1 \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
6 @settitle GNU Wget @value{VERSION} Manual
7 @c Disable the monstrous rectangles beside overfull hbox-es.
9 @c Use `odd' to print double-sided.
14 @c Remove this if you don't use A4 paper.
18 @c Title for man page. The weird way texi2pod.pl is written requires
19 @c the preceding @set.
21 @c man title Wget The non-interactive network downloader.
23 @dircategory Network Applications
25 * Wget: (wget). The non-interactive network downloader.
29 This file documents the GNU Wget utility for downloading network
32 @c man begin COPYRIGHT
33 Copyright @copyright{} 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
34 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
37 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
38 this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
39 are preserved on all copies.
43 Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the
44 results, provided the printed document carries a copying permission
45 notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
46 (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
48 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
49 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
50 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
51 Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A
52 copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free
53 Documentation License''.
58 @title GNU Wget @value{VERSION}
59 @subtitle The non-interactive download utility
60 @subtitle Updated for Wget @value{VERSION}, @value{UPDATED}
61 @author by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} and others
65 Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
66 Currently maintained by Micah Cowan <micah@cowan.name>.
69 This is @strong{not} the complete manual for GNU Wget.
70 For more complete information, including more detailed explanations of
71 some of the options, and a number of commands available
72 for use with @file{.wgetrc} files and the @samp{-e} option, see the GNU
73 Info entry for @file{wget}.
78 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
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 Wget and 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::
251 @node URL Format, Option Syntax, Invoking, Invoking
256 @dfn{URL} is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
257 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
258 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the @sc{url} syntax as per
259 @sc{rfc1738}. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
263 http://host[:port]/directory/file
264 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
267 You can also encode your username and password within a @sc{url}:
270 ftp://user:password@@host/path
271 http://user:password@@host/path
274 Either @var{user} or @var{password}, or both, may be left out. If you
275 leave out either the @sc{http} username or password, no authentication
276 will be sent. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} username, @samp{anonymous}
277 will be used. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} password, your email
278 address will be supplied as a default password.@footnote{If you have a
279 @file{.netrc} file in your home directory, password will also be
282 @strong{Important Note}: if you specify a password-containing @sc{url}
283 on the command line, the username and password will be plainly visible
284 to all users on the system, by way of @code{ps}. On multi-user systems,
285 this is a big security risk. To work around it, use @code{wget -i -}
286 and feed the @sc{url}s to Wget's standard input, each on a separate
287 line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
289 You can encode unsafe characters in a @sc{url} as @samp{%xy}, @code{xy}
290 being the hexadecimal representation of the character's @sc{ascii}
291 value. Some common unsafe characters include @samp{%} (quoted as
292 @samp{%25}), @samp{:} (quoted as @samp{%3A}), and @samp{@@} (quoted as
293 @samp{%40}). Refer to @sc{rfc1738} for a comprehensive list of unsafe
296 Wget also supports the @code{type} feature for @sc{ftp} @sc{url}s. By
297 default, @sc{ftp} documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type
298 @samp{i}), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another
299 useful mode is the @samp{a} (@dfn{ASCII}) mode, which converts the line
300 delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful
301 for text files. Here is an example:
304 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
307 Two alternative variants of @sc{url} specification are also supported,
308 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
310 @sc{ftp}-only syntax (supported by @code{NcFTP}):
315 @sc{http}-only syntax (introduced by @code{Netscape}):
320 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
321 supported in the future.
323 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
324 not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
325 with your favorite browser, like @code{Lynx} or @code{Netscape}.
329 @node Option Syntax, Basic Startup Options, URL Format, Invoking
330 @section Option Syntax
331 @cindex option syntax
332 @cindex syntax of options
334 Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process command-line arguments, every
335 option has a long form along with the short one. Long options are
336 more convenient to remember, but take time to type. You may freely
337 mix different option styles, or specify options after the command-line
338 arguments. Thus you may write:
341 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ -o log
344 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may
345 be omitted. Instead of @samp{-o log} you can write @samp{-olog}.
347 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
354 This is a complete equivalent of:
357 wget -d -r -c @var{URL}
360 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
361 terminate them with @samp{--}. So the following will try to download
362 @sc{url} @samp{-x}, reporting failure to @file{log}:
368 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
369 that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be useful to
370 clear the @file{.wgetrc} settings. For instance, if your @file{.wgetrc}
371 sets @code{exclude_directories} to @file{/cgi-bin}, the following
372 example will first reset it, and then set it to exclude @file{/~nobody}
373 and @file{/~somebody}. You can also clear the lists in @file{.wgetrc}
374 (@pxref{Wgetrc Syntax}).
377 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
380 Most options that do not accept arguments are @dfn{boolean} options,
381 so named because their state can be captured with a yes-or-no
382 (``boolean'') variable. For example, @samp{--follow-ftp} tells Wget
383 to follow FTP links from HTML files and, on the other hand,
384 @samp{--no-glob} tells it not to perform file globbing on FTP URLs. A
385 boolean option is either @dfn{affirmative} or @dfn{negative}
386 (beginning with @samp{--no}). All such options share several
389 Unless stated otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is
390 the opposite of what the option accomplishes. For example, the
391 documented existence of @samp{--follow-ftp} assumes that the default
392 is to @emph{not} follow FTP links from HTML pages.
394 Affirmative options can be negated by prepending the @samp{--no-} to
395 the option name; negative options can be negated by omitting the
396 @samp{--no-} prefix. This might seem superfluous---if the default for
397 an affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide a way
398 to explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in fact change
399 the default. For instance, using @code{follow_ftp = off} in
400 @file{.wgetrc} makes Wget @emph{not} follow FTP links by default, and
401 using @samp{--no-follow-ftp} is the only way to restore the factory
402 default from the command line.
404 @node Basic Startup Options, Logging and Input File Options, Option Syntax, Invoking
405 @section Basic Startup Options
410 Display the version of Wget.
414 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
418 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
419 specified via the @samp{-o}, output is redirected to @file{wget-log}.
421 @cindex execute wgetrc command
422 @item -e @var{command}
423 @itemx --execute @var{command}
424 Execute @var{command} as if it were a part of @file{.wgetrc}
425 (@pxref{Startup File}). A command thus invoked will be executed
426 @emph{after} the commands in @file{.wgetrc}, thus taking precedence over
427 them. If you need to specify more than one wgetrc command, use multiple
428 instances of @samp{-e}.
432 @node Logging and Input File Options, Download Options, Basic Startup Options, Invoking
433 @section Logging and Input File Options
438 @item -o @var{logfile}
439 @itemx --output-file=@var{logfile}
440 Log all messages to @var{logfile}. The messages are normally reported
443 @cindex append to log
444 @item -a @var{logfile}
445 @itemx --append-output=@var{logfile}
446 Append to @var{logfile}. This is the same as @samp{-o}, only it appends
447 to @var{logfile} instead of overwriting the old log file. If
448 @var{logfile} does not exist, a new file is created.
453 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
454 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
455 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in
456 which case @samp{-d} will not work. Please note that compiling with
457 debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will
458 @emph{not} print any debug info unless requested with @samp{-d}.
459 @xref{Reporting Bugs}, for more information on how to use @samp{-d} for
465 Turn off Wget's output.
470 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output
475 Turn off verbose without being completely quiet (use @samp{-q} for
476 that), which means that error messages and basic information still get
481 @itemx --input-file=@var{file}
482 Read @sc{url}s from a local or external @var{file}. If @samp{-} is
483 specified as @var{file}, @sc{url}s are read from the standard input.
484 (Use @samp{./-} to read from a file literally named @samp{-}.)
