1 \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
7 @settitle GNU Wget @value{VERSION} Manual
8 @c Disable the monstrous rectangles beside overfull hbox-es.
10 @c Use `odd' to print double-sided.
15 @c Remove this if you don't use A4 paper.
19 @c Title for man page. The weird way texi2pod.pl is written requires
20 @c the preceding @set.
22 @c man title Wget The non-interactive network downloader.
24 @dircategory Network Applications
26 * Wget: (wget). The non-interactive network downloader.
30 This file documents the the GNU Wget utility for downloading network
33 @c man begin COPYRIGHT
34 Copyright @copyright{} 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
35 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.
42 Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the
43 results, provided the printed document carries a copying permission
44 notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
45 (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
47 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
48 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
49 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
50 Invariant Sections being ``GNU General Public License'' and ``GNU Free
51 Documentation License'', with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
52 Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section
53 entitled ``GNU Free 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 the developers
65 Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
68 GNU Info entry for @file{wget}.
73 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
74 Copyright @copyright{} 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005,
75 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
77 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
78 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
79 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
80 Invariant Sections being ``GNU General Public License'' and ``GNU Free
81 Documentation License'', with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
82 Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section
83 entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
88 @top Wget @value{VERSION}
90 This manual documents version @value{VERSION} of GNU Wget, the freely
91 available utility for network downloads.
93 Copyright @copyright{} 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005
94 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
97 * Overview:: Features of Wget.
98 * Invoking:: Wget command-line arguments.
99 * Recursive Download:: Downloading interlinked pages.
100 * Following Links:: The available methods of chasing links.
101 * Time-Stamping:: Mirroring according to time-stamps.
102 * Startup File:: Wget's initialization file.
103 * Examples:: Examples of usage.
104 * Various:: The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.
105 * Appendices:: Some useful references.
106 * Copying:: You may give out copies of Wget and of this manual.
107 * Concept Index:: Topics covered by this manual.
116 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
117 GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from
118 the Web. It supports @sc{http}, @sc{https}, and @sc{ftp} protocols, as
119 well as retrieval through @sc{http} proxies.
122 This chapter is a partial overview of Wget's features.
126 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
127 Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background,
128 while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval
129 and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By
130 contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user's presence,
131 which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
137 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
141 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
142 Wget can follow links in @sc{html} and @sc{xhtml} pages and create local
143 versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of
144 the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ``recursive
145 downloading.'' While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion
146 Standard (@file{/robots.txt}). Wget can be instructed to convert the
147 links in downloaded @sc{html} files to the local files for offline
153 File name wildcard matching and recursive mirroring of directories are
154 available when retrieving via @sc{ftp}. Wget can read the time-stamp
155 information given by both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} servers, and store it
156 locally. Thus Wget can see if the remote file has changed since last
157 retrieval, and automatically retrieve the new version if it has. This
158 makes Wget suitable for mirroring of @sc{ftp} sites, as well as home
164 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
168 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
169 Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network
170 connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will
171 keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server
172 supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the
173 download from where it left off.
178 Wget supports proxy servers, which can lighten the network load, speed
179 up retrieval and provide access behind firewalls. However, if you are
180 behind a firewall that requires that you use a socks style gateway,
181 you can get the socks library and build Wget with support for socks.
182 Wget uses the passive @sc{ftp} downloading by default, active @sc{ftp}
187 Wget supports IP version 6, the next generation of IP. IPv6 is
188 autodetected at compile-time, and can be disabled at either build or
189 run time. Binaries built with IPv6 support work well in both
190 IPv4-only and dual family environments.
194 Built-in features offer mechanisms to tune which links you wish to follow
195 (@pxref{Following Links}).
199 The progress of individual downloads is traced using a progress gauge.
200 Interactive downloads are tracked using a ``thermometer''-style gauge,
201 whereas non-interactive ones are traced with dots, each dot
202 representing a fixed amount of data received (1KB by default). Either
203 gauge can be customized to your preferences.
207 Most of the features are fully configurable, either through command line
208 options, or via the initialization file @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup
209 File}). Wget allows you to define @dfn{global} startup files
210 (@file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default) for site settings.
215 @item /usr/local/etc/wgetrc
216 Default location of the @dfn{global} startup file.
226 Finally, GNU Wget is free software. This means that everyone may use
227 it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
228 Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation
239 By default, Wget is very simple to invoke. The basic syntax is:
242 @c man begin SYNOPSIS
243 wget [@var{option}]@dots{} [@var{URL}]@dots{}
247 Wget will simply download all the @sc{url}s specified on the command
248 line. @var{URL} is a @dfn{Uniform Resource Locator}, as defined below.
250 However, you may wish to change some of the default parameters of
251 Wget. You can do it two ways: permanently, adding the appropriate
252 command to @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup File}), or specifying it on
258 * Basic Startup Options::
259 * Logging and Input File Options::
261 * Directory Options::
263 * HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options::
265 * Recursive Retrieval Options::
266 * Recursive Accept/Reject Options::
274 @dfn{URL} is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
275 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
276 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the @sc{url} syntax as per
277 @sc{rfc1738}. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
281 http://host[:port]/directory/file
282 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
285 You can also encode your username and password within a @sc{url}:
288 ftp://user:password@@host/path
289 http://user:password@@host/path
292 Either @var{user} or @var{password}, or both, may be left out. If you
293 leave out either the @sc{http} username or password, no authentication
294 will be sent. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} username, @samp{anonymous}
295 will be used. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} password, your email
296 address will be supplied as a default password.@footnote{If you have a
297 @file{.netrc} file in your home directory, password will also be
300 @strong{Important Note}: if you specify a password-containing @sc{url}
301 on the command line, the username and password will be plainly visible
302 to all users on the system, by way of @code{ps}. On multi-user systems,
303 this is a big security risk. To work around it, use @code{wget -i -}
304 and feed the @sc{url}s to Wget's standard input, each on a separate
305 line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
307 You can encode unsafe characters in a @sc{url} as @samp{%xy}, @code{xy}
308 being the hexadecimal representation of the character's @sc{ascii}
309 value. Some common unsafe characters include @samp{%} (quoted as
310 @samp{%25}), @samp{:} (quoted as @samp{%3A}), and @samp{@@} (quoted as
311 @samp{%40}). Refer to @sc{rfc1738} for a comprehensive list of unsafe
314 Wget also supports the @code{type} feature for @sc{ftp} @sc{url}s. By
315 default, @sc{ftp} documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type
316 @samp{i}), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another
317 useful mode is the @samp{a} (@dfn{ASCII}) mode, which converts the line
318 delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful
319 for text files. Here is an example:
322 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
325 Two alternative variants of @sc{url} specification are also supported,
326 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
328 @sc{ftp}-only syntax (supported by @code{NcFTP}):
333 @sc{http}-only syntax (introduced by @code{Netscape}):
338 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
339 supported in the future.
