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, 2003,
34 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 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
85 @node Top, Overview, (dir), (dir)
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 this manual.
102 * Concept Index:: Topics covered by this manual.
105 @node Overview, Invoking, Top, Top
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).
214 @node Invoking, Recursive Download, Overview, Top
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::
252 @node URL Format, Option Syntax, Invoking, Invoking
257 @dfn{URL} is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
258 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
259 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the @sc{url} syntax as per
260 @sc{rfc1738}. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
264 http://host[:port]/directory/file
265 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
268 You can also encode your username and password within a @sc{url}:
271 ftp://user:password@@host/path
272 http://user:password@@host/path
275 Either @var{user} or @var{password}, or both, may be left out. If you
276 leave out either the @sc{http} username or password, no authentication
277 will be sent. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} username, @samp{anonymous}
278 will be used. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} password, your email
279 address will be supplied as a default password.@footnote{If you have a
280 @file{.netrc} file in your home directory, password will also be
283 @strong{Important Note}: if you specify a password-containing @sc{url}
284 on the command line, the username and password will be plainly visible
285 to all users on the system, by way of @code{ps}. On multi-user systems,
286 this is a big security risk. To work around it, use @code{wget -i -}
287 and feed the @sc{url}s to Wget's standard input, each on a separate
288 line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
290 You can encode unsafe characters in a @sc{url} as @samp{%xy}, @code{xy}
291 being the hexadecimal representation of the character's @sc{ascii}
292 value. Some common unsafe characters include @samp{%} (quoted as
293 @samp{%25}), @samp{:} (quoted as @samp{%3A}), and @samp{@@} (quoted as
294 @samp{%40}). Refer to @sc{rfc1738} for a comprehensive list of unsafe
297 Wget also supports the @code{type} feature for @sc{ftp} @sc{url}s. By
298 default, @sc{ftp} documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type
299 @samp{i}), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another
300 useful mode is the @samp{a} (@dfn{ASCII}) mode, which converts the line
301 delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful
302 for text files. Here is an example:
305 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
308 Two alternative variants of @sc{url} specification are also supported,
309 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
311 @sc{ftp}-only syntax (supported by @code{NcFTP}):
316 @sc{http}-only syntax (introduced by @code{Netscape}):
321 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
322 supported in the future.
324 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
325 not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
326 with your favorite browser, like @code{Lynx} or @code{Netscape}.
330 @node Option Syntax, Basic Startup Options, URL Format, Invoking
331 @section Option Syntax
332 @cindex option syntax
333 @cindex syntax of options
335 Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process command-line arguments, every
336 option has a long form along with the short one. Long options are
337 more convenient to remember, but take time to type. You may freely
338 mix different option styles, or specify options after the command-line
339 arguments. Thus you may write:
342 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ -o log
345 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may
346 be omitted. Instead of @samp{-o log} you can write @samp{-olog}.
348 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
355 This is completely equivalent to:
358 wget -d -r -c @var{URL}
361 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
362 terminate them with @samp{--}. So the following will try to download
363 @sc{url} @samp{-x}, reporting failure to @file{log}:
369 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
370 that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be useful to
371 clear the @file{.wgetrc} settings. For instance, if your @file{.wgetrc}
372 sets @code{exclude_directories} to @file{/cgi-bin}, the following
373 example will first reset it, and then set it to exclude @file{/~nobody}
374 and @file{/~somebody}. You can also clear the lists in @file{.wgetrc}
375 (@pxref{Wgetrc Syntax}).
378 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
381 Most options that do not accept arguments are @dfn{boolean} options,
382 so named because their state can be captured with a yes-or-no
383 (``boolean'') variable. For example, @samp{--follow-ftp} tells Wget
384 to follow FTP links from HTML files and, on the other hand,
385 @samp{--no-glob} tells it not to perform file globbing on FTP URLs. A
386 boolean option is either @dfn{affirmative} or @dfn{negative}
387 (beginning with @samp{--no}). All such options share several
390 Unless stated otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is
391 the opposite of what the option accomplishes. For example, the
392 documented existence of @samp{--follow-ftp} assumes that the default
393 is to @emph{not} follow FTP links from HTML pages.
395 Affirmative options can be negated by prepending the @samp{--no-} to
396 the option name; negative options can be negated by omitting the
397 @samp{--no-} prefix. This might seem superfluous---if the default for
398 an affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide a way
399 to explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in fact change
400 the default. For instance, using @code{follow_ftp = on} in
401 @file{.wgetrc} makes Wget @emph{follow} FTP links by default, and
402 using @samp{--no-follow-ftp} is the only way to restore the factory
403 default from the command line.
405 @node Basic Startup Options, Logging and Input File Options, Option Syntax, Invoking
406 @section Basic Startup Options
411 Display the version of Wget.
415 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
419 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
420 specified via the @samp{-o}, output is redirected to @file{wget-log}.
422 @cindex execute wgetrc command
423 @item -e @var{command}
424 @itemx --execute @var{command}
425 Execute @var{command} as if it were a part of @file{.wgetrc}
426 (@pxref{Startup File}). A command thus invoked will be executed
427 @emph{after} the commands in @file{.wgetrc}, thus taking precedence over
428 them. If you need to specify more than one wgetrc command, use multiple
429 instances of @samp{-e}.
433 @node Logging and Input File Options, Download Options, Basic Startup Options, Invoking
434 @section Logging and Input File Options
439 @item -o @var{logfile}
440 @itemx --output-file=@var{logfile}
441 Log all messages to @var{logfile}. The messages are normally reported
444 @cindex append to log
445 @item -a @var{logfile}
446 @itemx --append-output=@var{logfile}
447 Append to @var{logfile}. This is the same as @samp{-o}, only it appends
448 to @var{logfile} instead of overwriting the old log file. If
449 @var{logfile} does not exist, a new file is created.
454 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
455 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
456 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in
457 which case @samp{-d} will not work. Please note that compiling with
458 debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will
459 @emph{not} print any debug info unless requested with @samp{-d}.
460 @xref{Reporting Bugs}, for more information on how to use @samp{-d} for
466 Turn off Wget's output.
471 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output
476 Turn off verbose without being completely quiet (use @samp{-q} for
477 that), which means that error messages and basic information still get
482 @itemx --input-file=@var{file}
483 Read @sc{url}s from a local or external @var{file}. If @samp{-} is
484 specified as @var{file}, @sc{url}s are read from the standard input.
485 (Use @samp{./-} to read from a file literally named @samp{-}.)
487 If this function is used, no @sc{url}s need be present on the command
488 line. If there are @sc{url}s both on the command line and in an input
489 file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to be
490 retrieved. If @samp{--force-html} is not specified, then @var{file}
491 should consist of a series of URLs, one per line.
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 Resolves relative links using @var{URL} as the point of reference,
517 when reading links from an HTML file specified via the
518 @samp{-i}/@samp{--input-file} option (together with
519 @samp{--force-html}, or when the input file was fetched remotely from
520 a server describing it as @sc{html}). This is equivalent to the
521 presence of a @code{BASE} tag in the @sc{html} input file, with
522 @var{URL} as the value for the @code{href} attribute.
524 For instance, if you specify @samp{http://foo/bar/a.html} for
525 @var{URL}, and Wget reads @samp{../baz/b.html} from the input file, it
526 would be resolved to @samp{http://foo/baz/b.html}.
529 @node Download Options, Directory Options, Logging and Input File Options, Invoking
530 @section Download Options
534 @cindex client IP address
535 @cindex IP address, client
536 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
537 When making client TCP/IP connections, bind to @var{ADDRESS} on
538 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
539 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
544 @cindex number of retries
545 @item -t @var{number}
546 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
547 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
548 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
549 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
550 which are not retried.
553 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
554 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all
555 will be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @samp{-}
556 is used as @var{file}, documents will be printed to standard output,
557 disabling link conversion. (Use @samp{./-} to print to a file
558 literally named @samp{-}.)
560 Use of @samp{-O} is @emph{not} intended to mean simply ``use the name
561 @var{file} instead of the one in the URL;'' rather, it is
562 analogous to shell redirection:
563 @samp{wget -O file http://foo} is intended to work like
564 @samp{wget -O - http://foo > file}; @file{file} will be truncated
565 immediately, and @emph{all} downloaded content will be written there.
567 For this reason, @samp{-N} (for timestamp-checking) is not supported
568 in combination with @samp{-O}: since @var{file} is always newly
569 created, it will always have a very new timestamp. A warning will be
570 issued if this combination is used.