486 If this function is used, no @sc{url}s need be present on the command
487 line. If there are @sc{url}s both on the command line and in an input
488 file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to be
489 retrieved. The @var{file} need not be an @sc{html} document (but no
490 harm if it is)---it is enough if the @sc{url}s are just listed
493 However, if you specify @samp{--force-html}, the document will be
494 regarded as @samp{html}. In that case you may have problems with
495 relative links, which you can solve either by adding @code{<base
496 href="@var{url}">} to the documents or by specifying
497 @samp{--base=@var{url}} on the command line.
499 If the @var{file} is an external one, the document will be automatically
500 treated as @samp{html} if the Content-Type matches @samp{text/html}.
501 Furthermore, the @var{file}'s location will be implicitly used as base
502 href if none was specified.
507 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an @sc{html}
508 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
509 @sc{html} files on your local disk, by adding @code{<base
510 href="@var{url}">} to @sc{html}, or using the @samp{--base} command-line
513 @cindex base for relative links in input file
515 @itemx --base=@var{URL}
516 Prepends @var{URL} to relative links read from the file specified with
517 the @samp{-i} option.
520 @node Download Options, Directory Options, Logging and Input File Options, Invoking
521 @section Download Options
525 @cindex client IP address
526 @cindex IP address, client
527 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
528 When making client TCP/IP connections, bind to @var{ADDRESS} on
529 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
530 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
535 @cindex number of retries
536 @item -t @var{number}
537 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
538 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
539 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
540 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
541 which are not retried.
544 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
545 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all
546 will be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @samp{-}
547 is used as @var{file}, documents will be printed to standard output,
548 disabling link conversion. (Use @samp{./-} to print to a file
549 literally named @samp{-}.)
551 Use of @samp{-O} is @emph{not} intended to mean simply ``use the name
552 @var{file} instead of the one in the URL;'' rather, it is
553 analogous to shell redirection:
554 @samp{wget -O file http://foo} is intended to work like
555 @samp{wget -O - http://foo > file}; @file{file} will be truncated
556 immediately, and @emph{all} downloaded content will be written there.
558 For this reason, @samp{-N} (for timestamp-checking) is not supported
559 in combination with @samp{-O}: since @var{file} is always newly
560 created, it will always have a very new timestamp. A warning will be
561 issued if this combination is used.
563 Similarly, using @samp{-r} or @samp{-p} with @samp{-O} may not work as
564 you expect: Wget won't just download the first file to @var{file} and
565 then download the rest to their normal names: @emph{all} downloaded
566 content will be placed in @var{file}. This was disabled in version
567 1.11, but has been reinstated (with a warning) in 1.11.2, as there are
568 some cases where this behavior can actually have some use.
570 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only permitted when
571 downloading a single document, as in that case it will just convert
572 all relative URIs to external ones; @samp{-k} makes no sense for
573 multiple URIs when they're all being downloaded to a single file.
575 @cindex clobbering, file
576 @cindex downloading multiple times
580 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
581 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
582 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
583 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
585 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, @samp{-r}, or @samp{p},
586 downloading the same file in the same directory will result in the
587 original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy being
588 named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet again, the
589 third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on. When
590 @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will
591 refuse to download newer copies of @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore,
592 ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a misnomer in this mode---it's not
593 clobbering that's prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
594 preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version saving that's
597 When running Wget with @samp{-r} or @samp{-p}, but without @samp{-N}
598 or @samp{-nc}, re-downloading a file will result in the new copy
599 simply overwriting the old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent this
600 behavior, instead causing the original version to be preserved and any
601 newer copies on the server to be ignored.
603 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r} or
604 @samp{-p}, the decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy
605 of a file depends on the local and remote timestamp and size of the
606 file (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the
607 same time as @samp{-N}.
609 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
610 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
611 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
613 @cindex continue retrieval
614 @cindex incomplete downloads
615 @cindex resume download
618 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
619 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
620 by another program. For instance:
623 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
626 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
627 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
628 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
629 length of the local file.
631 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
632 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
633 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
634 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
635 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
637 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
638 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
641 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
642 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
643 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
644 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
645 start from scratch, remove the file.
647 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
648 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
649 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
650 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
651 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
652 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
654 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
655 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
656 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
657 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
658 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
659 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
660 collection or log file.
662 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
663 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
664 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
665 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
666 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
667 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
669 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
670 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
671 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
672 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
674 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
675 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
681 Turn on internationalized URI (IRI) support. Use @samp{--iri=no} to
682 turn it off. IRI support is activated by default.
684 You can set the default state of IRI support using @code{iri} command in
685 @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the command line.
687 @cindex local encoding
689 @item --locale=@var{encoding}
691 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default system encoding. That affects
692 how Wget converts URLs specified as arguments from locale to @sc{utf-8} for
695 Wget use the function @code{nl_langinfo()} and then the @code{CHARSET}
696 environment variable to get the locale. If it fails, @sc{ascii} is used.
698 You can set the default locale using the @code{locale} command in
699 @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the command line.
701 @cindex progress indicator
703 @item --progress=@var{type}
704 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
705 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
707 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
708 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
709 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
712 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
713 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
714 fixed amount of downloaded data.
716 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
717 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
718 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
719 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
720 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
721 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
722 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
723 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
724 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
726 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
727 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
728 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
729 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
730 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
732 @cindex remote encoding
733 @item --remote-encoding=@var{encoding}
735 Force Wget to use encoding as the default remote server encoding. That
736 affects how Wget converts URIs found in files from remote encoding to
737 @sc{utf-8} during a recursive fetch. This options is only useful for
738 IRI support, for the interpretation of non-@sc{ascii} characters.
740 For HTTP, remote encoding can be found in HTTP @code{Content-Type}
741 header and in HTML @code{Content-Type http-equiv} meta tag.
743 You can set the default encoding using the @code{remoteencoding}
744 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
748 @itemx --timestamping
749 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
751 @cindex server response, print
753 @itemx --server-response
754 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
757 @cindex Wget as spider
760 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
761 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
762 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
765 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
768 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
769 functionality of real web spiders.
773 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
774 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
775 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
776 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
778 When interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and
779 abort the operation if it takes too long. This prevents anomalies
780 like hanging reads and infinite connects. The only timeout enabled by
781 default is a 900-second read timeout. Setting a timeout to 0 disables
782 it altogether. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to
783 change the default timeout settings.
785 All timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as
786 subsecond values. For example, @samp{0.1} seconds is a legal (though
787 unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts are useful for checking
788 server response times or for testing network latency.
792 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
793 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
794 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
795 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
798 @cindex connect timeout
799 @cindex timeout, connect
800 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
801 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
802 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
803 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
806 @cindex timeout, read
807 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
808 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. The
809 ``time'' of this timeout refers to @dfn{idle time}: if, at any point in
810 the download, no data is received for more than the specified number
811 of seconds, reading fails and the download is restarted. This option
812 does not directly affect the duration of the entire download.
814 Of course, the remote server may choose to terminate the connection
815 sooner than this option requires. The default read timeout is 900
818 @cindex bandwidth, limit
820 @cindex limit bandwidth
821 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
822 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
823 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
824 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
825 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for whatever
826 reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available bandwidth.
828 This option allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction
829 with power suffixes; for example, @samp{--limit-rate=2.5k} is a legal
832 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
833 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
834 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
835 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
836 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
837 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
841 @item -w @var{seconds}
842 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
843 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
844 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
845 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
846 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
847 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
849 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
850 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
851 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry. The
852 waiting interval specified by this function is influenced by
853 @code{--random-wait}, which see.
855 @cindex retries, waiting between
856 @cindex waiting between retries
857 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
858 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
859 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
860 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
861 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
862 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify. Therefore,
863 a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55
866 By default, Wget will assume a value of 10 seconds.
871 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
872 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
873 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
874 to vary between 0.5 and 1.5 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
875 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
876 presence from such analysis.