341 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
342 not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
343 with your favorite browser, like @code{Lynx} or @code{Netscape}.
346 @section Option Syntax
347 @cindex option syntax
348 @cindex syntax of options
350 Since Wget uses GNU getopts to process its arguments, every option has a
351 short form and a long form. Long options are more convenient to
352 remember, but take time to type. You may freely mix different option
353 styles, or specify options after the command-line arguments. Thus you
357 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ -o log
360 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may
361 be omitted. Instead @samp{-o log} you can write @samp{-olog}.
363 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
370 This is a complete equivalent of:
373 wget -d -r -c @var{URL}
376 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
377 terminate them with @samp{--}. So the following will try to download
378 @sc{url} @samp{-x}, reporting failure to @file{log}:
384 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
385 that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be useful to
386 clear the @file{.wgetrc} settings. For instance, if your @file{.wgetrc}
387 sets @code{exclude_directories} to @file{/cgi-bin}, the following
388 example will first reset it, and then set it to exclude @file{/~nobody}
389 and @file{/~somebody}. You can also clear the lists in @file{.wgetrc}
390 (@pxref{Wgetrc Syntax}).
393 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
398 @node Basic Startup Options
399 @section Basic Startup Options
404 Display the version of Wget.
408 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
412 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
413 specified via the @samp{-o}, output is redirected to @file{wget-log}.
415 @cindex execute wgetrc command
416 @item -e @var{command}
417 @itemx --execute @var{command}
418 Execute @var{command} as if it were a part of @file{.wgetrc}
419 (@pxref{Startup File}). A command thus invoked will be executed
420 @emph{after} the commands in @file{.wgetrc}, thus taking precedence over
421 them. If you need to specify more than one wgetrc command, use multiple
422 instances of @samp{-e}.
426 @node Logging and Input File Options
427 @section Logging and Input File Options
432 @item -o @var{logfile}
433 @itemx --output-file=@var{logfile}
434 Log all messages to @var{logfile}. The messages are normally reported
437 @cindex append to log
438 @item -a @var{logfile}
439 @itemx --append-output=@var{logfile}
440 Append to @var{logfile}. This is the same as @samp{-o}, only it appends
441 to @var{logfile} instead of overwriting the old log file. If
442 @var{logfile} does not exist, a new file is created.
447 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
448 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
449 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in
450 which case @samp{-d} will not work. Please note that compiling with
451 debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will
452 @emph{not} print any debug info unless requested with @samp{-d}.
453 @xref{Reporting Bugs}, for more information on how to use @samp{-d} for
459 Turn off Wget's output.
464 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output
469 Non-verbose output---turn off verbose without being completely quiet
470 (use @samp{-q} for that), which means that error messages and basic
471 information still get printed.
475 @itemx --input-file=@var{file}
476 Read @sc{url}s from @var{file}, in which case no @sc{url}s need to be on
477 the command line. If there are @sc{url}s both on the command line and
478 in an input file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to
479 be retrieved. The @var{file} need not be an @sc{html} document (but no
480 harm if it is)---it is enough if the @sc{url}s are just listed
483 However, if you specify @samp{--force-html}, the document will be
484 regarded as @samp{html}. In that case you may have problems with
485 relative links, which you can solve either by adding @code{<base
486 href="@var{url}">} to the documents or by specifying
487 @samp{--base=@var{url}} on the command line.
492 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an @sc{html}
493 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
494 @sc{html} files on your local disk, by adding @code{<base
495 href="@var{url}">} to @sc{html}, or using the @samp{--base} command-line
498 @cindex base for relative links in input file
500 @itemx --base=@var{URL}
501 When used in conjunction with @samp{-F}, prepends @var{URL} to relative
502 links in the file specified by @samp{-i}.
505 @node Download Options
506 @section Download Options
509 @cindex bind() address
510 @cindex client IP address
511 @cindex IP address, client
512 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
513 When making client TCP/IP connections, @code{bind()} to @var{ADDRESS} on
514 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
515 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
520 @cindex number of retries
521 @item -t @var{number}
522 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
523 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
524 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
525 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
526 which are not retried.
529 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
530 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all will
531 be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @var{file}
532 already exists, it will be overwritten. If the @var{file} is @samp{-},
533 the documents will be written to standard output (disabling @samp{-k}).
535 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only well-defined for downloading
538 @cindex clobbering, file
539 @cindex downloading multiple times
543 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
544 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
545 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
546 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
548 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, or @samp{-r},
549 downloading the same file in the same directory will result in the
550 original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy being
551 named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet again, the
552 third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on. When
553 @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will
554 refuse to download newer copies of @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore,
555 ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a misnomer in this mode---it's not
556 clobbering that's prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
557 preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version saving that's
560 When running Wget with @samp{-r}, but without @samp{-N} or @samp{-nc},
561 re-downloading a file will result in the new copy simply overwriting the
562 old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent this behavior, instead causing the
563 original version to be preserved and any newer copies on the server to
566 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r}, the
567 decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy of a file depends
568 on the local and remote timestamp and size of the file
569 (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the same
572 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
573 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
574 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
576 @cindex continue retrieval
577 @cindex incomplete downloads
578 @cindex resume download
581 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
582 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
583 by another program. For instance:
586 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
589 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
590 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
591 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
592 length of the local file.
594 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
595 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
596 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
597 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
598 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
600 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
601 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
604 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
605 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
606 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
607 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
608 start from scratch, remove the file.
610 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
611 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
612 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
613 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
614 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
615 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
617 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
618 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
619 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
620 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
621 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
622 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
623 collection or log file.
625 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
626 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
627 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
628 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
629 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
630 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
632 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
633 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
634 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
635 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
637 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
638 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
640 @cindex progress indicator
642 @item --progress=@var{type}
643 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
644 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
646 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
647 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
648 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
651 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
652 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
653 fixed amount of downloaded data.
655 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
656 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
657 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
658 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
659 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
660 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
661 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
662 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
663 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
665 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
666 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
667 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
668 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
669 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
672 @itemx --timestamping
673 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
675 @cindex server response, print
677 @itemx --server-response
678 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
681 @cindex Wget as spider
684 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
685 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
686 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
689 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
692 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
693 functionality of real web spiders.
697 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
698 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
699 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
700 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
702 Whenever Wget connects to or reads from a remote host, it checks for a
703 timeout and aborts the operation if the time expires. This prevents
704 anomalous occurrences such as hanging reads or infinite connects. The
705 only timeout enabled by default is a 900-second timeout for reading.
706 Setting timeout to 0 disables checking for timeouts.
708 Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to set any of the
709 timeout-related options.