572 Similarly, using @samp{-r} or @samp{-p} with @samp{-O} may not work as
573 you expect: Wget won't just download the first file to @var{file} and
574 then download the rest to their normal names: @emph{all} downloaded
575 content will be placed in @var{file}. This was disabled in version
576 1.11, but has been reinstated (with a warning) in 1.11.2, as there are
577 some cases where this behavior can actually have some use.
579 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only permitted when
580 downloading a single document, as in that case it will just convert
581 all relative URIs to external ones; @samp{-k} makes no sense for
582 multiple URIs when they're all being downloaded to a single file;
583 @samp{-k} can be used only when the output is a regular file.
585 @cindex clobbering, file
586 @cindex downloading multiple times
590 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
591 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
592 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
593 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
595 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, @samp{-r}, or
596 @samp{-p}, downloading the same file in the same directory will result
597 in the original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy
598 being named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet
599 again, the third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on.
600 (This is also the behavior with @samp{-nd}, even if @samp{-r} or
601 @samp{-p} are in effect.) When @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior
602 is suppressed, and Wget will refuse to download newer copies of
603 @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore, ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a
604 misnomer in this mode---it's not clobbering that's prevented (as the
605 numeric suffixes were already preventing clobbering), but rather the
606 multiple version saving that's prevented.
608 When running Wget with @samp{-r} or @samp{-p}, but without @samp{-N},
609 @samp{-nd}, or @samp{-nc}, re-downloading a file will result in the
610 new copy simply overwriting the old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent
611 this behavior, instead causing the original version to be preserved
612 and any newer copies on the server to be ignored.
614 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r} or
615 @samp{-p}, the decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy
616 of a file depends on the local and remote timestamp and size of the
617 file (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the
618 same time as @samp{-N}.
620 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
621 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
622 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
624 @cindex continue retrieval
625 @cindex incomplete downloads
626 @cindex resume download
629 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
630 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
631 by another program. For instance:
634 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
637 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
638 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
639 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
640 length of the local file.
642 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
643 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
644 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
645 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
646 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
648 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
649 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
652 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
653 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
654 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
655 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
656 start from scratch, remove the file.
658 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
659 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
660 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
661 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
662 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
663 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
665 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
666 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
667 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
668 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
669 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
670 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
671 collection or log file.
673 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
674 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
675 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
676 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
677 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
678 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
680 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
681 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
682 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
683 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
685 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
686 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
688 @cindex progress indicator
690 @item --progress=@var{type}
691 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
692 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
694 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
695 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
696 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
699 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
700 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
701 fixed amount of downloaded data.
703 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
704 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
705 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
706 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
707 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
708 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
709 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
710 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
711 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
713 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
714 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
715 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
716 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
717 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
720 @itemx --timestamping
721 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
723 @item --no-use-server-timestamps
724 Don't set the local file's timestamp by the one on the server.
726 By default, when a file is downloaded, it's timestamps are set to
727 match those from the remote file. This allows the use of
728 @samp{--timestamping} on subsequent invocations of wget. However, it
729 is sometimes useful to base the local file's timestamp on when it was
730 actually downloaded; for that purpose, the
731 @samp{--no-use-server-timestamps} option has been provided.
733 @cindex server response, print
735 @itemx --server-response
736 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
739 @cindex Wget as spider
742 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
743 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
744 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
747 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
750 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
751 functionality of real web spiders.
755 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
756 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
757 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
758 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
760 When interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and
761 abort the operation if it takes too long. This prevents anomalies
762 like hanging reads and infinite connects. The only timeout enabled by
763 default is a 900-second read timeout. Setting a timeout to 0 disables
764 it altogether. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to
765 change the default timeout settings.
767 All timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as
768 subsecond values. For example, @samp{0.1} seconds is a legal (though
769 unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts are useful for checking
770 server response times or for testing network latency.
774 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
775 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
776 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
777 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
780 @cindex connect timeout
781 @cindex timeout, connect
782 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
783 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
784 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
785 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
788 @cindex timeout, read
789 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
790 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. The
791 ``time'' of this timeout refers to @dfn{idle time}: if, at any point in
792 the download, no data is received for more than the specified number
793 of seconds, reading fails and the download is restarted. This option
794 does not directly affect the duration of the entire download.
796 Of course, the remote server may choose to terminate the connection
797 sooner than this option requires. The default read timeout is 900
800 @cindex bandwidth, limit
802 @cindex limit bandwidth
803 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
804 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
805 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
806 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
807 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for whatever
808 reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available bandwidth.
810 This option allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction
811 with power suffixes; for example, @samp{--limit-rate=2.5k} is a legal
814 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
815 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
816 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
817 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
818 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
819 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
823 @item -w @var{seconds}
824 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
825 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
826 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
827 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
828 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
829 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
831 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
832 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
833 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry. The
834 waiting interval specified by this function is influenced by
835 @code{--random-wait}, which see.
837 @cindex retries, waiting between
838 @cindex waiting between retries
839 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
840 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
841 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
842 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
843 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
844 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify. Therefore,
845 a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55
848 By default, Wget will assume a value of 10 seconds.
853 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
854 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
855 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
856 to vary between 0.5 and 1.5 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
857 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
858 presence from such analysis.
860 A 2001 article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
861 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
862 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
863 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
866 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
867 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
872 Don't use proxies, even if the appropriate @code{*_proxy} environment
876 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
881 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
882 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
883 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
884 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
886 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
887 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
888 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
889 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
890 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
891 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
892 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
894 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
897 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
899 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
900 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
901 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
902 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
905 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
906 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
907 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
908 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
909 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
910 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
911 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
914 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
917 @cindex file names, restrict
918 @cindex Windows file names
919 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{modes}
920 Change which characters found in remote URLs must be escaped during
921 generation of local filenames. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
922 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
923 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
924 character. This option may also be used to force all alphabetical
925 cases to be either lower- or uppercase.
927 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid or safe as
928 part of file names on your operating system, as well as control
929 characters that are typically unprintable. This option is useful for
930 changing these defaults, perhaps because you are downloading to a
931 non-native partition, or because you want to disable escaping of the
932 control characters, or you want to further restrict characters to only
933 those in the @sc{ascii} range of values.
935 The @var{modes} are a comma-separated set of text values. The
936 acceptable values are @samp{unix}, @samp{windows}, @samp{nocontrol},
937 @samp{ascii}, @samp{lowercase}, and @samp{uppercase}. The values
938 @samp{unix} and @samp{windows} are mutually exclusive (one will
939 override the other), as are @samp{lowercase} and
940 @samp{uppercase}. Those last are special cases, as they do not change
941 the set of characters that would be escaped, but rather force local
942 file paths to be converted either to lower- or uppercase.
944 When ``unix'' is specified, Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
945 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
946 default on Unix-like operating systems.
948 When ``windows'' is given, Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
949 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
950 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
951 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
952 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
953 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
954 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
955 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
956 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
957 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
959 If you specify @samp{nocontrol}, then the escaping of the control
960 characters is also switched off. This option may make sense
961 when you are downloading URLs whose names contain UTF-8 characters, on
962 a system which can save and display filenames in UTF-8 (some possible
963 byte values used in UTF-8 byte sequences fall in the range of values
964 designated by Wget as ``controls'').
966 The @samp{ascii} mode is used to specify that any bytes whose values
967 are outside the range of @sc{ascii} characters (that is, greater than
968 127) shall be escaped. This can be useful when saving filenames
969 whose encoding does not match the one used locally.
976 Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With @samp{--inet4-only}
977 or @samp{-4}, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA
978 records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in
979 URLs. Conversely, with @samp{--inet6-only} or @samp{-6}, Wget will
980 only connect to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
982 Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware
983 Wget will use the address family specified by the host's DNS record.
984 If the DNS responds with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, Wget will try
985 them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to. (Also see
986 @code{--prefer-family} option described below.)
988 These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or
989 IPv6 address families on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging
990 or to deal with broken network configuration. Only one of
991 @samp{--inet6-only} and @samp{--inet4-only} may be specified at the
992 same time. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without IPv6
995 @item --prefer-family=none/IPv4/IPv6
996 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
997 with specified address family first. The address order returned by
998 DNS is used without change by default.
1000 This avoids spurious errors and connect attempts when accessing hosts
1001 that resolve to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4 networks. For
1002 example, @samp{www.kame.net} resolves to
1003 @samp{2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085} and to
1004 @samp{203.178.141.194}. When the preferred family is @code{IPv4}, the
1005 IPv4 address is used first; when the preferred family is @code{IPv6},
1006 the IPv6 address is used first; if the specified value is @code{none},
1007 the address order returned by DNS is used without change.
