channel set up
3449 via IRC at @code{irc.freenode.org}, @code{#wget}. Come check it out!
3451 @node Reporting Bugs
3452 @section Reporting Bugs
3454 @cindex reporting bugs
3458 You are welcome to submit bug reports via the GNU Wget bug tracker (see
3459 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/BugTracker}).
3461 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3466 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3467 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3468 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3469 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug, but you might want to
3470 double-check the documentation and the mailing lists (@pxref{Mailing
3474 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3475 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 --no-proxy
3476 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3477 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3478 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3479 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3481 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3482 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3483 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3484 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3485 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3489 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3490 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3491 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3492 with debug support on.
3494 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3495 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3496 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3497 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3498 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3499 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3500 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3503 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3504 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3505 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3511 @section Portability
3513 @cindex operating systems
3515 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3516 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3517 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3518 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3520 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds of
3521 Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, Mac OS X, OSF
3522 (aka Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some
3523 of those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3524 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3525 system, we would like to know about it.
3527 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3528 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3529 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3530 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3531 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3532 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3533 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3534 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3535 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3536 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3537 Windows-related features might look at them.
3539 Support for building on MS-DOS via DJGPP has been contributed by Gisle
3540 Vanem; a port to VMS is maintained by Steven Schweda, and is available
3541 at @url{http://antinode.org/}.
3545 @cindex signal handling
3548 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3549 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3550 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3551 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3552 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3555 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3558 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3561 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3562 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3567 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3570 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3571 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3572 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3575 @node Robot Exclusion
3576 @section Robot Exclusion
3577 @cindex robot exclusion
3579 @cindex server maintenance
3581 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3582 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3583 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3585 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3586 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3587 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3588 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3589 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3590 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3591 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3592 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3593 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3594 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3595 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3596 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3598 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3599 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3600 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3601 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3602 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3603 they will permit access.
3605 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3606 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3607 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3608 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3609 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3610 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3613 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3614 can download large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3615 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3616 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3619 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3622 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3623 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3624 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3625 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3628 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3629 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3630 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3631 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3632 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3633 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3634 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3635 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3637 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3639 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3640 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3641 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3645 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3648 This is explained in some detail at
3649 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3650 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3653 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3654 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3655 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3656 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3658 @node Security Considerations
3659 @section Security Considerations
3662 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3663 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3664 main issues, and some solutions.
3668 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3669 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3670 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3671 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3672 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3675 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3676 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3679 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3680 solution for this at the moment.
3683 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3684 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3685 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3690 @section Contributors
3691 @cindex contributors
3694 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3697 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3699 and it is currently maintained by Micah Cowan @email{micah@@cowan.name}.
3701 However, the development of Wget could never have gone as far as it has, were
3702 it not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature proposals,
3703 patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3705 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3708 @item Dan Harkless---contributed a lot of code and documentation of
3709 extremely high quality, as well as the @code{--page-requisites} and
3710 related options. He was the principal maintainer for some time and
3713 @item Ian Abbott---contributed bug fixes, Windows-related fixes, and
3714 provided a prototype implementation of the breadth-first recursive
3715 download. Co-maintained Wget during the 1.8 release cycle.
3718 The dotsrc.org crew, in particular Karsten Thygesen---donated system
3719 resources such as the mailing list, web space, @sc{ftp} space, and
3720 version control repositories, along with a lot of time to make these
3721 actually work. Christian Reiniger was of invaluable help with setting
3725 Heiko Herold---provided high-quality Windows builds and contributed
3726 bug and build reports for many years.
3729 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3732 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3736 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3740 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3741 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3744 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3745 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3749 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3752 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the initial Italian
3757 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3761 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3766 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3769 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3773 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization, Makefile
3774 layout and many other things.
3777 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3781 Mauro Tortonesi---improved IPv6 support, adding support for dual
3782 family systems. Refactored and enhanced FTP IPv6 code. Maintained GNU
3783 Wget from 2004--2007.
3786 Christopher G.@: Lewis---maintenance of the Windows version of GNU WGet.
3789 Gisle Vanem---many helpful patches and improvements, especially for
3790 Windows and MS-DOS support.
3793 Ralf Wildenhues---contributed patches to convert Wget to use Automake as
3794 part of its build process, and various bugfixes.
3797 Steven Schubiger---Many helpful patches, bugfixes and improvements.
3798 Notably, conversion of Wget to use the Gnulib quotes and quoteargs
3799 modules, and the addition of password prompts at the console, via the
3800 Gnulib getpasswd-gnu module.
3803 Ted Mielczarek---donated support for CSS.
3806 People who provided donations for development---including Brian Gough.
3809 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
3810 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
3811 that make maintenance so much fun:
3831 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
3840 Bertrand Demiddelaer,
3841 Alexander Dergachev,
3854 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
3857 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
3881 Madhusudan Hosaagrahara,
3885 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
3904 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
3917 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
3918 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
3919 (Simos KSenitellis),
3928 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
3934 Alexander V.@: Lukyanov,
3943 Matthew J.@: Mellon,
3978 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
3980 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}guez,
3983 Juan Jose Rodriguez,
3985 Maciej W.@: Rozycki,
3992 Steven M.@: Schweda,
4003 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
4018 Douglas E.@: Wegscheid,
4020 Joshua David Williams,
4031 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
4032 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
4034 @node Copying this manual
4035 @appendix Copying this manual
4038 * GNU Free Documentation License:: Licnse for copying this manual.
4041 @node GNU Free Documentation License
4042 @appendixsec GNU Free Documentation License
4043 @cindex FDL, GNU Free Documentation License
4049 @unnumbered Concept Index