713 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
714 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
715 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
716 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
719 @cindex connect timeout
720 @cindex timeout, connect
721 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
722 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
723 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
724 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
727 @cindex timeout, read
728 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
729 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. Reads that
730 take longer will fail. The default value for read timeout is 900
733 @cindex bandwidth, limit
735 @cindex limit bandwidth
736 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
737 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
738 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
739 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
740 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This kind of thing is useful when,
741 for whatever reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available
744 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
745 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
746 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
747 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
748 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
749 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
753 @item -w @var{seconds}
754 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
755 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
756 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
757 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
758 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
759 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
761 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
762 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
763 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry.
765 @cindex retries, waiting between
766 @cindex waiting between retries
767 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
768 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
769 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
770 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
771 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
772 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify. Therefore,
773 a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55
776 Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
782 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
783 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
784 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
785 to vary between 0 and 2 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
786 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
787 presence from such analysis.
789 A recent article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
790 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
791 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
792 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
795 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
796 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
801 @itemx --proxy=on/off
802 Turn proxy support on or off. The proxy is on by default if the
803 appropriate environment variable is defined.
805 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
809 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
810 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
811 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
812 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
814 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
815 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
816 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
817 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
818 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
819 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
820 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
822 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
825 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
827 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
828 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
829 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
830 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
833 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
834 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
835 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
836 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
837 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
838 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
839 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
842 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
845 @cindex file names, restrict
846 @cindex Windows file names
847 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{mode}
848 Change which characters found in remote URLs may show up in local file
849 names generated from those URLs. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
850 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
851 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
854 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid as part of
855 file names on your operating system, as well as control characters that
856 are typically unprintable. This option is useful for changing these
857 defaults, either because you are downloading to a non-native partition,
858 or because you want to disable escaping of the control characters.
860 When mode is set to ``unix'', Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
861 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
862 default on Unix-like OS'es.
864 When mode is set to ``windows'', Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
865 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
866 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
867 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
868 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
869 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
870 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
871 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
872 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
873 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
875 If you append @samp{,nocontrol} to the mode, as in
876 @samp{unix,nocontrol}, escaping of the control characters is also
877 switched off. You can use @samp{--restrict-file-names=nocontrol} to
878 turn off escaping of control characters without affecting the choice of
879 the OS to use as file name restriction mode.
886 Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With @samp{--inet4-only}
887 or @samp{-4}, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA
888 records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in
889 URLs. Conversely, with @samp{--inet6-only} or @samp{-6}, Wget will
890 only connect to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
892 Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware
893 Wget will use the address family specified by the host's DNS record.
894 If the DNS specifies both an A record and an AAAA record, Wget will
895 try them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to.
897 These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or
898 IPv6 address families on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging
899 or to deal with broken network configuration. Only one of
900 @samp{--inet6-only} and @samp{--inet4-only} may be specified in the
901 same command. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without
904 Note: the current implementation of the @samp{-6} switch allows IPv4
905 addresses mapped into IPv6 addresses to be connected to. This usage
906 is not intended to be condoned, and it might be removed in a later
910 @node Directory Options
911 @section Directory Options
915 @itemx --no-directories
916 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
917 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
918 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
919 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
922 @itemx --force-directories
923 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
924 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
925 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
926 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
929 @itemx --no-host-directories
930 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
931 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
932 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
935 @item --protocol-directories
936 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
937 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
938 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
940 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
941 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
942 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
945 @cindex cut directories
946 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
947 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
948 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
951 Take, for example, the directory at
952 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
953 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
954 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
955 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
956 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
957 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
958 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
962 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
964 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
965 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
967 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
972 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
973 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
974 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
975 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
976 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
978 @cindex directory prefix
979 @item -P @var{prefix}
980 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
981 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
982 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
983 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
988 @section HTTP Options
991 @cindex .html extension
993 @itemx --html-extension
994 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
995 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
996 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
997 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
998 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
999 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1000 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1001 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1002 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1004 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1005 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1006 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1007 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1008 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1009 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1010 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1011 Retrieval Options}).
1014 @cindex http password
1015 @cindex authentication
1016 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1017 @itemx --http-passwd=@var{password}
1018 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1019 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1020 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure) or the
1021 @code{digest} authentication scheme.
1023 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1024 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1025 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1026 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1027 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1028 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1029 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1031 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1037 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1038 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1039 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1040 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1041 documents on proxy servers.
1043 Caching is allowed by default.
1047 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1048 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1049 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1050 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1051 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1052 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1053 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1055 @cindex loading cookies
1056 @cindex cookies, loading
1057 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1058 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1059 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1060 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1062 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1063 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1064 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1065 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1066 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1067 proves your identity.
1069 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1070 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1071 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1072 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1073 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1074 cookie files in different locations:
1078 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1080 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1081 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1082 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1083 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1084 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1086 @item Internet Explorer.
1087 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1088 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1089 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1091 @item Other browsers.
1092 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1093 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1094 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1097 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1098 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1099 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1100 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1101 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1104 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1107 @cindex saving cookies
1108 @cindex cookies, saving
1109 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1110 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1111 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1112 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1114 @cindex cookies, session
1115 @cindex session cookies
1116 @item --keep-session-cookies
1118 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1119 cookies. Session cookies are normally not save because they are
1120 supposed to be forgotten when you exit the browser. Saving them is
1121 useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit the home page
1122 before you can access some pages. With this option, multiple Wget runs
1123 are considered a single browser session as far as the site is concerned.
1125 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1126 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1127 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1128 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1129 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1130 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1131 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1133 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1134 @cindex ignore length
1135 @item --ignore-length
1136 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1137 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1138 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1139 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1140 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1143 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1144 if it never existed.
1147 @item --header=@var{additional-header}
1148 Define an @var{additional-header} to be passed to the @sc{http} servers.
1149 Headers must contain a @samp{:} preceded by one or more non-blank
1150 characters, and must not contain newlines.
1152 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1153 @samp{--header} more than once.
1157 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1158 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1159 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1163 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1164 previous user-defined headers.
1167 @cindex proxy password
1168 @cindex proxy authentication
1169 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1170 @itemx --proxy-passwd=@var{password}
1171 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1172 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1173 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1175 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-passwd}
1176 pertain here as well.
1178 @cindex http referer
1179 @cindex referer, http
1180 @item --referer=@var{url}
1181 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1182 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1183 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1184 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1186 @cindex server response, save
1187 @item --save-headers
1188 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1189 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1192 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1193 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1194 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1196 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1197 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1198 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1199 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1200 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1203 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1204 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1205 While conceptually this is not such a bad idea, it has been abused by
1206 servers denying information to clients other than @code{Mozilla} or
1207 Microsoft @code{Internet Explorer}. This option allows you to change
1208 the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget. Use of this option is
1209 discouraged, unless you really know what you are doing.
1212 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1213 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1214 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data
1215 in the request body. @code{--post-data} sends @var{string} as data,
1216 whereas @code{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}. Other than
1217 that, they work in exactly the same way.