1009 Unlike @samp{-4} and @samp{-6}, this option doesn't inhibit access to
1010 any address family, it only changes the @emph{order} in which the
1011 addresses are accessed. Also note that the reordering performed by
1012 this option is @dfn{stable}---it doesn't affect order of addresses of
1013 the same family. That is, the relative order of all IPv4 addresses
1014 and of all IPv6 addresses remains intact in all cases.
1016 @item --retry-connrefused
1017 Consider ``connection refused'' a transient error and try again.
1018 Normally Wget gives up on a URL when it is unable to connect to the
1019 site because failure to connect is taken as a sign that the server is
1020 not running at all and that retries would not help. This option is
1021 for mirroring unreliable sites whose servers tend to disappear for
1022 short periods of time.
1026 @cindex authentication
1027 @item --user=@var{user}
1028 @itemx --password=@var{password}
1029 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for both
1030 @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval. These parameters can be overridden
1031 using the @samp{--ftp-user} and @samp{--ftp-password} options for
1032 @sc{ftp} connections and the @samp{--http-user} and @samp{--http-password}
1033 options for @sc{http} connections.
1035 @item --ask-password
1036 Prompt for a password for each connection established. Cannot be specified
1037 when @samp{--password} is being used, because they are mutually exclusive.
1043 Turn off internationalized URI (IRI) support. Use @samp{--iri} to
1044 turn it on. IRI support is activated by default.
1046 You can set the default state of IRI support using the @code{iri}
1047 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
1050 @cindex local encoding
1051 @item --local-encoding=@var{encoding}
1053 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default system encoding. That affects
1054 how Wget converts URLs specified as arguments from locale to @sc{utf-8} for
1057 Wget use the function @code{nl_langinfo()} and then the @code{CHARSET}
1058 environment variable to get the locale. If it fails, @sc{ascii} is used.
1060 You can set the default local encoding using the @code{local_encoding}
1061 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
1064 @cindex remote encoding
1065 @item --remote-encoding=@var{encoding}
1067 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default remote server encoding.
1068 That affects how Wget converts URIs found in files from remote encoding
1069 to @sc{utf-8} during a recursive fetch. This options is only useful for
1070 IRI support, for the interpretation of non-@sc{ascii} characters.
1072 For HTTP, remote encoding can be found in HTTP @code{Content-Type}
1073 header and in HTML @code{Content-Type http-equiv} meta tag.
1075 You can set the default encoding using the @code{remoteencoding}
1076 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
1080 @node Directory Options, HTTP Options, Download Options, Invoking
1081 @section Directory Options
1085 @itemx --no-directories
1086 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
1087 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
1088 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
1089 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
1092 @itemx --force-directories
1093 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
1094 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
1095 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
1096 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
1099 @itemx --no-host-directories
1100 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
1101 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
1102 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
1105 @item --protocol-directories
1106 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
1107 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
1108 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
1110 @cindex cut directories
1111 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
1112 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
1113 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
1116 Take, for example, the directory at
1117 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
1118 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
1119 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
1120 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
1121 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
1122 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
1123 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
1127 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
1129 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
1130 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
1132 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
1137 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
1138 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
1139 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
1140 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
1141 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
1143 @cindex directory prefix
1144 @item -P @var{prefix}
1145 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
1146 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
1147 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
1148 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
1152 @node HTTP Options, HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, Directory Options, Invoking
1153 @section HTTP Options
1156 @cindex default page name
1158 @item --default-page=@var{name}
1159 Use @var{name} as the default file name when it isn't known (i.e., for
1160 URLs that end in a slash), instead of @file{index.html}.
1162 @cindex .html extension
1163 @cindex .css extension
1165 @itemx --adjust-extension
1166 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
1167 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
1168 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
1169 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
1170 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
1171 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1172 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1173 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1174 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1176 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1177 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1178 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1179 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1180 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1181 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1182 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1183 Retrieval Options}).
1185 As of version 1.12, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files of
1186 type @samp{text/css} end in the suffix @samp{.css}, and the option was
1187 renamed from @samp{--html-extension}, to better reflect its new
1188 behavior. The old option name is still acceptable, but should now be
1189 considered deprecated.
1191 At some point in the future, this option may well be expanded to
1192 include suffixes for other types of content, including content types
1193 that are not parsed by Wget.
1196 @cindex http password
1197 @cindex authentication
1198 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1199 @itemx --http-password=@var{password}
1200 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1201 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1202 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure),
1203 the @code{digest}, or the Windows @code{NTLM} authentication scheme.
1205 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1206 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1207 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1208 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1209 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1210 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1211 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1214 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1218 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1219 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1220 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1221 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1222 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1223 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1224 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1225 the load on the server.
1227 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1228 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1229 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1234 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1235 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1236 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1237 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1238 documents on proxy servers.
1240 Caching is allowed by default.
1244 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1245 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1246 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1247 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1248 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1249 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1250 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1252 @cindex loading cookies
1253 @cindex cookies, loading
1254 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1255 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1256 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1257 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1259 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1260 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1261 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1262 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1263 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1264 proves your identity.
1266 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1267 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1268 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1269 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1270 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1271 cookie files in different locations:
1275 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1277 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1278 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1279 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1280 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1281 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1283 @item Internet Explorer.
1284 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1285 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1286 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1288 @item Other browsers.
1289 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1290 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1291 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1294 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1295 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1296 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1297 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1298 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1301 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1304 @cindex saving cookies
1305 @cindex cookies, saving
1306 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1307 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1308 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1309 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1311 @cindex cookies, session
1312 @cindex session cookies
1313 @item --keep-session-cookies
1314 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1315 cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they are
1316 meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit the browser.
1317 Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
1318 the home page before you can access some pages. With this option,
1319 multiple Wget runs are considered a single browser session as far as
1320 the site is concerned.
1322 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1323 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1324 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1325 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1326 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1327 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1328 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1330 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1331 @cindex ignore length
1332 @item --ignore-length
1333 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1334 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1335 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1336 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1337 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1340 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1341 if it never existed.
1344 @item --header=@var{header-line}
1345 Send @var{header-line} along with the rest of the headers in each
1346 @sc{http} request. The supplied header is sent as-is, which means it
1347 must contain name and value separated by colon, and must not contain
1350 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1351 @samp{--header} more than once.
1355 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1356 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1357 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1361 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1362 previous user-defined headers.
1364 As of Wget 1.10, this option can be used to override headers otherwise
1365 generated automatically. This example instructs Wget to connect to
1366 localhost, but to specify @samp{foo.bar} in the @code{Host} header:
1369 wget --header="Host: foo.bar" http://localhost/
1372 In versions of Wget prior to 1.10 such use of @samp{--header} caused
1373 sending of duplicate headers.
1376 @item --max-redirect=@var{number}
1377 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
1378 The default is 20, which is usually far more than necessary. However, on
1379 those occasions where you want to allow more (or fewer), this is the
1383 @cindex proxy password
1384 @cindex proxy authentication
1385 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1386 @itemx --proxy-password=@var{password}
1387 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1388 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1389 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1391 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-password}
1392 pertain here as well.
1394 @cindex http referer
1395 @cindex referer, http
1396 @item --referer=@var{url}
1397 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1398 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1399 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1400 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1402 @cindex server response, save
1403 @item --save-headers
1404 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1405 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1408 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1409 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1410 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1412 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1413 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1414 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1415 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1416 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1419 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1420 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1421 While this is not such a bad idea in theory, it has been abused by
1422 servers denying information to clients other than (historically)
1423 Netscape or, more frequently, Microsoft Internet Explorer. This
1424 option allows you to change the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget.
1425 Use of this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
1428 Specifying empty user agent with @samp{--user-agent=""} instructs Wget
1429 not to send the @code{User-Agent} header in @sc{http} requests.
1432 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1433 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1434 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified
1435 data in the request body. @samp{--post-data} sends @var{string} as
1436 data, whereas @samp{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}.
1437 Other than that, they work in exactly the same way. In particular,
1438 they @emph{both} expect content of the form @code{key1=value1&key2=value2},
1439 with percent-encoding for special characters; the only difference is
1440 that one expects its content as a command-line paramter and the other
1441 accepts its content from a file. In particular, @samp{--post-file} is
1442 @emph{not} for transmitting files as form attachments: those must
1443 appear as @code{key=value} data (with appropriate percent-coding) just
1444 like everything else. Wget does not currently support
1445 @code{multipart/form-data} for transmitting POST data; only
1446 @code{application/x-www-form-urlencoded}. Only one of
1447 @samp{--post-data} and @samp{--post-file} should be specified.