878 A 2001 article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
879 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
880 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
881 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
884 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
885 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
890 Don't use proxies, even if the appropriate @code{*_proxy} environment
894 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
899 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
900 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
901 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
902 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
904 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
905 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
906 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
907 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
908 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
909 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
910 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
912 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
915 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
917 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
918 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
919 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
920 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
923 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
924 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
925 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
926 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
927 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
928 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
929 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
932 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
935 @cindex file names, restrict
936 @cindex Windows file names
937 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{mode}
938 Change which characters found in remote URLs may show up in local file
939 names generated from those URLs. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
940 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
941 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
944 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid as part of
945 file names on your operating system, as well as control characters that
946 are typically unprintable. This option is useful for changing these
947 defaults, either because you are downloading to a non-native partition,
948 or because you want to disable escaping of the control characters.
950 When mode is set to ``unix'', Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
951 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
952 default on Unix-like OS'es.
954 When mode is set to ``windows'', Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
955 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
956 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
957 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
958 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
959 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
960 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
961 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
962 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
963 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
965 If you append @samp{,nocontrol} to the mode, as in
966 @samp{unix,nocontrol}, escaping of the control characters is also
967 switched off. You can use @samp{--restrict-file-names=nocontrol} to
968 turn off escaping of control characters without affecting the choice of
969 the OS to use as file name restriction mode.
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.
1040 @node Directory Options, HTTP Options, Download Options, Invoking
1041 @section Directory Options
1045 @itemx --no-directories
1046 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
1047 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
1048 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
1049 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
1052 @itemx --force-directories
1053 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
1054 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
1055 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
1056 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
1059 @itemx --no-host-directories
1060 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
1061 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
1062 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
1065 @item --protocol-directories
1066 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
1067 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
1068 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
1070 @cindex cut directories
1071 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
1072 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
1073 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
1076 Take, for example, the directory at
1077 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
1078 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
1079 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
1080 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
1081 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
1082 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
1083 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
1087 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
1089 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
1090 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
1092 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
1097 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
1098 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
1099 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
1100 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
1101 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
1103 @cindex directory prefix
1104 @item -P @var{prefix}
1105 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
1106 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
1107 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
1108 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
1112 @node HTTP Options, HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, Directory Options, Invoking
1113 @section HTTP Options
1116 @cindex default page name
1118 @item --default-page=@var{name}
1119 Use @var{name} as the default file name when it isn't known (i.e., for
1120 URLs that end in a slash), instead of @file{index.html}.
1122 @cindex .html extension
1124 @itemx --html-extension
1125 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
1126 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
1127 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
1128 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
1129 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
1130 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1131 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1132 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1133 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1135 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1136 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1137 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1138 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1139 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1140 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1141 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1142 Retrieval Options}).
1144 As of version 1.12, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files of
1145 type @samp{text/css} end in the suffix @samp{.css}. Obviously, this
1146 makes the name @samp{--html-extension} misleading; a better name is
1147 expected to be offered as an alternative in the near future.
1150 @cindex http password
1151 @cindex authentication
1152 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1153 @itemx --http-password=@var{password}
1154 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1155 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1156 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure),
1157 the @code{digest}, or the Windows @code{NTLM} authentication scheme.
1159 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1160 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1161 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1162 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1163 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1164 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1165 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1168 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1172 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1173 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1174 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1175 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1176 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1177 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1178 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1179 the load on the server.
1181 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1182 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1183 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1188 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1189 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1190 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1191 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1192 documents on proxy servers.
1194 Caching is allowed by default.
1198 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1199 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1200 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1201 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1202 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1203 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1204 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1206 @cindex loading cookies
1207 @cindex cookies, loading
1208 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1209 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1210 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1211 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1213 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1214 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1215 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1216 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1217 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1218 proves your identity.
1220 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1221 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1222 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1223 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1224 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1225 cookie files in different locations:
1229 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1231 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1232 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1233 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1234 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1235 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1237 @item Internet Explorer.
1238 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1239 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1240 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1242 @item Other browsers.
1243 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1244 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1245 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1248 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1249 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1250 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1251 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1252 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1255 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1258 @cindex saving cookies
1259 @cindex cookies, saving
1260 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1261 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1262 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1263 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1265 @cindex cookies, session
1266 @cindex session cookies
1267 @item --keep-session-cookies
1268 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1269 cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they are
1270 meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit the browser.
1271 Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
1272 the home page before you can access some pages. With this option,
1273 multiple Wget runs are considered a single browser session as far as
1274 the site is concerned.
1276 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1277 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1278 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1279 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1280 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1281 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1282 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1284 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1285 @cindex ignore length
1286 @item --ignore-length
1287 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1288 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1289 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1290 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1291 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1294 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1295 if it never existed.
1298 @item --header=@var{header-line}
1299 Send @var{header-line} along with the rest of the headers in each
1300 @sc{http} request. The supplied header is sent as-is, which means it
1301 must contain name and value separated by colon, and must not contain
1304 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1305 @samp{--header} more than once.
1309 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1310 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1311 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1315 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1316 previous user-defined headers.
1318 As of Wget 1.10, this option can be used to override headers otherwise
1319 generated automatically. This example instructs Wget to connect to
1320 localhost, but to specify @samp{foo.bar} in the @code{Host} header:
1323 wget --header="Host: foo.bar" http://localhost/
1326 In versions of Wget prior to 1.10 such use of @samp{--header} caused
1327 sending of duplicate headers.
1330 @item --max-redirect=@var{number}
1331 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
1332 The default is 20, which is usually far more than necessary. However, on
1333 those occasions where you want to allow more (or fewer), this is the
1337 @cindex proxy password
1338 @cindex proxy authentication
1339 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1340 @itemx --proxy-password=@var{password}
1341 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1342 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1343 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1345 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-password}
1346 pertain here as well.
1348 @cindex http referer
1349 @cindex referer, http
1350 @item --referer=@var{url}
1351 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1352 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1353 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1354 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1356 @cindex server response, save
1357 @item --save-headers
1358 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1359 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1362 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1363 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1364 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1366 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1367 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1368 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1369 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1370 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1373 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1374 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1375 While this is not such a bad idea in theory, it has been abused by
1376 servers denying information to clients other than (historically)
1377 Netscape or, more frequently, Microsoft Internet Explorer. This
1378 option allows you to change the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget.
1379 Use of this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
1382 Specifying empty user agent with @samp{--user-agent=""} instructs Wget
1383 not to send the @code{User-Agent} header in @sc{http} requests.
1386 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1387 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1388 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data
1389 in the request body. @code{--post-data} sends @var{string} as data,
1390 whereas @code{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}. Other than
1391 that, they work in exactly the same way.
1393 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1394 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1395 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1396 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1397 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1398 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1399 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1400 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1401 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1403 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it
1404 will not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because
1405 URLs that process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular
1406 page, which does not desire or accept POST. It is not completely
1407 clear that this behavior is optimal; if it doesn't work out, it might
1408 be changed in the future.
1410 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1411 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1416 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1417 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1418 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1419 http://server.com/auth.php
1421 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1422 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1423 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1427 If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication,
1428 the above will not work because @samp{--save-cookies} will not save
1429 them (and neither will browsers) and the @file{cookies.txt} file will
1430 be empty. In that case use @samp{--keep-session-cookies} along with
1431 @samp{--save-cookies} to force saving of session cookies.
1433 @cindex Content-Disposition
1434 @item --content-disposition
1436 If this is set to on, experimental (not fully-functional) support for
1437 @code{Content-Disposition} headers is enabled. This can currently result in
1438 extra round-trips to the server for a @code{HEAD} request, and is known
1439 to suffer from a few bugs, which is why it is not currently enabled by default.
1441 This option is useful for some file-downloading CGI programs that use
1442 @code{Content-Disposition} headers to describe what the name of a
1443 downloaded file should be.
1445 @cindex authentication
1446 @item --auth-no-challenge
1448 If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication
1449 information (plaintext username and password) for all requests, just
1450 like Wget 1.10.2 and prior did by default.