1219 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1220 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1221 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1222 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1223 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1224 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1225 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1226 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1227 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1229 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it will
1230 not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because URLs that
1231 process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular page
1232 (although that's technically disallowed), which does not desire or
1233 accept POST. It is not yet clear that this behavior is optimal; if it
1234 doesn't work out, it will be changed.
1236 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1237 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1242 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1243 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1244 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1245 http://server.com/auth.php
1247 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1248 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1249 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1254 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1255 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1258 To support SSL-based HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1259 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1260 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1263 @item --sslcertfile=@var{file}
1264 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1265 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1266 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1269 @cindex SSL certificate
1270 @item --sslcertkey=@var{keyfile}
1271 Read the certificate key from @var{keyfile}.
1273 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1274 @item --sslcadir=@var{directory}
1275 Specifies directory used for certificate authorities (``CA'').
1277 @item --sslcafile=@var{file}
1278 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities.
1280 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1281 @item --sslcerttype=0/1
1282 Specify the type of the client certificate: 0 means @code{PEM}
1283 (default), 1 means @code{ASN1} (@code{DER}).
1285 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1286 @item --sslcheckcert=0/1
1287 If set to 1, check the server certificate against the specified client
1288 authorities. If this is 0 (the default), Wget will break the SSL
1289 handshake if the server certificate is not valid.
1291 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1292 @item --sslprotocol=0-3
1293 Choose the SSL protocol to be used. If 0 is specified (the default),
1294 the OpenSSL library chooses the appropriate protocol automatically.
1295 Specifying 1 forces the use of SSLv2, specifying 2 forces SSLv3, and
1296 specifying 3 forces TLSv1.
1298 In most cases the OpenSSL library is capable of making an intelligent
1299 choice of the protocol, but there have been reports of sites that use
1300 old (and presumably buggy) server libraries with which a protocol has
1301 to be specified manually.
1304 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1305 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1306 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1307 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1308 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1309 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1310 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1312 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1313 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1314 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1315 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1317 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1318 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1319 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1323 @section FTP Options
1326 @cindex password, FTP
1327 @item --ftp-passwd=@var{string}
1328 Set the default FTP password to @var{string}. Without this, or the
1329 corresponding startup option, the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@},
1330 normally used for anonymous FTP.
1332 @cindex .listing files, removing
1333 @item --no-remove-listing
1334 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1335 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1336 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1337 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1338 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1339 you're running is complete).
1341 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1342 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1343 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1344 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1345 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1346 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1347 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1348 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1349 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1351 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1352 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1353 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1354 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1355 will be overwritten.
1357 @cindex globbing, toggle
1359 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1360 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1361 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1365 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1368 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1369 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1372 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1373 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1374 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1375 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1378 @item --no-passive-ftp
1379 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1380 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1381 connection rather than the other way around.
1383 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1384 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1385 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1386 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1387 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1388 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1390 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1391 @item --retr-symlinks
1392 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1393 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1394 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1395 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1396 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1398 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1399 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1400 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1401 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1404 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1405 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1406 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1409 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1410 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1411 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1412 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1413 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1414 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1415 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1416 the load on the server.
1418 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1419 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1420 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1423 @node Recursive Retrieval Options
1424 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1429 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1432 @item -l @var{depth}
1433 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1434 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1435 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1437 @cindex proxy filling
1438 @cindex delete after retrieval
1439 @cindex filling proxy cache
1440 @item --delete-after
1441 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1442 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1443 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1446 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1449 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1452 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1453 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1454 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1455 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1456 created in the first place.
1458 @cindex conversion of links
1459 @cindex link conversion
1461 @itemx --convert-links
1462 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1463 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1464 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1465 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1468 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1472 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1473 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1475 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1476 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1477 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1478 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1481 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1482 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1484 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1485 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1486 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1487 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1490 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1491 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1492 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1493 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1494 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1497 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1498 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1499 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1501 @cindex backing up converted files
1503 @itemx --backup-converted
1504 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1505 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1510 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1511 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1512 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1513 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1515 @cindex page requisites
1516 @cindex required images, downloading
1518 @itemx --page-requisites
1519 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1520 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1521 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1523 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1524 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1525 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1526 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1527 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1530 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1531 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1532 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1533 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1534 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1536 If one executes the command:
1539 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1542 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1543 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1544 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1545 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1546 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1549 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1552 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1553 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1556 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1559 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1560 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1563 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1566 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1567 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1568 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1569 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1570 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1571 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1574 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1577 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1578 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1579 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1580 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1581 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1582 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1585 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1588 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1589 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1590 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1593 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1594 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1595 @item --strict-comments
1596 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1597 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1599 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1600 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1601 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1602 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1603 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1604 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1605 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1607 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1608 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1609 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1610 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1611 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1612 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1613 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1614 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1615 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1617 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1618 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1619 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1620 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1621 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1624 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1625 option to turn it on.
1628 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1629 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1632 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1633 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1634 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1635 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files} for more details).
1637 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1638 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1639 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1640 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1642 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1643 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed.
1644 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1646 @cindex follow FTP links
1648 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1649 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1651 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1652 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1653 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1654 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1655 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1656 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1657 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1659 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1660 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1661 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1662 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
1664 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
1665 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
1668 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1671 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
1672 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
1673 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
1674 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
1675 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
1676 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
1680 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
1681 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1685 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
1686 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
1687 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
1690 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
1691 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
1692 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits} for more details.) Elements
1693 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1696 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
1697 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
1698 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits} for more details.) Elements of
1699 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1703 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
1704 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
1705 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
1706 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
1711 @node Recursive Download
1712 @chapter Recursive Download
1715 @cindex recursive download
1717 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
1718 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
1719 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
1721 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} from
1722 the given @sc{url}, documents, retrieving the files the @sc{html}
1723 document was referring to, through markup like @code{href}, or
1724 @code{src}. If the freshly downloaded file is also of type
1725 @code{text/html} or @code{application/xhtml+xml}, it will be parsed and
1728 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html} content is
1729 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
1730 @sc{html} document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
1731 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
1732 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
1733 until the specified maximum depth.
1735 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
1736 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
1738 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
1739 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
1740 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
1741 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
1742 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
1745 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
1746 the one found on the remote server.
1748 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
1749 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
1750 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
1751 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
1753 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
1754 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
1755 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
1756 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
1757 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
1758 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
1759 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
1761 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
1762 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
1763 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
1764 consume memory and CPU.
1766 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
1767 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
1768 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
1769 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
1770 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
1771 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
1772 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
1775 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
1778 @node Following Links
1779 @chapter Following Links
1781 @cindex following links
1783 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
1784 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
1785 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
1787 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
1788 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
1789 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
1791 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
1792 links it will follow.