1449 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1450 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1451 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1452 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1453 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1454 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1455 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1456 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1457 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1459 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it
1460 will not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because
1461 URLs that process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular
1462 page, which does not desire or accept POST. It is not completely
1463 clear that this behavior is optimal; if it doesn't work out, it might
1464 be changed in the future.
1466 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1467 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1472 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1473 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1474 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1475 http://server.com/auth.php
1477 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1478 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1479 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1483 If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication,
1484 the above will not work because @samp{--save-cookies} will not save
1485 them (and neither will browsers) and the @file{cookies.txt} file will
1486 be empty. In that case use @samp{--keep-session-cookies} along with
1487 @samp{--save-cookies} to force saving of session cookies.
1489 @cindex Content-Disposition
1490 @item --content-disposition
1492 If this is set to on, experimental (not fully-functional) support for
1493 @code{Content-Disposition} headers is enabled. This can currently result in
1494 extra round-trips to the server for a @code{HEAD} request, and is known
1495 to suffer from a few bugs, which is why it is not currently enabled by default.
1497 This option is useful for some file-downloading CGI programs that use
1498 @code{Content-Disposition} headers to describe what the name of a
1499 downloaded file should be.
1501 @cindex authentication
1502 @item --auth-no-challenge
1504 If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication
1505 information (plaintext username and password) for all requests, just
1506 like Wget 1.10.2 and prior did by default.
1508 Use of this option is not recommended, and is intended only to support
1509 some few obscure servers, which never send HTTP authentication
1510 challenges, but accept unsolicited auth info, say, in addition to
1511 form-based authentication.
1515 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, FTP Options, HTTP Options, Invoking
1516 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1519 To support encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1520 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1521 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1524 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1525 @item --secure-protocol=@var{protocol}
1526 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto},
1527 @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. If @samp{auto} is used,
1528 the SSL library is given the liberty of choosing the appropriate
1529 protocol automatically, which is achieved by sending an SSLv2 greeting
1530 and announcing support for SSLv3 and TLSv1. This is the default.
1532 Specifying @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, or @samp{TLSv1} forces the use
1533 of the corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old and
1534 buggy SSL server implementations that make it hard for OpenSSL to
1535 choose the correct protocol version. Fortunately, such servers are
1538 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1539 @item --no-check-certificate
1540 Don't check the server certificate against the available certificate
1541 authorities. Also don't require the URL host name to match the common
1542 name presented by the certificate.
1544 As of Wget 1.10, the default is to verify the server's certificate
1545 against the recognized certificate authorities, breaking the SSL
1546 handshake and aborting the download if the verification fails.
1547 Although this provides more secure downloads, it does break
1548 interoperability with some sites that worked with previous Wget
1549 versions, particularly those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise
1550 invalid certificates. This option forces an ``insecure'' mode of
1551 operation that turns the certificate verification errors into warnings
1552 and allows you to proceed.
1554 If you encounter ``certificate verification'' errors or ones saying
1555 that ``common name doesn't match requested host name'', you can use
1556 this option to bypass the verification and proceed with the download.
1557 @emph{Only use this option if you are otherwise convinced of the
1558 site's authenticity, or if you really don't care about the validity of
1559 its certificate.} It is almost always a bad idea not to check the
1560 certificates when transmitting confidential or important data.
1562 @cindex SSL certificate
1563 @item --certificate=@var{file}
1564 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1565 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1566 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1569 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1570 @item --certificate-type=@var{type}
1571 Specify the type of the client certificate. Legal values are
1572 @samp{PEM} (assumed by default) and @samp{DER}, also known as
1575 @item --private-key=@var{file}
1576 Read the private key from @var{file}. This allows you to provide the
1577 private key in a file separate from the certificate.
1579 @item --private-key-type=@var{type}
1580 Specify the type of the private key. Accepted values are @samp{PEM}
1581 (the default) and @samp{DER}.
1583 @item --ca-certificate=@var{file}
1584 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities
1585 (``CA'') to verify the peers. The certificates must be in PEM format.
1587 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1588 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1590 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1591 @item --ca-directory=@var{directory}
1592 Specifies directory containing CA certificates in PEM format. Each
1593 file contains one CA certificate, and the file name is based on a hash
1594 value derived from the certificate. This is achieved by processing a
1595 certificate directory with the @code{c_rehash} utility supplied with
1596 OpenSSL. Using @samp{--ca-directory} is more efficient than
1597 @samp{--ca-certificate} when many certificates are installed because
1598 it allows Wget to fetch certificates on demand.
1600 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1601 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1603 @cindex entropy, specifying source of
1604 @cindex randomness, specifying source of
1605 @item --random-file=@var{file}
1606 Use @var{file} as the source of random data for seeding the
1607 pseudo-random number generator on systems without @file{/dev/random}.
1609 On such systems the SSL library needs an external source of randomness
1610 to initialize. Randomness may be provided by EGD (see
1611 @samp{--egd-file} below) or read from an external source specified by
1612 the user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random data
1613 in @code{$RANDFILE} or, if that is unset, in @file{$HOME/.rnd}. If
1614 none of those are available, it is likely that SSL encryption will not
1617 If you're getting the ``Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG; disabling SSL.''
1618 error, you should provide random data using some of the methods
1622 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1623 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1624 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1625 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1626 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1627 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1628 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1630 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1631 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1632 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1633 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1635 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1636 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1637 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1640 @node FTP Options, Recursive Retrieval Options, HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, Invoking
1641 @section FTP Options
1645 @cindex ftp password
1646 @cindex ftp authentication
1647 @item --ftp-user=@var{user}
1648 @itemx --ftp-password=@var{password}
1649 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1650 @sc{ftp} server. Without this, or the corresponding startup option,
1651 the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, normally used for anonymous
1654 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1655 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1656 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1657 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1658 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1659 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1660 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1663 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1667 @cindex .listing files, removing
1668 @item --no-remove-listing
1669 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1670 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1671 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1672 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1673 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1674 you're running is complete).
1676 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1677 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1678 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1679 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1680 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1681 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1682 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1683 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1684 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1686 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1687 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1688 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1689 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1690 will be overwritten.
1692 @cindex globbing, toggle
1694 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1695 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1696 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1700 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1703 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1704 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1707 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1708 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1709 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1710 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1713 @item --no-passive-ftp
1714 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1715 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1716 connection rather than the other way around.
1718 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1719 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1720 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1721 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1722 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1723 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1725 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1726 @item --retr-symlinks
1727 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1728 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1729 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1730 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1731 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1733 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1734 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1735 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1736 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1739 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1740 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1741 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1745 @node Recursive Retrieval Options, Recursive Accept/Reject Options, FTP Options, Invoking
1746 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1751 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1754 @item -l @var{depth}
1755 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1756 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1757 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1759 @cindex proxy filling
1760 @cindex delete after retrieval
1761 @cindex filling proxy cache
1762 @item --delete-after
1763 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1764 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1765 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1768 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1771 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1774 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1775 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1776 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1777 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1778 created in the first place.
1780 @cindex conversion of links
1781 @cindex link conversion
1783 @itemx --convert-links
1784 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1785 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1786 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1787 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1790 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1794 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1795 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1797 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1798 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1799 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1800 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1803 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1804 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1806 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1807 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1808 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1809 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1812 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1813 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1814 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1815 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1816 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1819 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1820 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1821 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1823 @cindex backing up converted files
1825 @itemx --backup-converted
1826 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1827 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1832 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1833 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1834 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1835 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1837 @cindex page requisites
1838 @cindex required images, downloading
1840 @itemx --page-requisites
1841 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1842 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1843 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1845 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1846 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1847 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1848 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1849 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1852 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1853 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1854 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1855 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1856 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1858 If one executes the command:
1861 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1864 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1865 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1866 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1867 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1868 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1871 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1874 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1875 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1878 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1881 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1882 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1885 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1888 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1889 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1890 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1891 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1892 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1893 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1896 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1899 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1900 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1901 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1902 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1903 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1904 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1907 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1910 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1911 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1912 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1915 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1916 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1917 @item --strict-comments
1918 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1919 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1921 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1922 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1923 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1924 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1925 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1926 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1927 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1929 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1930 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1931 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1932 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1933 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1934 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1935 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1936 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1937 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1939 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1940 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1941 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1942 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1943 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1946 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1947 option to turn it on.