1452 Use of this option is not recommended, and is intended only to support
1453 some few obscure servers, which never send HTTP authentication
1454 challenges, but accept unsolicited auth info, say, in addition to
1455 form-based authentication.
1459 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, FTP Options, HTTP Options, Invoking
1460 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1463 To support encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1464 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1465 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1468 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1469 @item --secure-protocol=@var{protocol}
1470 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto},
1471 @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. If @samp{auto} is used,
1472 the SSL library is given the liberty of choosing the appropriate
1473 protocol automatically, which is achieved by sending an SSLv2 greeting
1474 and announcing support for SSLv3 and TLSv1. This is the default.
1476 Specifying @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, or @samp{TLSv1} forces the use
1477 of the corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old and
1478 buggy SSL server implementations that make it hard for OpenSSL to
1479 choose the correct protocol version. Fortunately, such servers are
1482 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1483 @item --no-check-certificate
1484 Don't check the server certificate against the available certificate
1485 authorities. Also don't require the URL host name to match the common
1486 name presented by the certificate.
1488 As of Wget 1.10, the default is to verify the server's certificate
1489 against the recognized certificate authorities, breaking the SSL
1490 handshake and aborting the download if the verification fails.
1491 Although this provides more secure downloads, it does break
1492 interoperability with some sites that worked with previous Wget
1493 versions, particularly those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise
1494 invalid certificates. This option forces an ``insecure'' mode of
1495 operation that turns the certificate verification errors into warnings
1496 and allows you to proceed.
1498 If you encounter ``certificate verification'' errors or ones saying
1499 that ``common name doesn't match requested host name'', you can use
1500 this option to bypass the verification and proceed with the download.
1501 @emph{Only use this option if you are otherwise convinced of the
1502 site's authenticity, or if you really don't care about the validity of
1503 its certificate.} It is almost always a bad idea not to check the
1504 certificates when transmitting confidential or important data.
1506 @cindex SSL certificate
1507 @item --certificate=@var{file}
1508 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1509 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1510 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1513 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1514 @item --certificate-type=@var{type}
1515 Specify the type of the client certificate. Legal values are
1516 @samp{PEM} (assumed by default) and @samp{DER}, also known as
1519 @item --private-key=@var{file}
1520 Read the private key from @var{file}. This allows you to provide the
1521 private key in a file separate from the certificate.
1523 @item --private-key-type=@var{type}
1524 Specify the type of the private key. Accepted values are @samp{PEM}
1525 (the default) and @samp{DER}.
1527 @item --ca-certificate=@var{file}
1528 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities
1529 (``CA'') to verify the peers. The certificates must be in PEM format.
1531 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1532 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1534 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1535 @item --ca-directory=@var{directory}
1536 Specifies directory containing CA certificates in PEM format. Each
1537 file contains one CA certificate, and the file name is based on a hash
1538 value derived from the certificate. This is achieved by processing a
1539 certificate directory with the @code{c_rehash} utility supplied with
1540 OpenSSL. Using @samp{--ca-directory} is more efficient than
1541 @samp{--ca-certificate} when many certificates are installed because
1542 it allows Wget to fetch certificates on demand.
1544 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1545 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1547 @cindex entropy, specifying source of
1548 @cindex randomness, specifying source of
1549 @item --random-file=@var{file}
1550 Use @var{file} as the source of random data for seeding the
1551 pseudo-random number generator on systems without @file{/dev/random}.
1553 On such systems the SSL library needs an external source of randomness
1554 to initialize. Randomness may be provided by EGD (see
1555 @samp{--egd-file} below) or read from an external source specified by
1556 the user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random data
1557 in @code{$RANDFILE} or, if that is unset, in @file{$HOME/.rnd}. If
1558 none of those are available, it is likely that SSL encryption will not
1561 If you're getting the ``Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG; disabling SSL.''
1562 error, you should provide random data using some of the methods
1566 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1567 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1568 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1569 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1570 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1571 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1572 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1574 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1575 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1576 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1577 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1579 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1580 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1581 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1584 @node FTP Options, Recursive Retrieval Options, HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, Invoking
1585 @section FTP Options
1589 @cindex ftp password
1590 @cindex ftp authentication
1591 @item --ftp-user=@var{user}
1592 @itemx --ftp-password=@var{password}
1593 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1594 @sc{ftp} server. Without this, or the corresponding startup option,
1595 the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, normally used for anonymous
1598 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1599 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1600 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1601 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1602 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1603 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1604 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1607 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1611 @cindex .listing files, removing
1612 @item --no-remove-listing
1613 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1614 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1615 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1616 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1617 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1618 you're running is complete).
1620 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1621 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1622 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1623 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1624 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1625 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1626 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1627 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1628 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1630 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1631 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1632 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1633 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1634 will be overwritten.
1636 @cindex globbing, toggle
1638 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1639 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1640 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1644 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1647 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1648 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1651 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1652 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1653 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1654 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1657 @item --no-passive-ftp
1658 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1659 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1660 connection rather than the other way around.
1662 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1663 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1664 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1665 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1666 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1667 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1669 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1670 @item --retr-symlinks
1671 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1672 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1673 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1674 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1675 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1677 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1678 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1679 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1680 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1683 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1684 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1685 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1689 @node Recursive Retrieval Options, Recursive Accept/Reject Options, FTP Options, Invoking
1690 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1695 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1698 @item -l @var{depth}
1699 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1700 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1701 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1703 @cindex proxy filling
1704 @cindex delete after retrieval
1705 @cindex filling proxy cache
1706 @item --delete-after
1707 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1708 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1709 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1712 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1715 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1718 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1719 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1720 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1721 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1722 created in the first place.
1724 @cindex conversion of links
1725 @cindex link conversion
1727 @itemx --convert-links
1728 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1729 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1730 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1731 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1734 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1738 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1739 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1741 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1742 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1743 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1744 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1747 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1748 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1750 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1751 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1752 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1753 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1756 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1757 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1758 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1759 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1760 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1763 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1764 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1765 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1767 @cindex backing up converted files
1769 @itemx --backup-converted
1770 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1771 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1776 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1777 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1778 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1779 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1781 @cindex page requisites
1782 @cindex required images, downloading
1784 @itemx --page-requisites
1785 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1786 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1787 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1789 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1790 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1791 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1792 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1793 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1796 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1797 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1798 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1799 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1800 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1802 If one executes the command:
1805 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1808 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1809 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1810 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1811 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1812 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1815 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1818 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1819 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1822 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1825 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1826 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1829 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1832 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1833 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1834 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1835 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1836 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1837 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1840 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1843 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1844 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1845 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1846 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1847 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1848 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1851 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1854 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1855 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1856 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1859 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1860 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1861 @item --strict-comments
1862 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1863 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1865 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1866 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1867 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1868 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1869 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1870 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1871 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1873 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1874 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1875 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1876 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1877 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1878 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1879 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1880 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1881 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1883 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1884 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1885 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1886 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1887 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1890 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1891 option to turn it on.
1894 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options, , Recursive Retrieval Options, Invoking
1895 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1898 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1899 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1900 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1901 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files}). Note that if
1902 any of the wildcard characters, @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[} or
1903 @samp{]}, appear in an element of @var{acclist} or @var{rejlist},
1904 it will be treated as a pattern, rather than a suffix.
1906 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1907 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1908 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1909 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1911 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1912 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed.
1913 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1915 @cindex follow FTP links
1917 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1918 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1920 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1921 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1922 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1923 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1924 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1925 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1926 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1928 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1929 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1930 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1931 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
1933 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
1934 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
1937 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1940 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
1941 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
1942 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
1943 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
1944 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
1945 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
1950 Ignore case when matching files and directories. This influences the
1951 behavior of -R, -A, -I, and -X options, as well as globbing
1952 implemented when downloading from FTP sites. For example, with this
1953 option, @samp{-A *.txt} will match @samp{file1.txt}, but also
1954 @samp{file2.TXT}, @samp{file3.TxT}, and so on.