1795 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
1796 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
1797 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
1798 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
1799 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
1802 @node Spanning Hosts
1803 @section Spanning Hosts
1804 @cindex spanning hosts
1805 @cindex hosts, spanning
1807 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
1808 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
1809 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
1810 your Wget into a small version of google.
1812 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
1813 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
1814 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
1815 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
1816 pages refer to both interchangeably.
1819 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
1821 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
1822 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
1823 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
1824 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
1825 up much more data than you have intended.
1827 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
1829 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
1830 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
1831 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
1832 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
1833 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
1834 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
1837 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
1840 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
1841 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
1843 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
1845 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
1846 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
1847 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
1848 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
1849 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
1853 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
1859 @node Types of Files
1860 @section Types of Files
1861 @cindex types of files
1863 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
1864 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
1865 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
1866 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
1868 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
1869 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
1872 @cindex accept wildcards
1873 @cindex accept suffixes
1874 @cindex wildcards, accept
1875 @cindex suffixes, accept
1877 @item -A @var{acclist}
1878 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
1879 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
1880 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
1881 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
1882 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
1883 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
1884 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
1886 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
1887 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
1888 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
1889 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
1890 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
1891 a description of how pattern matching works.
1893 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
1894 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
1896 @cindex reject wildcards
1897 @cindex reject suffixes
1898 @cindex wildcards, reject
1899 @cindex suffixes, reject
1900 @item -R @var{rejlist}
1901 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
1902 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
1903 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
1904 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
1905 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
1907 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
1908 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
1909 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
1910 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
1911 expansion by the shell.
1914 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
1915 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
1916 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
1917 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
1919 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
1920 files; Wget must load all the @sc{html}s to know where to go at
1921 all---recursive retrieval would make no sense otherwise.
1923 @node Directory-Based Limits
1924 @section Directory-Based Limits
1926 @cindex directory limits
1928 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
1929 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
1930 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
1931 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
1932 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
1933 @file{/dev} directories.
1935 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
1936 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
1937 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
1939 @cindex directories, include
1940 @cindex include directories
1941 @cindex accept directories
1944 @itemx --include @var{list}
1945 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
1946 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
1947 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
1948 directories are absolute paths.
1950 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
1951 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
1952 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
1955 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
1958 @cindex directories, exclude
1959 @cindex exclude directories
1960 @cindex reject directories
1962 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
1963 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
1964 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
1965 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
1966 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
1967 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
1969 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
1970 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
1971 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
1972 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
1977 @itemx no_parent = on
1978 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
1979 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
1980 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
1981 parent directory/directories.
1983 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
1984 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
1985 Supposing you issue Wget with:
1988 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
1991 You may rest assured that none of the references to
1992 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
1993 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
1994 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
1995 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
1996 intelligent fashion.
1999 @node Relative Links
2000 @section Relative Links
2001 @cindex relative links
2003 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2004 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2005 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2009 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2010 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2013 These links are not relative:
2017 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2018 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2021 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2022 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2023 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2025 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2029 @section Following FTP Links
2030 @cindex following ftp links
2032 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2033 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2034 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2037 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2038 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2039 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2040 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2041 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2042 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2043 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2045 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2046 retrieved recursively further.
2049 @chapter Time-Stamping
2050 @cindex time-stamping
2051 @cindex timestamping
2052 @cindex updating the archives
2053 @cindex incremental updating
2055 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2056 Internet is updating your archives.
2058 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2059 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2060 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2061 offer the option of incremental updating.
2063 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2064 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2065 the place of the old ones.
2067 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2071 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2074 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2075 recently than the local file.
2078 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2079 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2080 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2082 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2083 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2084 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2085 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2086 does, and the remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
2088 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2089 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2093 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2094 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2095 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2098 @node Time-Stamping Usage
2099 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2100 @cindex time-stamping usage
2101 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2103 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2104 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2107 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2110 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2111 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2112 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2113 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2115 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2116 changed, and download it if it has.
2119 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2122 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2123 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2124 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2125 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2127 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2130 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2133 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2134 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2136 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2137 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2138 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2139 since the last download.
2141 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2142 command like the following, weekly:
2145 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2148 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2149 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2150 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2151 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2152 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2154 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2155 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2156 @cindex http time-stamping
2158 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2159 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2160 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2161 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2162 retrieved unconditionally.
2164 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2165 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2166 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2169 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2170 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2171 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2172 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2173 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2174 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2177 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2178 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2179 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2180 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2181 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2183 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2184 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2186 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2187 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2188 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2190 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2191 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2194 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2195 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2196 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2197 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2198 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2199 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2200 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2201 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2203 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2204 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2205 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2206 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2207 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2208 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2210 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2211 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2212 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2213 Wget may support this command in the future.
2216 @chapter Startup File
2217 @cindex startup file
2223 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2224 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2225 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2226 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2228 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2229 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2230 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2231 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2233 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2237 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2238 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2239 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2240 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2243 @node Wgetrc Location
2244 @section Wgetrc Location
2245 @cindex wgetrc location
2246 @cindex location of wgetrc
2248 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2249 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2250 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2251 from there, if it exists.
2253 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2254 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2255 further attempts will be made.
2257 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2259 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2260 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2261 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2262 Fascist admins, away!
2265 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2266 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2267 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2269 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2275 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2276 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2278 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2279 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2280 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2283 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2284 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2285 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2291 @node Wgetrc Commands
2292 @section Wgetrc Commands
2293 @cindex wgetrc commands
2295 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2296 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2297 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}. A fancier kind of
2298 Boolean allowed in some cases is the @dfn{lockable Boolean}, which may
2299 be set to @samp{on}, @samp{off}, @samp{always}, or @samp{never}. If an
2300 option is set to @samp{always} or @samp{never}, that value will be
2301 locked in for the duration of the Wget invocation---command-line options
2304 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2305 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2306 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2307 values can be any non-empty string.
2309 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2310 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2311 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2314 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2315 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2317 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2318 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2320 @item continue = on/off
2321 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2322 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2324 @item background = on/off
2325 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2328 @item backup_converted = on/off
2329 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2330 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2332 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2333 @c #### Document me!
2335 @item base = @var{string}
2336 Consider relative @sc{url}s in @sc{url} input files forced to be
2337 interpreted as @sc{html} as being relative to @var{string}---the same as
2340 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2341 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address} option.
2343 @item cache = on/off
2344 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2347 @item convert_links = on/off
2348 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2350 @item cookies = on/off
2351 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2353 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
2354 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies}.
2356 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
2357 Save cookies to @var{file}. See @samp{--save-cookies}.
2359 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2360 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2362 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2363 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components.
2365 @item debug = on/off
2366 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2368 @item delete_after = on/off
2369 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2371 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2372 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P}.
2374 @item dirstruct = on/off
2375 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2378 @item dns_cache = on/off
2379 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2380 option is normally used to turn it off. Same as @samp{--dns-cache}.