1950 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Exit Status, Recursive Retrieval Options, Invoking
1951 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1954 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1955 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1956 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1957 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files}). Note that if
1958 any of the wildcard characters, @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[} or
1959 @samp{]}, appear in an element of @var{acclist} or @var{rejlist},
1960 it will be treated as a pattern, rather than a suffix.
1962 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1963 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1964 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1965 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1967 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1968 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed.
1969 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1971 @cindex follow FTP links
1973 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1974 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1976 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1977 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1978 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1979 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1980 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1981 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1982 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1984 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1985 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1986 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1987 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
1989 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
1990 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
1993 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1996 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
1997 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
1998 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
1999 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
2000 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
2001 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
2006 Ignore case when matching files and directories. This influences the
2007 behavior of -R, -A, -I, and -X options, as well as globbing
2008 implemented when downloading from FTP sites. For example, with this
2009 option, @samp{-A *.txt} will match @samp{file1.txt}, but also
2010 @samp{file2.TXT}, @samp{file3.TxT}, and so on.
2014 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
2015 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2019 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
2020 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
2021 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
2024 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
2025 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2026 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements
2027 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
2030 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
2031 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2032 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements of
2033 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
2037 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
2038 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
2039 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
2040 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
2045 @node Exit Status, , Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Invoking
2046 @section Exit Status
2048 @c man begin EXITSTATUS
2050 Wget may return one of several error codes if it encounters problems.
2055 No problems occurred.
2061 Parse error---for instance, when parsing command-line options, the
2062 @samp{.wgetrc} or @samp{.netrc}...
2071 SSL verification failure.
2074 Username/password authentication failure.
2080 Server issued an error response.
2084 With the exceptions of 0 and 1, the lower-numbered exit codes take
2085 precedence over higher-numbered ones, when multiple types of errors
2088 In versions of Wget prior to 1.12, Wget's exit status tended to be
2089 unhelpful and inconsistent. Recursive downloads would virtually always
2090 return 0 (success), regardless of any issues encountered, and
2091 non-recursive fetches only returned the status corresponding to the
2092 most recently-attempted download.
2096 @node Recursive Download, Following Links, Invoking, Top
2097 @chapter Recursive Download
2100 @cindex recursive download
2102 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
2103 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
2104 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
2106 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} or
2107 @sc{css} from the given @sc{url}, retrieving the files the document
2108 refers to, through markup like @code{href} or @code{src}, or @sc{css}
2109 @sc{uri} values specified using the @samp{url()} functional notation.
2110 If the freshly downloaded file is also of type @code{text/html},
2111 @code{application/xhtml+xml}, or @code{text/css}, it will be parsed
2112 and followed further.
2114 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html}/@sc{css} content is
2115 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
2116 document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
2117 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
2118 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
2119 until the specified maximum depth.
2121 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
2122 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
2124 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
2125 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
2126 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
2127 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
2128 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
2131 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
2132 the one found on the remote server.
2134 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
2135 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
2136 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
2137 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
2139 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
2140 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
2141 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
2142 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
2143 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
2144 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
2145 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
2147 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
2148 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
2149 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
2150 consume memory and CPU.
2152 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
2153 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
2154 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
2155 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
2156 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
2157 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
2158 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
2161 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
2164 @node Following Links, Time-Stamping, Recursive Download, Top
2165 @chapter Following Links
2167 @cindex following links
2169 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
2170 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
2171 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
2173 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
2174 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
2175 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
2177 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
2178 links it will follow.
2181 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
2182 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
2183 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
2184 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
2185 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
2188 @node Spanning Hosts, Types of Files, Following Links, Following Links
2189 @section Spanning Hosts
2190 @cindex spanning hosts
2191 @cindex hosts, spanning
2193 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
2194 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
2195 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
2196 your Wget into a small version of google.
2198 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
2199 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
2200 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
2201 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
2202 pages refer to both interchangeably.
2205 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
2207 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
2208 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
2209 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
2210 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
2211 up much more data than you have intended.
2213 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
2215 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
2216 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
2217 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
2218 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
2219 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
2220 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
2223 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
2226 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
2227 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
2229 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
2231 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
2232 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
2233 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
2234 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
2235 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
2239 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
2245 @node Types of Files, Directory-Based Limits, Spanning Hosts, Following Links
2246 @section Types of Files
2247 @cindex types of files
2249 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
2250 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
2251 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
2252 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
2254 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
2255 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
2258 @cindex accept wildcards
2259 @cindex accept suffixes
2260 @cindex wildcards, accept
2261 @cindex suffixes, accept
2263 @item -A @var{acclist}
2264 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
2265 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
2266 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
2267 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
2268 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
2269 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
2270 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
2272 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
2273 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
2274 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
2275 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
2276 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
2277 a description of how pattern matching works.
2279 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
2280 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
2282 @cindex reject wildcards
2283 @cindex reject suffixes
2284 @cindex wildcards, reject
2285 @cindex suffixes, reject
2286 @item -R @var{rejlist}
2287 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
2288 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
2289 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
2290 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
2291 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
2293 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
2294 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
2295 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
2296 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
2297 expansion by the shell.
2301 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
2302 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
2303 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
2304 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
2306 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
2307 files (as determined by a @samp{.htm} or @samp{.html} filename
2308 prefix). This behavior may not be desirable for all users, and may be
2309 changed for future versions of Wget.
2311 Note, too, that query strings (strings at the end of a URL beginning
2312 with a question mark (@samp{?}) are not included as part of the
2313 filename for accept/reject rules, even though these will actually
2314 contribute to the name chosen for the local file. It is expected that
2315 a future version of Wget will provide an option to allow matching
2316 against query strings.
2318 Finally, it's worth noting that the accept/reject lists are matched
2319 @emph{twice} against downloaded files: once against the URL's filename
2320 portion, to determine if the file should be downloaded in the first
2321 place; then, after it has been accepted and successfully downloaded,
2322 the local file's name is also checked against the accept/reject lists
2323 to see if it should be removed. The rationale was that, since
2324 @samp{.htm} and @samp{.html} files are always downloaded regardless of
2325 accept/reject rules, they should be removed @emph{after} being
2326 downloaded and scanned for links, if they did match the accept/reject
2327 lists. However, this can lead to unexpected results, since the local
2328 filenames can differ from the original URL filenames in the following
2329 ways, all of which can change whether an accept/reject rule matches:
2333 If the local file already exists and @samp{--no-directories} was
2334 specified, a numeric suffix will be appended to the original name.
2336 If @samp{--adjust-extension} was specified, the local filename might have
2337 @samp{.html} appended to it. If Wget is invoked with @samp{-E -A.php},
2338 a filename such as @samp{index.php} will match be accepted, but upon
2339 download will be named @samp{index.php.html}, which no longer matches,
2340 and so the file will be deleted.
2342 Query strings do not contribute to URL matching, but are included in
2343 local filenames, and so @emph{do} contribute to filename matching.
2347 This behavior, too, is considered less-than-desirable, and may change
2348 in a future version of Wget.
2350 @node Directory-Based Limits, Relative Links, Types of Files, Following Links
2351 @section Directory-Based Limits
2353 @cindex directory limits
2355 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
2356 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
2357 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
2358 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
2359 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
2360 @file{/dev} directories.
2362 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
2363 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
2364 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
2366 @cindex directories, include
2367 @cindex include directories
2368 @cindex accept directories
2371 @itemx --include @var{list}
2372 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
2373 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
2374 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
2375 directories are absolute paths.
2377 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
2378 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
2379 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
2382 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
2385 @cindex directories, exclude
2386 @cindex exclude directories
2387 @cindex reject directories
2389 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
2390 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
2391 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
2392 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
2393 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
2394 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
2396 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
2397 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
2398 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
2399 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
2404 @itemx no_parent = on
2405 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
2406 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
2407 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
2408 parent directory/directories.
2410 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
2411 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
2412 Supposing you issue Wget with:
2415 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
2418 You may rest assured that none of the references to
2419 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
2420 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
2421 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
2422 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
2423 intelligent fashion.
2425 @strong{Note} that, for HTTP (and HTTPS), the trailing slash is very
2426 important to @samp{--no-parent}. HTTP has no concept of a ``directory''---Wget
2427 relies on you to indicate what's a directory and what isn't. In
2428 @samp{http://foo/bar/}, Wget will consider @samp{bar} to be a
2429 directory, while in @samp{http://foo/bar} (no trailing slash),
2430 @samp{bar} will be considered a filename (so @samp{--no-parent} would be
2431 meaningless, as its parent is @samp{/}).