1958 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
1959 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1963 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
1964 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
1965 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
1968 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
1969 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
1970 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements
1971 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1974 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
1975 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
1976 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements of
1977 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1981 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
1982 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
1983 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
1984 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
1989 @node Recursive Download, Following Links, Invoking, Top
1990 @chapter Recursive Download
1993 @cindex recursive download
1995 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
1996 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
1997 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
1999 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} or
2000 @sc{css} from the given @sc{url}, retrieving the files the document
2001 refers to, through markup like @code{href} or @code{src}, or @sc{css}
2002 @sc{uri} values specified using the @samp{url()} functional notation.
2003 If the freshly downloaded file is also of type @code{text/html},
2004 @code{application/xhtml+xml}, or @code{text/css}, it will be parsed
2005 and followed further.
2007 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html}/@sc{css} content is
2008 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
2009 document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
2010 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
2011 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
2012 until the specified maximum depth.
2014 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
2015 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
2017 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
2018 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
2019 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
2020 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
2021 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
2024 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
2025 the one found on the remote server.
2027 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
2028 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
2029 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
2030 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
2032 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
2033 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
2034 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
2035 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
2036 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
2037 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
2038 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
2040 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
2041 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
2042 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
2043 consume memory and CPU.
2045 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
2046 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
2047 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
2048 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
2049 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
2050 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
2051 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
2054 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
2057 @node Following Links, Time-Stamping, Recursive Download, Top
2058 @chapter Following Links
2060 @cindex following links
2062 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
2063 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
2064 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
2066 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
2067 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
2068 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
2070 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
2071 links it will follow.
2074 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
2075 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
2076 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
2077 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
2078 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
2081 @node Spanning Hosts, Types of Files, Following Links, Following Links
2082 @section Spanning Hosts
2083 @cindex spanning hosts
2084 @cindex hosts, spanning
2086 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
2087 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
2088 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
2089 your Wget into a small version of google.
2091 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
2092 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
2093 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
2094 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
2095 pages refer to both interchangeably.
2098 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
2100 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
2101 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
2102 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
2103 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
2104 up much more data than you have intended.
2106 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
2108 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
2109 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
2110 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
2111 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
2112 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
2113 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
2116 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
2119 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
2120 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
2122 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
2124 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
2125 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
2126 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
2127 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
2128 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
2132 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
2138 @node Types of Files, Directory-Based Limits, Spanning Hosts, Following Links
2139 @section Types of Files
2140 @cindex types of files
2142 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
2143 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
2144 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
2145 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
2147 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
2148 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
2151 @cindex accept wildcards
2152 @cindex accept suffixes
2153 @cindex wildcards, accept
2154 @cindex suffixes, accept
2156 @item -A @var{acclist}
2157 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
2158 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
2159 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
2160 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
2161 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
2162 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
2163 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
2165 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
2166 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
2167 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
2168 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
2169 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
2170 a description of how pattern matching works.
2172 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
2173 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
2175 @cindex reject wildcards
2176 @cindex reject suffixes
2177 @cindex wildcards, reject
2178 @cindex suffixes, reject
2179 @item -R @var{rejlist}
2180 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
2181 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
2182 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
2183 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
2184 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
2186 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
2187 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
2188 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
2189 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
2190 expansion by the shell.
2194 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
2195 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
2196 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
2197 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
2199 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
2200 files (as determined by a @samp{.htm} or @samp{.html} filename
2201 prefix). This behavior may not be desirable for all users, and may be
2202 changed for future versions of Wget.
2204 Note, too, that query strings (strings at the end of a URL beginning
2205 with a question mark (@samp{?}) are not included as part of the
2206 filename for accept/reject rules, even though these will actually
2207 contribute to the name chosen for the local file. It is expected that
2208 a future version of Wget will provide an option to allow matching
2209 against query strings.
2211 Finally, it's worth noting that the accept/reject lists are matched
2212 @emph{twice} against downloaded files: once against the URL's filename
2213 portion, to determine if the file should be downloaded in the first
2214 place; then, after it has been accepted and successfully downloaded,
2215 the local file's name is also checked against the accept/reject lists
2216 to see if it should be removed. The rationale was that, since
2217 @samp{.htm} and @samp{.html} files are always downloaded regardless of
2218 accept/reject rules, they should be removed @emph{after} being
2219 downloaded and scanned for links, if they did match the accept/reject
2220 lists. However, this can lead to unexpected results, since the local
2221 filenames can differ from the original URL filenames in the following
2222 ways, all of which can change whether an accept/reject rule matches:
2226 If the local file already exists and @samp{--no-directories} was
2227 specified, a numeric suffix will be appended to the original name.
2229 If @samp{--html-extension} was specified, the local filename will have
2230 @samp{.html} appended to it. If Wget is invoked with @samp{-E -A.php},
2231 a filename such as @samp{index.php} will match be accepted, but upon
2232 download will be named @samp{index.php.html}, which no longer matches,
2233 and so the file will be deleted.
2235 Query strings do not contribute to URL matching, but are included in
2236 local filenames, and so @emph{do} contribute to filename matching.
2240 This behavior, too, is considered less-than-desirable, and may change
2241 in a future version of Wget.
2243 @node Directory-Based Limits, Relative Links, Types of Files, Following Links
2244 @section Directory-Based Limits
2246 @cindex directory limits
2248 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
2249 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
2250 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
2251 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
2252 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
2253 @file{/dev} directories.
2255 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
2256 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
2257 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
2259 @cindex directories, include
2260 @cindex include directories
2261 @cindex accept directories
2264 @itemx --include @var{list}
2265 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
2266 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
2267 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
2268 directories are absolute paths.
2270 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
2271 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
2272 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
2275 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
2278 @cindex directories, exclude
2279 @cindex exclude directories
2280 @cindex reject directories
2282 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
2283 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
2284 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
2285 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
2286 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
2287 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
2289 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
2290 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
2291 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
2292 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
2297 @itemx no_parent = on
2298 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
2299 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
2300 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
2301 parent directory/directories.
2303 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
2304 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
2305 Supposing you issue Wget with:
2308 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
2311 You may rest assured that none of the references to
2312 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
2313 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
2314 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
2315 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
2316 intelligent fashion.
2318 @strong{Note} that, for HTTP (and HTTPS), the trailing slash is very
2319 important to @samp{--no-parent}. HTTP has no concept of a ``directory''---Wget
2320 relies on you to indicate what's a directory and what isn't. In
2321 @samp{http://foo/bar/}, Wget will consider @samp{bar} to be a
2322 directory, while in @samp{http://foo/bar} (no trailing slash),
2323 @samp{bar} will be considered a filename (so @samp{--no-parent} would be
2324 meaningless, as its parent is @samp{/}).
2327 @node Relative Links, FTP Links, Directory-Based Limits, Following Links
2328 @section Relative Links
2329 @cindex relative links
2331 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2332 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2333 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2337 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2338 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2341 These links are not relative:
2345 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2346 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2349 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2350 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2351 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2353 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2356 @node FTP Links, , Relative Links, Following Links
2357 @section Following FTP Links
2358 @cindex following ftp links
2360 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2361 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2362 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2365 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2366 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2367 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2368 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2369 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2370 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2371 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2373 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2374 retrieved recursively further.
2376 @node Time-Stamping, Startup File, Following Links, Top
2377 @chapter Time-Stamping
2378 @cindex time-stamping
2379 @cindex timestamping
2380 @cindex updating the archives
2381 @cindex incremental updating
2383 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2384 Internet is updating your archives.
2386 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2387 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2388 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2389 offer the option of incremental updating.
2391 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2392 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2393 the place of the old ones.