2382 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2383 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2385 @item domains = @var{string}
2386 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2388 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2389 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2390 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2391 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2392 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2393 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2394 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2396 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2397 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2398 the retrieval (50 by default).
2400 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2401 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2403 @item egd_file = @var{string}
2404 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2407 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2408 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2409 download---the same as @samp{-X} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2411 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2412 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2414 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2415 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2416 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2418 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2419 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, just like
2420 @samp{--follow-tags}.
2422 @item force_html = on/off
2423 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2424 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2426 @item ftp_passwd = @var{string}
2427 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2428 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2429 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2431 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2433 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2434 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2438 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2440 @item header = @var{string}
2441 Define an additional header, like @samp{--header}.
2443 @item html_extension = on/off
2444 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2445 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files without it, like
2448 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2449 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). The same as
2450 `--http-keep-alive'.
2452 @item http_passwd = @var{string}
2453 Set @sc{http} password.
2455 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2456 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2459 @item http_user = @var{string}
2460 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}.
2462 @item ignore_length = on/off
2463 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2464 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2466 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2467 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, just like
2468 @samp{--ignore-tags}.
2470 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2471 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2472 downloading---the same as @samp{-I}.
2474 @item inet4_only = on/off
2475 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2476 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2477 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2478 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2480 @item inet6_only = on/off
2481 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2482 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2485 @item input = @var{string}
2486 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i}.
2488 @item kill_longer = on/off
2489 Consider data longer than specified in content-length header as invalid
2490 (and retry getting it). The default behavior is to save as much data
2491 as there is, provided there is more than or equal to the value in
2492 @code{Content-Length}.
2494 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2495 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
2496 The same as @samp{--limit-rate}.
2498 @item logfile = @var{string}
2499 Set logfile---the same as @samp{-o}.
2501 @item login = @var{string}
2502 Your user name on the remote machine, for @sc{ftp}. Defaults to
2505 @item mirror = on/off
2506 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
2508 @item netrc = on/off
2509 Turn reading netrc on or off.
2511 @item noclobber = on/off
2514 @item no_parent = on/off
2515 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
2516 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2518 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
2519 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
2520 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
2522 @item output_document = @var{string}
2523 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O}.
2525 @item page_requisites = on/off
2526 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
2527 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
2529 @item passive_ftp = on/off/always/never
2530 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
2531 @samp{--passive-ftp} option. Some scripts and @samp{.pm} (Perl
2532 module) files download files using @samp{wget --passive-ftp}. If your
2533 firewall does not allow this, you can set @samp{passive_ftp = never}
2534 to override the command-line.
2536 @item post_data = @var{string}
2537 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
2538 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data}.
2540 @item post_file = @var{file}
2541 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
2542 @var{file} in the request body. The same as @samp{--post-file}.
2544 @item progress = @var{string}
2545 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are ``dot'' and
2548 @item protocol_directories = on/off
2549 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
2550 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
2552 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
2553 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like @samp{--proxy-user}.
2555 @item proxy_passwd = @var{string}
2556 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like @samp{--proxy-passwd}.
2558 @item quiet = on/off
2559 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
2561 @item quota = @var{quota}
2562 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
2563 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
2564 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
2565 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
2566 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
2567 to 5 mbytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
2570 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
2571 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as @samp{--read-timeout}.
2573 @item reclevel = @var{n}
2574 Recursion level---the same as @samp{-l}.
2576 @item recursive = on/off
2577 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
2579 @item referer = @var{string}
2580 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like @samp{--referer}. (Note it
2581 was the folks who wrote the @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of
2582 ``referrer'' wrong.)
2584 @item relative_only = on/off
2585 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
2588 @item remove_listing = on/off
2589 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
2590 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
2592 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
2593 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
2594 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
2596 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
2597 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
2598 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
2600 @item robots = on/off
2601 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
2602 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
2603 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
2604 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
2607 @item server_response = on/off
2608 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
2609 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
2611 @item span_hosts = on/off
2614 @item ssl_cert_file = @var{string}
2615 Set the client certificate file name to @var{string}. The same as
2616 @samp{--sslcertfile}.
2618 @item ssl_cert_key = @var{string}
2619 Set the certificate key file to @var{string}. The same as
2620 @samp{--sslcertkey}.
2622 @item ssl_ca_dir = @var{string}
2623 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2626 @item ssl_ca_file = @var{string}
2627 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{string}. The same
2628 as @samp{--sslcafile}.
2630 @item ssl_cert_type = 0/1
2631 Specify the type of the client certificate: 0 means @code{PEM}
2632 (default), 1 means @code{ASN1} (@code{DER}). The same as
2633 @samp{--sslcerttype}.
2635 @item ssl_check_cert = 0/1
2636 If this is set to 1, the server certificate is checked against the
2637 specified client authorities. The same as @samp{--sslcheckcert}.
2639 @item ssl_protocol = 0-3
2640 Choose the SSL protocol to be used. 0 means choose automatically, 1
2641 means force SSLv2, 2 means force SSLv3, and 3 means force TLSv1. The
2642 same as @samp{--sslprotocol}.
2644 @item strict_comments = on/off
2645 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
2647 @item timeout = @var{n}
2648 Set timeout value---the same as @samp{-T}.
2650 @item timestamping = on/off
2651 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
2653 @item tries = @var{n}
2654 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t}.
2656 @item use_proxy = on/off
2657 Turn proxy support on/off. The same as @samp{-Y}.
2659 @item verbose = on/off
2660 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
2662 @item wait = @var{n}
2663 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w}.
2665 @item waitretry = @var{n}
2666 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
2667 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry}. Note that this is turned on by
2668 default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
2670 @item randomwait = on/off
2671 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
2672 @samp{--random-wait}.
2676 @section Sample Wgetrc
2677 @cindex sample wgetrc
2679 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
2680 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
2681 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
2682 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
2684 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
2685 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
2689 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
2696 @c man begin EXAMPLES
2697 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
2701 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
2702 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
2703 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
2707 @section Simple Usage
2711 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
2714 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
2718 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
2719 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
2720 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
2721 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
2722 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
2723 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
2726 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
2730 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
2731 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
2732 shall use @samp{-t}.
2735 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
2738 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
2739 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
2742 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
2746 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
2750 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
2751 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
2754 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2759 @node Advanced Usage
2760 @section Advanced Usage
2764 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
2771 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
2775 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
2776 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
2777 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
2780 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
2784 The same as the above, but convert the links in the @sc{html} files to
2785 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
2788 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
2792 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
2793 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
2794 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
2795 references the downloaded links.
2798 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
2801 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
2802 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
2803 depending on where they were on the remote server.
2806 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
2807 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
2808 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
2809 subdirectory of the current directory.