2434 @node Relative Links, FTP Links, Directory-Based Limits, Following Links
2435 @section Relative Links
2436 @cindex relative links
2438 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2439 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2440 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2444 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2445 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2448 These links are not relative:
2452 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2453 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2456 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2457 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2458 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2460 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2463 @node FTP Links, , Relative Links, Following Links
2464 @section Following FTP Links
2465 @cindex following ftp links
2467 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2468 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2469 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2472 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2473 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2474 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2475 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2476 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2477 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2478 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2480 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2481 retrieved recursively further.
2483 @node Time-Stamping, Startup File, Following Links, Top
2484 @chapter Time-Stamping
2485 @cindex time-stamping
2486 @cindex timestamping
2487 @cindex updating the archives
2488 @cindex incremental updating
2490 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2491 Internet is updating your archives.
2493 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2494 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2495 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2496 offer the option of incremental updating.
2498 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2499 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2500 the place of the old ones.
2502 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2506 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2509 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2510 recently than the local file.
2513 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2514 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2515 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2517 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2518 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2519 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2520 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2521 does, and the remote file is not newer, Wget will not download it.
2523 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2524 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2528 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2529 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2530 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2533 @node Time-Stamping Usage, HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping, Time-Stamping
2534 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2535 @cindex time-stamping usage
2536 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2538 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2539 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2542 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2545 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2546 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2547 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2548 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2550 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2551 changed, and download it if it has.
2554 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2557 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2558 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2559 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2560 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2562 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2565 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2568 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2569 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2571 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2572 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2573 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2574 since the last download.
2576 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2577 command like the following, weekly:
2580 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2583 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2584 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2585 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2586 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2587 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2589 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, FTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping Usage, Time-Stamping
2590 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2591 @cindex http time-stamping
2593 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2594 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2595 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2596 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2597 retrieved unconditionally.
2599 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2600 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2601 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2604 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2605 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2606 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2607 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2608 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2609 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2612 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2613 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2614 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2615 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2616 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2618 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2619 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2621 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals, , HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping
2622 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2623 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2625 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2626 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2629 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2630 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2631 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2632 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2633 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2634 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2635 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2636 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2638 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2639 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2640 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2641 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2642 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2643 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2645 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2646 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2647 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2648 Wget may support this command in the future.
2650 @node Startup File, Examples, Time-Stamping, Top
2651 @chapter Startup File
2652 @cindex startup file
2658 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2659 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2660 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2661 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2663 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2664 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2665 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2666 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2668 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2672 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2673 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2674 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2675 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2678 @node Wgetrc Location, Wgetrc Syntax, Startup File, Startup File
2679 @section Wgetrc Location
2680 @cindex wgetrc location
2681 @cindex location of wgetrc
2683 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2684 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2685 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2686 from there, if it exists.
2688 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2689 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2690 further attempts will be made.
2692 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2694 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2695 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2696 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2697 Fascist admins, away!
2699 @node Wgetrc Syntax, Wgetrc Commands, Wgetrc Location, Startup File
2700 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2701 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2702 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2704 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2710 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2711 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2713 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2714 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2715 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2718 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2719 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2720 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2726 @node Wgetrc Commands, Sample Wgetrc, Wgetrc Syntax, Startup File
2727 @section Wgetrc Commands
2728 @cindex wgetrc commands
2730 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2731 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2732 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}.
2734 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2735 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2736 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2737 values can be any non-empty string.
2739 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2740 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2741 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2744 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2745 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2747 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2748 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2750 @item ask_password = on/off
2751 Prompt for a password for each connection established. Cannot be specified
2752 when @samp{--password} is being used, because they are mutually
2753 exclusive. Equivalent to @samp{--ask-password}.
2755 @item auth_no_challenge = on/off
2756 If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication
2757 information (plaintext username and password) for all requests. See
2758 @samp{--auth-no-challenge}.
2760 @item background = on/off
2761 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2764 @item backup_converted = on/off
2765 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2766 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2768 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2769 @c #### Document me!
2771 @item base = @var{string}
2772 Consider relative @sc{url}s in input files (specified via the
2773 @samp{input} command or the @samp{--input-file}/@samp{-i} option,
2774 together with @samp{force_html} or @samp{--force-html})
2775 as being relative to @var{string}---the same as @samp{--base=@var{string}}.
2777 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2778 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address=@var{address}}.
2780 @item ca_certificate = @var{file}
2781 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{file}. The same
2782 as @samp{--ca-certificate=@var{file}}.
2784 @item ca_directory = @var{directory}
2785 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2786 @samp{--ca-directory=@var{directory}}.
2788 @item cache = on/off
2789 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2792 @item certificate = @var{file}
2793 Set the client certificate file name to @var{file}. The same as
2794 @samp{--certificate=@var{file}}.
2796 @item certificate_type = @var{string}
2797 Specify the type of the client certificate, legal values being
2798 @samp{PEM} (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2799 @samp{--certificate-type=@var{string}}.
2801 @item check_certificate = on/off
2802 If this is set to off, the server certificate is not checked against
2803 the specified client authorities. The default is ``on''. The same as
2804 @samp{--check-certificate}.
2806 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2807 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2809 @item content_disposition = on/off
2810 Turn on recognition of the (non-standard) @samp{Content-Disposition}
2811 HTTP header---if set to @samp{on}, the same as @samp{--content-disposition}.
2813 @item continue = on/off
2814 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2815 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2817 @item convert_links = on/off
2818 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2820 @item cookies = on/off
2821 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2823 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2824 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components. Equivalent to
2825 @samp{--cut-dirs=@var{n}}.
2827 @item debug = on/off
2828 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2830 @item default_page = @var{string}
2831 Default page name---the same as @samp{--default-page=@var{string}}.
2833 @item delete_after = on/off
2834 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2836 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2837 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P @var{string}}.
2839 @item dirstruct = on/off
2840 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2843 @item dns_cache = on/off
2844 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2845 option is normally used to turn it off and is equivalent to
2846 @samp{--no-dns-cache}.
2848 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2849 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2851 @item domains = @var{string}
2852 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2854 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2855 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2856 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2857 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2858 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2859 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2860 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2862 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2863 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2865 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2866 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2867 the retrieval (50 by default).
2869 @item egd_file = @var{file}
2870 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2871 @samp{--egd-file=@var{file}}.
2873 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2874 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2875 download---the same as @samp{-X @var{string}} (@pxref{Directory-Based
2878 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2879 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains=@var{string}} (@pxref{Spanning
2882 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2883 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2884 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2886 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2887 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval,
2888 just like @samp{--follow-tags=@var{string}}.
2890 @item force_html = on/off
2891 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2892 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2894 @item ftp_password = @var{string}
2895 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2896 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2897 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2899 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2901 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2902 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2905 @item ftp_user = @var{string}
2906 Set @sc{ftp} user to @var{string}.
2908 This command used to be named @code{login} prior to Wget 1.10.
2911 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2913 @item header = @var{string}
2914 Define a header for HTTP downloads, like using
2915 @samp{--header=@var{string}}.
2917 @item adjust_extension = on/off
2918 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2919 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files that lack one, or a @samp{.css}
2920 extension to @samp{text/css} files that lack one, like
2921 @samp{-E}. Previously named @samp{html_extension} (still acceptable,
2924 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2925 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). Turning it
2926 off is equivalent to @samp{--no-http-keep-alive}.
2928 @item http_password = @var{string}
2929 Set @sc{http} password, equivalent to
2930 @samp{--http-password=@var{string}}.
2932 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2933 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2936 @item http_user = @var{string}
2937 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}, equivalent to
2938 @samp{--http-user=@var{string}}.
2940 @item https_proxy = @var{string}
2941 Use @var{string} as @sc{https} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2944 @item ignore_case = on/off
2945 When set to on, match files and directories case insensitively; the
2946 same as @samp{--ignore-case}.
2948 @item ignore_length = on/off
2949 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2950 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2952 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2953 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, like
2954 @samp{--ignore-tags=@var{string}}.
2956 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2957 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2958 downloading---the same as @samp{-I @var{string}}.
2961 When set to on, enable internationalized URI (IRI) support; the same as
2964 @item inet4_only = on/off
2965 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2966 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2967 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2968 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2970 @item inet6_only = on/off
2971 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2972 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2975 @item input = @var{file}
2976 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i @var{file}}.
2978 @item keep_session_cookies = on/off
2979 When specified, causes @samp{save_cookies = on} to also save session
2980 cookies. See @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
2982 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2983 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
2984 The same as @samp{--limit-rate=@var{rate}}.
2986 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
2987 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies @var{file}}.