2395 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2399 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2402 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2403 recently than the local file.
2406 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2407 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2408 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2410 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2411 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2412 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2413 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2414 does, and the remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
2416 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2417 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2421 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2422 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2423 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2426 @node Time-Stamping Usage, HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping, Time-Stamping
2427 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2428 @cindex time-stamping usage
2429 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2431 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2432 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2435 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2438 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2439 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2440 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2441 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2443 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2444 changed, and download it if it has.
2447 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2450 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2451 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2452 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2453 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2455 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2458 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2461 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2462 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2464 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2465 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2466 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2467 since the last download.
2469 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2470 command like the following, weekly:
2473 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2476 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2477 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2478 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2479 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2480 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2482 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, FTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping Usage, Time-Stamping
2483 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2484 @cindex http time-stamping
2486 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2487 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2488 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2489 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2490 retrieved unconditionally.
2492 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2493 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2494 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2497 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2498 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2499 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2500 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2501 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2502 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2505 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2506 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2507 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2508 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2509 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2511 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2512 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2514 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals, , HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping
2515 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2516 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2518 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2519 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2522 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2523 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2524 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2525 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2526 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2527 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2528 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2529 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2531 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2532 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2533 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2534 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2535 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2536 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2538 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2539 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2540 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2541 Wget may support this command in the future.
2543 @node Startup File, Examples, Time-Stamping, Top
2544 @chapter Startup File
2545 @cindex startup file
2551 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2552 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2553 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2554 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2556 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2557 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2558 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2559 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2561 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2565 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2566 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2567 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2568 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2571 @node Wgetrc Location, Wgetrc Syntax, Startup File, Startup File
2572 @section Wgetrc Location
2573 @cindex wgetrc location
2574 @cindex location of wgetrc
2576 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2577 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2578 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2579 from there, if it exists.
2581 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2582 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2583 further attempts will be made.
2585 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2587 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2588 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2589 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2590 Fascist admins, away!
2592 @node Wgetrc Syntax, Wgetrc Commands, Wgetrc Location, Startup File
2593 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2594 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2595 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2597 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2603 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2604 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2606 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2607 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2608 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2611 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2612 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2613 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2619 @node Wgetrc Commands, Sample Wgetrc, Wgetrc Syntax, Startup File
2620 @section Wgetrc Commands
2621 @cindex wgetrc commands
2623 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2624 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2625 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}.
2627 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2628 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2629 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2630 values can be any non-empty string.
2632 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2633 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2634 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2637 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2638 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2640 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2641 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2643 @item background = on/off
2644 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2647 @item backup_converted = on/off
2648 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2649 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2651 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2652 @c #### Document me!
2654 @item base = @var{string}
2655 Consider relative @sc{url}s in @sc{url} input files forced to be
2656 interpreted as @sc{html} as being relative to @var{string}---the same as
2657 @samp{--base=@var{string}}.
2659 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2660 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address=@var{address}}.
2662 @item ca_certificate = @var{file}
2663 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{file}. The same
2664 as @samp{--ca-certificate=@var{file}}.
2666 @item ca_directory = @var{directory}
2667 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2668 @samp{--ca-directory=@var{directory}}.
2670 @item cache = on/off
2671 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2674 @item certificate = @var{file}
2675 Set the client certificate file name to @var{file}. The same as
2676 @samp{--certificate=@var{file}}.
2678 @item certificate_type = @var{string}
2679 Specify the type of the client certificate, legal values being
2680 @samp{PEM} (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2681 @samp{--certificate-type=@var{string}}.
2683 @item check_certificate = on/off
2684 If this is set to off, the server certificate is not checked against
2685 the specified client authorities. The default is ``on''. The same as
2686 @samp{--check-certificate}.
2688 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2689 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2691 @item content_disposition = on/off
2692 Turn on recognition of the (non-standard) @samp{Content-Disposition}
2693 HTTP header---if set to @samp{on}, the same as @samp{--content-disposition}.
2695 @item continue = on/off
2696 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2697 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2699 @item convert_links = on/off
2700 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2702 @item cookies = on/off
2703 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2705 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2706 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components. Equivalent to
2707 @samp{--cut-dirs=@var{n}}.
2709 @item debug = on/off
2710 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2712 @item default_page = @var{string}
2713 Default page name---the same as @samp{--default-page=@var{string}}.
2715 @item delete_after = on/off
2716 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2718 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2719 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P @var{string}}.
2721 @item dirstruct = on/off
2722 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2725 @item dns_cache = on/off
2726 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2727 option is normally used to turn it off and is equivalent to
2728 @samp{--no-dns-cache}.
2730 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2731 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2733 @item domains = @var{string}
2734 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2736 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2737 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2738 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2739 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2740 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2741 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2742 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2744 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2745 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2747 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2748 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2749 the retrieval (50 by default).
2751 @item egd_file = @var{file}
2752 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2753 @samp{--egd-file=@var{file}}.
2755 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2756 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2757 download---the same as @samp{-X @var{string}} (@pxref{Directory-Based
2760 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2761 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains=@var{string}} (@pxref{Spanning
2764 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2765 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2766 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2768 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2769 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval,
2770 just like @samp{--follow-tags=@var{string}}.
2772 @item force_html = on/off
2773 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2774 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2776 @item ftp_password = @var{string}
2777 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2778 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2779 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2781 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2783 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2784 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2787 @item ftp_user = @var{string}
2788 Set @sc{ftp} user to @var{string}.
2790 This command used to be named @code{login} prior to Wget 1.10.
2793 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2795 @item header = @var{string}
2796 Define a header for HTTP downloads, like using
2797 @samp{--header=@var{string}}.
2799 @item html_extension = on/off
2800 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2801 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files without it, or a @samp{.css}
2802 extension to @samp{text/css} files without it, like @samp{-E}.
2804 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2805 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). Turning it
2806 off is equivalent to @samp{--no-http-keep-alive}.
2808 @item http_password = @var{string}
2809 Set @sc{http} password, equivalent to
2810 @samp{--http-password=@var{string}}.
2812 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2813 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2816 @item http_user = @var{string}
2817 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}, equivalent to
2818 @samp{--http-user=@var{string}}.
2820 @item https_proxy = @var{string}
2821 Use @var{string} as @sc{https} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2824 @item ignore_case = on/off
2825 When set to on, match files and directories case insensitively; the
2826 same as @samp{--ignore-case}.
2828 @item ignore_length = on/off
2829 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2830 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2832 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2833 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, like
2834 @samp{--ignore-tags=@var{string}}.
2836 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2837 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2838 downloading---the same as @samp{-I @var{string}}.
2840 @item inet4_only = on/off
2841 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2842 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2843 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2844 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2846 @item inet6_only = on/off
2847 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2848 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2851 @item input = @var{file}
2852 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i @var{file}}.
2854 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2855 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
2856 The same as @samp{--limit-rate=@var{rate}}.
2858 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
2859 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies @var{file}}.
2861 @item logfile = @var{file}
2862 Set logfile to @var{file}, the same as @samp{-o @var{file}}.
2864 @item max_redirect = @var{number}
2865 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
2866 See @samp{--max-redirect=@var{number}}.
2868 @item mirror = on/off
2869 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
2871 @item netrc = on/off
2872 Turn reading netrc on or off.
2874 @item no_clobber = on/off
2877 @item no_parent = on/off
2878 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
2879 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2881 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
2882 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
2883 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
2885 @item output_document = @var{file}
2886 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O @var{file}}.
2888 @item page_requisites = on/off
2889 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
2890 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
2892 @item passive_ftp = on/off
2893 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
2894 @samp{--passive-ftp} option.
2896 @itemx password = @var{string}
2897 Specify password @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
2898 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_password} and
2899 @samp{http_password} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
2901 @item post_data = @var{string}
2902 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
2903 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data=@var{string}}.