2812 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
2813 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
2817 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
2821 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
2825 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
2828 wget -s http://www.lycos.com/
2833 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
2837 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
2841 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
2842 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
2843 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
2847 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
2850 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
2851 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
2852 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
2853 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
2854 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
2858 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
2859 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
2863 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
2867 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
2868 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
2871 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
2874 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
2875 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
2878 @cindex redirecting output
2880 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
2884 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
2887 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
2888 documents from remote hotlists:
2891 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
2895 @node Very Advanced Usage
2896 @section Very Advanced Usage
2901 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
2902 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
2903 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
2904 to recheck a site each Sunday:
2908 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
2912 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
2913 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
2914 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
2915 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
2916 would look like this:
2919 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
2920 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
2924 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
2925 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
2926 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
2927 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
2928 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
2931 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
2932 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
2936 Or, with less typing:
2939 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
2948 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
2951 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers
2952 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
2953 * Mailing List:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
2954 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
2955 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
2956 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
2963 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
2964 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
2965 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
2966 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
2967 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
2968 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
2969 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
2970 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
2971 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
2972 using an authorized proxy.
2974 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
2975 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
2976 the following environment variables:
2980 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{http}
2984 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
2985 connections. It is quite common that @sc{http_proxy} and @sc{ftp_proxy}
2986 are set to the same @sc{url}.
2989 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
2990 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
2991 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
2995 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
2996 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3000 @itemx --proxy=on/off
3001 @itemx proxy = on/off
3002 This option may be used to turn the proxy support on or off. Proxy
3003 support is on by default, provided that the appropriate environment
3006 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3007 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3008 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3009 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3010 specified by the environment.
3013 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3014 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3015 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3016 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3017 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3019 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3020 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3021 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3022 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3026 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3029 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3030 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3031 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_passwd} to set the proxy
3032 username and password.
3035 @section Distribution
3036 @cindex latest version
3038 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3039 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3040 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3041 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3044 @section Mailing List
3045 @cindex mailing list
3048 There are several Wget-related mailing lists, all hosted by
3049 SunSITE.dk. The general discussion list is at
3050 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk}. It is the preferred place for bug reports
3051 and suggestions, as well as for discussion of development. You are
3052 invited to subscribe.
3054 To subscribe, simply send mail to @email{wget-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}
3055 and follow the instructions. Unsubscribe by mailing to
3056 @email{wget-unsubscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The mailing list is archived at
3057 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3058 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}.
3060 The second mailing list is at @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk}, and is
3061 used to submit patches for review by Wget developers. A ``patch'' is
3062 a textual representation of change to source code, readable by both
3063 humans and programs. The file @file{PATCHES} that comes with Wget
3064 covers the creation and submitting of patches in detail. Please don't
3065 send general suggestions or bug reports to @samp{wget-patches}; use it
3066 only for patch submissions.
3068 To subscribe, simply send mail to @email{wget-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}
3069 and follow the instructions. Unsubscribe by mailing to
3070 @email{wget-unsubscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The mailing list is archived at
3071 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3073 Finally, there is a read-only list at @email{wget-cvs@@sunsite.dk}
3074 that tracks commits to the Wget CVS repository. To subscribe to that
3075 list, send mail to @email{wget-cvs-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The list
3078 @node Reporting Bugs
3079 @section Reporting Bugs
3081 @cindex reporting bugs
3085 You are welcome to send bug reports about GNU Wget to
3086 @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}.
3088 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3093 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3094 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3095 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3096 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug.
3099 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3100 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 -Y0
3101 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3102 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3103 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3104 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3106 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3107 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3108 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3109 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3110 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3114 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3115 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3116 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3117 with debug support on.
3119 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3120 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3121 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3122 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3123 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3124 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3125 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3128 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3129 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3130 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3136 @section Portability
3138 @cindex operating systems
3140 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3141 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3142 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3143 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3145 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds
3146 of Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, OSF (aka
3147 Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some of
3148 those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3149 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3150 system, we would like to know about it.
3152 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3153 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3154 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3155 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3156 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3157 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3158 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3159 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3160 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3161 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3162 Windows-related features might look at them.
3166 @cindex signal handling
3169 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3170 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3171 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3172 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3173 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3176 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3179 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3182 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3183 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3188 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3191 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3192 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3193 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3196 @node Robot Exclusion
3197 @section Robot Exclusion
3198 @cindex robot exclusion
3200 @cindex server maintenance
3202 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3203 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3204 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3206 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3207 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3208 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3209 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3210 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3211 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3212 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3213 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3214 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3215 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3216 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3217 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3219 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3220 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3221 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3222 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3223 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3224 they will permit access.
3226 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3227 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3228 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3229 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3230 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3231 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3234 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3235 can downloads large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3236 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3237 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3240 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3243 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3244 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3245 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3246 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3249 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3250 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3251 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3252 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3253 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3254 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3255 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3256 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3258 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3260 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3261 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3262 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3266 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3269 This is explained in some detail at
3270 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3271 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3274 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3275 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3276 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3277 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3279 @node Security Considerations
3280 @section Security Considerations
3283 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3284 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3285 main issues, and some solutions.
3289 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3290 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3291 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3292 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3293 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3296 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3297 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3300 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3301 solution for this at the moment.
3304 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3305 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3306 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3311 @section Contributors
3312 @cindex contributors
3315 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org}.
3318 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org}.
3320 However, its development could never have gone as far as it has, were it
3321 not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature
3322 proposals, patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3324 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3328 Karsten Thygesen---donated system resources such as the mailing list,
3329 web space, and @sc{ftp} space, along with a lot of time to make these
3333 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3336 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3340 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3344 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3345 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3348 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3349 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3353 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3356 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the Italian translation.
3360 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3364 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3369 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3372 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3376 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization and other
3380 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3384 The people who provided donations for development, including Brian
3388 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
3389 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
3390 that make maintenance so much fun:
3410 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
3430 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
3433 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
3453 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
3472 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
3483 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
3484 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
3485 (Simos KSenitellis),
3493 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
3499 Alexander V. Lukyanov,
3530 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
3532 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}gues,
3535 Juan Jose Rodrigues,
3549 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
3557 Douglas E. Wegscheid,
3568 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
3569 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
3576 @cindex free software
3578 GNU Wget is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL),
3579 which makes it @dfn{free software}. Please note that ``free'' in ``free
3580 software'' refers to liberty, not price. As some people like to point
3581 out, it's the ``free'' of ``free speech'', not the ``free'' of ``free
3584 The exact and legally binding distribution terms are spelled out below.
3585 The GPL guarantees that you have the right (freedom) to run and change
3586 GNU Wget and distribute it to others, and even---if you want---charge
3587 money for doing any of those things. With these rights comes the
3588 obligation to distribute the source code along with the software and to
3589 grant your recipients the same rights and impose the same restrictions.