2989 @item local_encoding = @var{encoding}
2990 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default system encoding. See
2991 @samp{--local-encoding}.
2993 @item logfile = @var{file}
2994 Set logfile to @var{file}, the same as @samp{-o @var{file}}.
2996 @item max_redirect = @var{number}
2997 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
2998 See @samp{--max-redirect=@var{number}}.
3000 @item mirror = on/off
3001 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
3003 @item netrc = on/off
3004 Turn reading netrc on or off.
3006 @item no_clobber = on/off
3009 @item no_parent = on/off
3010 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
3011 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
3013 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
3014 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
3015 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
3017 @item output_document = @var{file}
3018 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O @var{file}}.
3020 @item page_requisites = on/off
3021 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
3022 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
3024 @item passive_ftp = on/off
3025 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
3026 @samp{--passive-ftp} option.
3028 @itemx password = @var{string}
3029 Specify password @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
3030 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_password} and
3031 @samp{http_password} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
3033 @item post_data = @var{string}
3034 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
3035 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data=@var{string}}.
3037 @item post_file = @var{file}
3038 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
3039 @var{file} in the request body. The same as
3040 @samp{--post-file=@var{file}}.
3042 @item prefer_family = none/IPv4/IPv6
3043 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
3044 with specified address family first. The address order returned by
3045 DNS is used without change by default. The same as @samp{--prefer-family},
3046 which see for a detailed discussion of why this is useful.
3048 @item private_key = @var{file}
3049 Set the private key file to @var{file}. The same as
3050 @samp{--private-key=@var{file}}.
3052 @item private_key_type = @var{string}
3053 Specify the type of the private key, legal values being @samp{PEM}
3054 (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
3055 @samp{--private-type=@var{string}}.
3057 @item progress = @var{string}
3058 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are @samp{dot}
3059 and @samp{bar}. Equivalent to @samp{--progress=@var{string}}.
3061 @item protocol_directories = on/off
3062 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
3063 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
3065 @item proxy_password = @var{string}
3066 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like
3067 @samp{--proxy-password=@var{string}}.
3069 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
3070 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like
3071 @samp{--proxy-user=@var{string}}.
3073 @item quiet = on/off
3074 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
3076 @item quota = @var{quota}
3077 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
3078 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
3079 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
3080 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
3081 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
3082 to 5 megabytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
3085 @item random_file = @var{file}
3086 Use @var{file} as a source of randomness on systems lacking
3089 @item random_wait = on/off
3090 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
3091 @samp{--random-wait}.
3093 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
3094 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as
3095 @samp{--read-timeout=@var{n}}.
3097 @item reclevel = @var{n}
3098 Recursion level (depth)---the same as @samp{-l @var{n}}.
3100 @item recursive = on/off
3101 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
3103 @item referer = @var{string}
3104 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like
3105 @samp{--referer=@var{string}}. (Note that it was the folks who wrote
3106 the @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of ``referrer'' wrong.)
3108 @item relative_only = on/off
3109 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
3112 @item remote_encoding = @var{encoding}
3113 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default remote server encoding.
3114 See @samp{--remote-encoding}.
3116 @item remove_listing = on/off
3117 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
3118 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
3120 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
3121 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
3122 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
3124 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
3125 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
3126 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
3128 @item retry_connrefused = on/off
3129 When set to on, consider ``connection refused'' a transient
3130 error---the same as @samp{--retry-connrefused}.
3132 @item robots = on/off
3133 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
3134 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
3135 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
3136 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
3139 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
3140 Save cookies to @var{file}. The same as @samp{--save-cookies
3143 @item save_headers = on/off
3144 Same as @samp{--save-headers}.
3146 @item secure_protocol = @var{string}
3147 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto}
3148 (the default), @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. The same
3149 as @samp{--secure-protocol=@var{string}}.
3151 @item server_response = on/off
3152 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
3153 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
3155 @item span_hosts = on/off
3158 @item spider = on/off
3159 Same as @samp{--spider}.
3161 @item strict_comments = on/off
3162 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
3164 @item timeout = @var{n}
3165 Set all applicable timeout values to @var{n}, the same as @samp{-T
3168 @item timestamping = on/off
3169 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
3171 @item use_server_timestamps = on/off
3172 If set to @samp{off}, Wget won't set the local file's timestamp by the
3173 one on the server (same as @samp{--no-use-server-timestamps}).
3175 @item tries = @var{n}
3176 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t @var{n}}.
3178 @item use_proxy = on/off
3179 When set to off, don't use proxy even when proxy-related environment
3180 variables are set. In that case it is the same as using
3183 @item user = @var{string}
3184 Specify username @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
3185 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_user} and
3186 @samp{http_user} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
3188 @item user_agent = @var{string}
3189 User agent identification sent to the HTTP Server---the same as
3190 @samp{--user-agent=@var{string}}.
3192 @item verbose = on/off
3193 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
3195 @item wait = @var{n}
3196 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w
3199 @item wait_retry = @var{n}
3200 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
3201 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry=@var{n}}. Note that this is
3202 turned on by default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
3205 @node Sample Wgetrc, , Wgetrc Commands, Startup File
3206 @section Sample Wgetrc
3207 @cindex sample wgetrc
3209 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
3210 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
3211 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
3212 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
3214 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
3215 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
3219 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
3222 @node Examples, Various, Startup File, Top
3226 @c man begin EXAMPLES
3227 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
3231 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
3232 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
3233 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
3236 @node Simple Usage, Advanced Usage, Examples, Examples
3237 @section Simple Usage
3241 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
3244 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
3248 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
3249 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
3250 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
3251 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
3252 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
3253 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
3256 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
3260 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
3261 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
3262 shall use @samp{-t}.
3265 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
3268 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
3269 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
3272 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
3276 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
3280 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
3281 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
3284 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
3289 @node Advanced Usage, Very Advanced Usage, Simple Usage, Examples
3290 @section Advanced Usage
3294 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
3301 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
3305 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
3306 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
3307 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
3310 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3314 The same as the above, but convert the links in the downloaded files to
3315 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
3318 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3322 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
3323 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
3324 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
3325 references the downloaded links.
3328 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3331 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
3332 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
3333 depending on where they were on the remote server.
3336 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
3337 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
3338 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
3339 subdirectory of the current directory.
3342 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
3343 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3347 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
3351 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
3355 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
3358 wget --save-headers http://www.lycos.com/
3363 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
3367 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
3371 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
3372 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
3373 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
3377 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
3380 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
3381 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
3382 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
3383 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
3384 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
3388 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
3389 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
3393 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
3397 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
3398 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
3401 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
3404 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
3405 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
3408 @cindex redirecting output
3410 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
3414 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
3417 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
3418 documents from remote hotlists:
3421 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
3425 @node Very Advanced Usage, , Advanced Usage, Examples
3426 @section Very Advanced Usage
3431 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
3432 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
3433 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
3434 to recheck a site each Sunday:
3438 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3442 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
3443 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
3444 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
3445 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
3446 would look like this:
3449 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3450 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3454 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
3455 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
3456 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
3457 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
3458 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
3461 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3462 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
3466 Or, with less typing:
3469 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3474 @node Various, Appendices, Examples, Top
3478 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
3481 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers.
3482 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
3483 * Web Site:: GNU Wget's presence on the World Wide Web.
3484 * Mailing Lists:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
3485 * Internet Relay Chat:: Wget's presence on IRC.
3486 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
3487 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
3488 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
3491 @node Proxies, Distribution, Various, Various
3495 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
3496 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
3497 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
3498 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
3499 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
3500 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
3501 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
3502 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
3503 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
3504 using an authorized proxy.
3506 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
3507 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
3508 the following environment variables:
3513 If set, the @code{http_proxy} and @code{https_proxy} variables should
3514 contain the @sc{url}s of the proxies for @sc{http} and @sc{https}
3515 connections respectively.
3518 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
3519 connections. It is quite common that @code{http_proxy} and
3520 @code{ftp_proxy} are set to the same @sc{url}.
3523 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
3524 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
3525 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
3529 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
3530 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3534 @itemx proxy = on/off
3535 This option and the corresponding command may be used to suppress the
3536 use of proxy, even if the appropriate environment variables are set.
3538 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3539 @itemx https_proxy = @var{URL}
3540 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3541 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3542 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3543 specified by the environment.
3546 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3547 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3548 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3549 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3550 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3552 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3553 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3554 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3555 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3559 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3562 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3563 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3564 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_password} to set the proxy
3565 username and password.