2905 @item post_file = @var{file}
2906 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
2907 @var{file} in the request body. The same as
2908 @samp{--post-file=@var{file}}.
2910 @item prefer_family = none/IPv4/IPv6
2911 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
2912 with specified address family first. The address order returned by
2913 DNS is used without change by default. The same as @samp{--prefer-family},
2914 which see for a detailed discussion of why this is useful.
2916 @item private_key = @var{file}
2917 Set the private key file to @var{file}. The same as
2918 @samp{--private-key=@var{file}}.
2920 @item private_key_type = @var{string}
2921 Specify the type of the private key, legal values being @samp{PEM}
2922 (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2923 @samp{--private-type=@var{string}}.
2925 @item progress = @var{string}
2926 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are @samp{dot}
2927 and @samp{bar}. Equivalent to @samp{--progress=@var{string}}.
2929 @item protocol_directories = on/off
2930 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
2931 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
2933 @item proxy_password = @var{string}
2934 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like
2935 @samp{--proxy-password=@var{string}}.
2937 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
2938 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like
2939 @samp{--proxy-user=@var{string}}.
2941 @item quiet = on/off
2942 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
2944 @item quota = @var{quota}
2945 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
2946 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
2947 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
2948 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
2949 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
2950 to 5 megabytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
2953 @item random_file = @var{file}
2954 Use @var{file} as a source of randomness on systems lacking
2957 @item random_wait = on/off
2958 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
2959 @samp{--random-wait}.
2961 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
2962 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as
2963 @samp{--read-timeout=@var{n}}.
2965 @item reclevel = @var{n}
2966 Recursion level (depth)---the same as @samp{-l @var{n}}.
2968 @item recursive = on/off
2969 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
2971 @item referer = @var{string}
2972 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like
2973 @samp{--referer=@var{string}}. (Note that it was the folks who wrote
2974 the @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of ``referrer'' wrong.)
2976 @item relative_only = on/off
2977 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
2980 @item remove_listing = on/off
2981 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
2982 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
2984 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
2985 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
2986 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
2988 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
2989 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
2990 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
2992 @item retry_connrefused = on/off
2993 When set to on, consider ``connection refused'' a transient
2994 error---the same as @samp{--retry-connrefused}.
2996 @item robots = on/off
2997 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
2998 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
2999 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
3000 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
3003 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
3004 Save cookies to @var{file}. The same as @samp{--save-cookies
3007 @item save_headers = on/off
3008 Same as @samp{--save-headers}.
3010 @item secure_protocol = @var{string}
3011 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto}
3012 (the default), @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. The same
3013 as @samp{--secure-protocol=@var{string}}.
3015 @item server_response = on/off
3016 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
3017 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
3019 @item span_hosts = on/off
3022 @item spider = on/off
3023 Same as @samp{--spider}.
3025 @item strict_comments = on/off
3026 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
3028 @item timeout = @var{n}
3029 Set all applicable timeout values to @var{n}, the same as @samp{-T
3032 @item timestamping = on/off
3033 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
3035 @item tries = @var{n}
3036 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t @var{n}}.
3038 @item use_proxy = on/off
3039 When set to off, don't use proxy even when proxy-related environment
3040 variables are set. In that case it is the same as using
3043 @item user = @var{string}
3044 Specify username @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
3045 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_user} and
3046 @samp{http_user} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
3048 @item user_agent = @var{string}
3049 User agent identification sent to the HTTP Server---the same as
3050 @samp{--user-agent=@var{string}}.
3052 @item verbose = on/off
3053 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
3055 @item wait = @var{n}
3056 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w
3059 @item wait_retry = @var{n}
3060 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
3061 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry=@var{n}}. Note that this is
3062 turned on by default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
3065 @node Sample Wgetrc, , Wgetrc Commands, Startup File
3066 @section Sample Wgetrc
3067 @cindex sample wgetrc
3069 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
3070 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
3071 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
3072 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
3074 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
3075 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
3079 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
3082 @node Examples, Various, Startup File, Top
3086 @c man begin EXAMPLES
3087 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
3091 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
3092 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
3093 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
3096 @node Simple Usage, Advanced Usage, Examples, Examples
3097 @section Simple Usage
3101 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
3104 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
3108 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
3109 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
3110 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
3111 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
3112 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
3113 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
3116 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
3120 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
3121 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
3122 shall use @samp{-t}.
3125 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
3128 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
3129 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
3132 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
3136 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
3140 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
3141 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
3144 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
3149 @node Advanced Usage, Very Advanced Usage, Simple Usage, Examples
3150 @section Advanced Usage
3154 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
3161 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
3165 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
3166 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
3167 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
3170 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3174 The same as the above, but convert the links in the downloaded files to
3175 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
3178 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3182 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
3183 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
3184 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
3185 references the downloaded links.
3188 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3191 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
3192 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
3193 depending on where they were on the remote server.
3196 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
3197 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
3198 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
3199 subdirectory of the current directory.
3202 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
3203 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3207 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
3211 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
3215 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
3218 wget --save-headers http://www.lycos.com/
3223 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
3227 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
3231 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
3232 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
3233 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
3237 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
3240 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
3241 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
3242 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
3243 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
3244 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
3248 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
3249 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
3253 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
3257 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
3258 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
3261 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
3264 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
3265 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
3268 @cindex redirecting output
3270 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
3274 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
3277 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
3278 documents from remote hotlists:
3281 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
3285 @node Very Advanced Usage, , Advanced Usage, Examples
3286 @section Very Advanced Usage
3291 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
3292 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
3293 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
3294 to recheck a site each Sunday:
3298 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3302 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
3303 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
3304 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
3305 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
3306 would look like this:
3309 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3310 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3314 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
3315 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
3316 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
3317 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
3318 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
3321 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3322 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
3326 Or, with less typing:
3329 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3334 @node Various, Appendices, Examples, Top
3338 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
3341 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers.
3342 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
3343 * Web Site:: GNU Wget's presence on the World Wide Web.
3344 * Mailing Lists:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
3345 * Internet Relay Chat:: Wget's presence on IRC.
3346 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
3347 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
3348 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
3351 @node Proxies, Distribution, Various, Various
3355 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
3356 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
3357 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
3358 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
3359 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
3360 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
3361 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
3362 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
3363 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
3364 using an authorized proxy.
3366 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
3367 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
3368 the following environment variables:
3373 If set, the @code{http_proxy} and @code{https_proxy} variables should
3374 contain the @sc{url}s of the proxies for @sc{http} and @sc{https}
3375 connections respectively.
3378 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
3379 connections. It is quite common that @code{http_proxy} and
3380 @code{ftp_proxy} are set to the same @sc{url}.
3383 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
3384 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
3385 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
3389 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
3390 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3394 @itemx proxy = on/off
3395 This option and the corresponding command may be used to suppress the
3396 use of proxy, even if the appropriate environment variables are set.
3398 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3399 @itemx https_proxy = @var{URL}
3400 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3401 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3402 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3403 specified by the environment.
3406 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3407 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3408 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3409 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3410 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3412 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3413 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3414 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3415 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3419 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3422 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3423 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3424 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_password} to set the proxy
3425 username and password.
3427 @node Distribution, Web Site, Proxies, Various
3428 @section Distribution
3429 @cindex latest version
3431 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3432 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3433 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3434 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3436 @node Web Site, Mailing Lists, Distribution, Various
3440 The official web site for GNU Wget is at
3441 @url{http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/}. However, most useful
3442 information resides at ``The Wget Wgiki'',
3443 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/}.
3445 @node Mailing Lists, Internet Relay Chat, Web Site, Various
3446 @section Mailing Lists
3447 @cindex mailing list
3450 @unnumberedsubsec Primary List
3452 The primary mailinglist for discussion, bug-reports, or questions
3453 about GNU Wget is at @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}. To subscribe, send an
3454 email to @email{bug-wget-join@@gnu.org}, or visit
3455 @url{http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-wget}.