3567 @node Distribution, Web Site, Proxies, Various
3568 @section Distribution
3569 @cindex latest version
3571 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3572 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3573 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3574 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3576 @node Web Site, Mailing Lists, Distribution, Various
3580 The official web site for GNU Wget is at
3581 @url{http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/}. However, most useful
3582 information resides at ``The Wget Wgiki'',
3583 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/}.
3585 @node Mailing Lists, Internet Relay Chat, Web Site, Various
3586 @section Mailing Lists
3587 @cindex mailing list
3590 @unnumberedsubsec Primary List
3592 The primary mailinglist for discussion, bug-reports, or questions
3593 about GNU Wget is at @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}. To subscribe, send an
3594 email to @email{bug-wget-join@@gnu.org}, or visit
3595 @url{http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-wget}.
3597 You do not need to subscribe to send a message to the list; however,
3598 please note that unsubscribed messages are moderated, and may take a
3599 while before they hit the list---@strong{usually around a day}. If
3600 you want your message to show up immediately, please subscribe to the
3601 list before posting. Archives for the list may be found at
3602 @url{http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-wget/}.
3604 An NNTP/Usenettish gateway is also available via
3605 @uref{http://gmane.org/about.php,Gmane}. You can see the Gmane
3607 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}. Note that the
3608 Gmane archives conveniently include messages from both the current
3609 list, and the previous one. Messages also show up in the Gmane
3610 archives sooner than they do at @url{lists.gnu.org}.
3612 @unnumberedsubsec Bug Notices List
3614 Additionally, there is the @email{wget-notify@@addictivecode.org} mailing
3615 list. This is a non-discussion list that receives bug report
3616 notifications from the bug-tracker. To subscribe to this list,
3617 send an email to @email{wget-notify-join@@addictivecode.org},
3618 or visit @url{http://addictivecode.org/mailman/listinfo/wget-notify}.
3620 @unnumberedsubsec Obsolete Lists
3622 Previously, the mailing list @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} was used as the
3623 main discussion list, and another list,
3624 @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} was used for submitting and
3625 discussing patches to GNU Wget.
3627 Messages from @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3630 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3632 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general} (which also
3633 continues to archive the current list, @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}).
3636 Messages from @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3639 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3642 @node Internet Relay Chat, Reporting Bugs, Mailing Lists, Various
3643 @section Internet Relay Chat
3644 @cindex Internet Relay Chat
3648 In addition to the mailinglists, we also have a support channel set up
3649 via IRC at @code{irc.freenode.org}, @code{#wget}. Come check it out!
3651 @node Reporting Bugs, Portability, Internet Relay Chat, Various
3652 @section Reporting Bugs
3654 @cindex reporting bugs
3658 You are welcome to submit bug reports via the GNU Wget bug tracker (see
3659 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/BugTracker}).
3661 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3666 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3667 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3668 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3669 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug, but you might want to
3670 double-check the documentation and the mailing lists (@pxref{Mailing
3674 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3675 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 --no-proxy
3676 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3677 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3678 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3679 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3681 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3682 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3683 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3684 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3685 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3689 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3690 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3691 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3692 with debug support on.
3694 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3695 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3696 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3697 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3698 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3699 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3700 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3703 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3704 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3705 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3710 @node Portability, Signals, Reporting Bugs, Various
3711 @section Portability
3713 @cindex operating systems
3715 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3716 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3717 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3718 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3720 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds of
3721 Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, Mac OS X, OSF
3722 (aka Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some
3723 of those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3724 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3725 system, we would like to know about it.
3727 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3728 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3729 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3730 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3731 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3732 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3733 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3734 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3735 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3736 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3737 Windows-related features might look at them.
3739 Support for building on MS-DOS via DJGPP has been contributed by Gisle
3740 Vanem; a port to VMS is maintained by Steven Schweda, and is available
3741 at @url{http://antinode.org/}.
3743 @node Signals, , Portability, Various
3745 @cindex signal handling
3748 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3749 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3750 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3751 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3752 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3755 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3758 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3761 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3762 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3764 @node Appendices, Copying this manual, Various, Top
3767 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3770 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3771 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3772 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3775 @node Robot Exclusion, Security Considerations, Appendices, Appendices
3776 @section Robot Exclusion
3777 @cindex robot exclusion
3779 @cindex server maintenance
3781 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3782 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3783 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3785 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3786 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3787 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3788 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3789 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3790 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3791 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3792 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3793 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3794 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3795 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3796 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3798 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3799 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3800 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3801 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3802 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3803 they will permit access.
3805 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3806 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3807 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3808 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3809 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3810 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3813 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3814 can download large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3815 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3816 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3819 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3822 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3823 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3824 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3825 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3828 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3829 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3830 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3831 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3832 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3833 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3834 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3835 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3837 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3839 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3840 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3841 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3845 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3848 This is explained in some detail at
3849 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3850 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3853 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3854 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3855 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3856 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3858 @node Security Considerations, Contributors, Robot Exclusion, Appendices
3859 @section Security Considerations
3862 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3863 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3864 main issues, and some solutions.
3868 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3869 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3870 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3871 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3872 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3875 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3876 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3879 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3880 solution for this at the moment.
3883 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3884 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3885 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3889 @node Contributors, , Security Considerations, Appendices
3890 @section Contributors
3891 @cindex contributors
3894 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3897 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3899 and it is currently maintained by Micah Cowan @email{micah@@cowan.name}.
3901 However, the development of Wget could never have gone as far as it has, were
3902 it not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature proposals,
3903 patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3905 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3908 @item Dan Harkless---contributed a lot of code and documentation of
3909 extremely high quality, as well as the @code{--page-requisites} and
3910 related options. He was the principal maintainer for some time and
3913 @item Ian Abbott---contributed bug fixes, Windows-related fixes, and
3914 provided a prototype implementation of the breadth-first recursive
3915 download. Co-maintained Wget during the 1.8 release cycle.
3918 The dotsrc.org crew, in particular Karsten Thygesen---donated system
3919 resources such as the mailing list, web space, @sc{ftp} space, and
3920 version control repositories, along with a lot of time to make these
3921 actually work. Christian Reiniger was of invaluable help with setting
3925 Heiko Herold---provided high-quality Windows builds and contributed
3926 bug and build reports for many years.
3929 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3932 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3936 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3940 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3941 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3944 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3945 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3949 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3952 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the initial Italian
3957 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3961 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3966 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3969 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3973 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization, Makefile
3974 layout and many other things.
3977 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3981 Mauro Tortonesi---improved IPv6 support, adding support for dual
3982 family systems. Refactored and enhanced FTP IPv6 code. Maintained GNU
3983 Wget from 2004--2007.
3986 Christopher G.@: Lewis---maintenance of the Windows version of GNU WGet.
3989 Gisle Vanem---many helpful patches and improvements, especially for
3990 Windows and MS-DOS support.
3993 Ralf Wildenhues---contributed patches to convert Wget to use Automake as
3994 part of its build process, and various bugfixes.
3997 Steven Schubiger---Many helpful patches, bugfixes and improvements.
3998 Notably, conversion of Wget to use the Gnulib quotes and quoteargs
3999 modules, and the addition of password prompts at the console, via the
4000 Gnulib getpasswd-gnu module.
4003 Ted Mielczarek---donated support for CSS.
4006 Saint Xavier---Support for IRIs (RFC 3987).
4009 People who provided donations for development---including Brian Gough.
4012 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
4013 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
4014 that make maintenance so much fun:
4034 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
4043 Bertrand Demiddelaer,
4044 Alexander Dergachev,
4057 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
4060 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
4084 Madhusudan Hosaagrahara,
4088 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
4107 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
4121 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
4122 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
4123 (Simos KSenitellis),
4132 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
4138 Alexander V.@: Lukyanov,
4147 Matthew J.@: Mellon,
4183 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
4185 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}guez,
4188 Juan Jose Rodriguez,
4190 Maciej W.@: Rozycki,
4197 Steven M.@: Schweda,
4208 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
4223 Douglas E.@: Wegscheid,
4225 Joshua David Williams,
4239 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
4240 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
4242 @node Copying this manual, Concept Index, Appendices, Top
4243 @appendix Copying this manual
4246 * GNU Free Documentation License:: Licnse for copying this manual.
4249 @node GNU Free Documentation License, , Copying this manual, Copying this manual
4250 @appendixsec GNU Free Documentation License
4251 @cindex FDL, GNU Free Documentation License
4256 @node Concept Index, , Copying this manual, Top
4257 @unnumbered Concept Index