3457 You do not need to subscribe to send a message to the list; however,
3458 please note that unsubscribed messages are moderated, and may take a
3459 while before they hit the list---@strong{usually around a day}. If
3460 you want your message to show up immediately, please subscribe to the
3461 list before posting. Archives for the list may be found at
3462 @url{http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-wget/}.
3464 An NNTP/Usenettish gateway is also available via
3465 @uref{http://gmane.org/about.php,Gmane}. You can see the Gmane
3467 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}. Note that the
3468 Gmane archives conveniently include messages from both the current
3469 list, and the previous one. Messages also show up in the Gmane
3470 archives sooner than they do at @url{lists.gnu.org}.
3472 @unnumberedsubsec Bug Notices List
3474 Additionally, there is the @email{wget-notify@@addictivecode.org} mailing
3475 list. This is a non-discussion list that receives bug report
3476 notifications from the bug-tracker. To subscribe to this list,
3477 send an email to @email{wget-notify-join@@addictivecode.org},
3478 or visit @url{http://addictivecode.org/mailman/listinfo/wget-notify}.
3480 @unnumberedsubsec Obsolete Lists
3482 Previously, the mailing list @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} was used as the
3483 main discussion list, and another list,
3484 @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} was used for submitting and
3485 discussing patches to GNU Wget.
3487 Messages from @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3490 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3492 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general} (which also
3493 continues to archive the current list, @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}).
3496 Messages from @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3499 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3502 @node Internet Relay Chat, Reporting Bugs, Mailing Lists, Various
3503 @section Internet Relay Chat
3504 @cindex Internet Relay Chat
3508 In addition to the mailinglists, we also have a support channel set up
3509 via IRC at @code{irc.freenode.org}, @code{#wget}. Come check it out!
3511 @node Reporting Bugs, Portability, Internet Relay Chat, Various
3512 @section Reporting Bugs
3514 @cindex reporting bugs
3518 You are welcome to submit bug reports via the GNU Wget bug tracker (see
3519 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/BugTracker}).
3521 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3526 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3527 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3528 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3529 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug, but you might want to
3530 double-check the documentation and the mailing lists (@pxref{Mailing
3534 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3535 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 --no-proxy
3536 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3537 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3538 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3539 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3541 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3542 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3543 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3544 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3545 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3549 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3550 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3551 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3552 with debug support on.
3554 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3555 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3556 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3557 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3558 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3559 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3560 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3563 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3564 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3565 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3570 @node Portability, Signals, Reporting Bugs, Various
3571 @section Portability
3573 @cindex operating systems
3575 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3576 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3577 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3578 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3580 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds of
3581 Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, Mac OS X, OSF
3582 (aka Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some
3583 of those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3584 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3585 system, we would like to know about it.
3587 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3588 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3589 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3590 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3591 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3592 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3593 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3594 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3595 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3596 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3597 Windows-related features might look at them.
3599 Support for building on MS-DOS via DJGPP has been contributed by Gisle
3600 Vanem; a port to VMS is maintained by Steven Schweda, and is available
3601 at @url{http://antinode.org/}.
3603 @node Signals, , Portability, Various
3605 @cindex signal handling
3608 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3609 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3610 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3611 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3612 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3615 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3618 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3621 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3622 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3624 @node Appendices, Copying this manual, Various, Top
3627 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3630 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3631 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3632 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3635 @node Robot Exclusion, Security Considerations, Appendices, Appendices
3636 @section Robot Exclusion
3637 @cindex robot exclusion
3639 @cindex server maintenance
3641 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3642 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3643 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3645 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3646 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3647 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3648 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3649 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3650 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3651 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3652 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3653 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3654 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3655 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3656 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3658 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3659 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3660 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3661 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3662 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3663 they will permit access.
3665 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3666 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3667 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3668 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3669 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3670 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3673 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3674 can download large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3675 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3676 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3679 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3682 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3683 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3684 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3685 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3688 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3689 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3690 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3691 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3692 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3693 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3694 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3695 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3697 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3699 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3700 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3701 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3705 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3708 This is explained in some detail at
3709 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3710 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3713 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3714 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3715 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3716 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3718 @node Security Considerations, Contributors, Robot Exclusion, Appendices
3719 @section Security Considerations
3722 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3723 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3724 main issues, and some solutions.
3728 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3729 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3730 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3731 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3732 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3735 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3736 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3739 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3740 solution for this at the moment.
3743 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3744 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3745 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3749 @node Contributors, , Security Considerations, Appendices
3750 @section Contributors
3751 @cindex contributors
3754 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3757 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3759 and it is currently maintained by Micah Cowan @email{micah@@cowan.name}.
3761 However, the development of Wget could never have gone as far as it has, were
3762 it not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature proposals,
3763 patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3765 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3768 @item Dan Harkless---contributed a lot of code and documentation of
3769 extremely high quality, as well as the @code{--page-requisites} and
3770 related options. He was the principal maintainer for some time and
3773 @item Ian Abbott---contributed bug fixes, Windows-related fixes, and
3774 provided a prototype implementation of the breadth-first recursive
3775 download. Co-maintained Wget during the 1.8 release cycle.
3778 The dotsrc.org crew, in particular Karsten Thygesen---donated system
3779 resources such as the mailing list, web space, @sc{ftp} space, and
3780 version control repositories, along with a lot of time to make these
3781 actually work. Christian Reiniger was of invaluable help with setting
3785 Heiko Herold---provided high-quality Windows builds and contributed
3786 bug and build reports for many years.
3789 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3792 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3796 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3800 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3801 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3804 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3805 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3809 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3812 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the initial Italian
3817 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3821 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3826 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3829 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3833 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization, Makefile
3834 layout and many other things.
3837 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3841 Mauro Tortonesi---improved IPv6 support, adding support for dual
3842 family systems. Refactored and enhanced FTP IPv6 code. Maintained GNU
3843 Wget from 2004--2007.
3846 Christopher G.@: Lewis---maintenance of the Windows version of GNU WGet.
3849 Gisle Vanem---many helpful patches and improvements, especially for
3850 Windows and MS-DOS support.
3853 Ralf Wildenhues---contributed patches to convert Wget to use Automake as
3854 part of its build process, and various bugfixes.
3857 Steven Schubiger---Many helpful patches, bugfixes and improvements.
3858 Notably, conversion of Wget to use the Gnulib quotes and quoteargs
3859 modules, and the addition of password prompts at the console, via the
3860 Gnulib getpasswd-gnu module.
3863 Ted Mielczarek---donated support for CSS.
3866 People who provided donations for development---including Brian Gough.
3869 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
3870 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
3871 that make maintenance so much fun:
3891 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
3900 Bertrand Demiddelaer,
3901 Alexander Dergachev,
3914 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
3917 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
3941 Madhusudan Hosaagrahara,
3945 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
3964 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
3977 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
3978 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
3979 (Simos KSenitellis),
3988 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
3994 Alexander V.@: Lukyanov,
4003 Matthew J.@: Mellon,
4038 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
4040 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}guez,
4043 Juan Jose Rodriguez,
4045 Maciej W.@: Rozycki,
4052 Steven M.@: Schweda,
4063 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
4078 Douglas E.@: Wegscheid,
4080 Joshua David Williams,
4091 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
4092 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
4094 @node Copying this manual, Concept Index, Appendices, Top
4095 @appendix Copying this manual
4098 * GNU Free Documentation License:: Licnse for copying this manual.
4101 @node GNU Free Documentation License, , Copying this manual, Copying this manual
4102 @appendixsec GNU Free Documentation License
4103 @cindex FDL, GNU Free Documentation License
4108 @node Concept Index, , Copying this manual, Top
4109 @unnumbered Concept Index