3591 This licensing model is also known as @dfn{open source} because it,
3592 among other things, makes sure that all recipients will receive the
3593 source code along with the program, and be able to improve it. The GNU
3594 project prefers the term ``free software'' for reasons outlined at
3595 @url{http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html}.
3597 The exact license terms are defined by this paragraph and the GNU
3598 General Public License it refers to:
3601 GNU Wget is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
3602 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
3603 Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
3604 option) any later version.
3606 GNU Wget is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
3607 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
3608 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
3611 A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as part of this
3612 manual; if you did not receive it, write to the Free Software
3613 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
3616 In addition to this, this manual is free in the same sense:
3619 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3620 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
3621 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
3622 Invariant Sections being ``GNU General Public License'' and ``GNU Free
3623 Documentation License'', with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
3624 Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section
3625 entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
3628 @c #### Maybe we should wrap these licenses in ifinfo? Stallman says
3629 @c that the GFDL needs to be present in the manual, and to me it would
3630 @c suck to include the license for the manual and not the license for
3633 The full texts of the GNU General Public License and of the GNU Free
3634 Documentation License are available below.
3637 * GNU General Public License::
3638 * GNU Free Documentation License::
3641 @node GNU General Public License
3642 @section GNU General Public License
3643 @center Version 2, June 1991
3646 Copyright @copyright{} 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3647 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
3649 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
3650 of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
3653 @unnumberedsec Preamble
3655 The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
3656 freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
3657 License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
3658 software---to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
3659 General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
3660 Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
3661 using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
3662 the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
3665 When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
3666 price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
3667 have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
3668 this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
3669 if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
3670 in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
3672 To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
3673 anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
3674 These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
3675 distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
3677 For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
3678 gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
3679 you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
3680 source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
3683 We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
3684 (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
3685 distribute and/or modify the software.
3687 Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
3688 that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
3689 software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
3690 want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so
3691 that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original
3692 authors' reputations.
3694 Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
3695 patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
3696 program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
3697 program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
3698 patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
3700 The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
3701 modification follow.
3704 @unnumberedsec TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
3707 @center TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
3712 This License applies to any program or other work which contains
3713 a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
3714 under the terms of this General Public License. The ``Program'', below,
3715 refers to any such program or work, and a ``work based on the Program''
3716 means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
3717 that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
3718 either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
3719 language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
3720 the term ``modification''.) Each licensee is addressed as ``you''.
3722 Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
3723 covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
3724 running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
3725 is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
3726 Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
3727 Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
3730 You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
3731 source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
3732 conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
3733 copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
3734 notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
3735 and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
3736 along with the Program.
3738 You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
3739 you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
3742 You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
3743 of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
3744 distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
3745 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
3749 You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
3750 stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
3753 You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
3754 whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
3755 part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
3756 parties under the terms of this License.
3759 If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
3760 when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
3761 interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
3762 announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
3763 notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
3764 a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
3765 these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
3766 License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
3767 does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
3768 the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
3771 These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
3772 identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
3773 and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
3774 themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
3775 sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
3776 distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
3777 on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
3778 this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
3779 entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
3781 Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
3782 your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
3783 exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
3784 collective works based on the Program.
3786 In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
3787 with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of
3788 a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under
3789 the scope of this License.
3792 You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
3793 under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
3794 Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
3798 Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
3799 source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
3800 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
3803 Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
3804 years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
3805 cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
3806 machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
3807 distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
3808 customarily used for software interchange; or,
3811 Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
3812 to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
3813 allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
3814 received the program in object code or executable form with such
3815 an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
3818 The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
3819 making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
3820 code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
3821 associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
3822 control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a
3823 special exception, the source code distributed need not include
3824 anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
3825 form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
3826 operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
3827 itself accompanies the executable.
3829 If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering
3830 access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent
3831 access to copy the source code from the same place counts as
3832 distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not
3833 compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
3836 You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
3837 except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt
3838 otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
3839 void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
3840 However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under
3841 this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
3842 parties remain in full compliance.
3845 You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
3846 signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
3847 distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
3848 prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
3849 modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
3850 Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
3851 all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
3852 the Program or works based on it.
3855 Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
3856 Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
3857 original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
3858 these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further
3859 restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
3860 You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
3864 If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
3865 infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
3866 conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
3867 otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
3868 excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot
3869 distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
3870 License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
3871 may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent
3872 license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
3873 all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
3874 the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
3875 refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
3877 If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
3878 any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
3879 apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other
3882 It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
3883 patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any
3884 such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the
3885 integrity of the free software distribution system, which is
3886 implemented by public license practices. Many people have made
3887 generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed
3888 through that system in reliance on consistent application of that
3889 system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing
3890 to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot
3893 This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to
3894 be a consequence of the rest of this License.
3897 If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
3898 certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
3899 original copyright holder who places the Program under this License
3900 may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding
3901 those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among
3902 countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates
3903 the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
3906 The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions
3907 of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will
3908 be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
3909 address new problems or concerns.
3911 Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
3912 specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and ``any
3913 later version'', you have the option of following the terms and conditions
3914 either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
3915 Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of
3916 this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
3920 If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
3921 programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author
3922 to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free
3923 Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes
3924 make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals
3925 of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and
3926 of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
3929 @heading NO WARRANTY
3937 BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
3938 FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
3939 OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
3940 PROVIDE THE PROGRAM ``AS IS'' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
3941 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
3942 MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS
3943 TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
3944 PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING,
3945 REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
3948 IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
3949 WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
3950 REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
3951 INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
3952 OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
3953 TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
3954 YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
3955 PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
3956 POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
3960 @heading END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
3963 @center END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
3967 @unnumberedsec How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
3969 If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
3970 possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
3971 free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
3973 To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest
3974 to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
3975 convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
3976 the ``copyright'' line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
3979 @var{one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does.}
3980 Copyright (C) 20@var{yy} @var{name of author}
3982 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
3983 modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
3984 as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
3985 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
3987 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3988 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3989 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3990 GNU General Public License for more details.
3992 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3993 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
3994 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
3997 Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
3999 If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
4000 when it starts in an interactive mode:
4003 Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 20@var{yy} @var{name of author}
4004 Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
4005 type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome
4006 to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'
4010 The hypothetical commands @samp{show w} and @samp{show c} should show
4011 the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the
4012 commands you use may be called something other than @samp{show w} and
4013 @samp{show c}; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items---whatever
4016 You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
4017 school, if any, to sign a ``copyright disclaimer'' for the program, if
4018 necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
4022 Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright
4023 interest in the program `Gnomovision'
4024 (which makes passes at compilers) written
4027 @var{signature of Ty Coon}, 1 April 1989
4028 Ty Coon, President of Vice
4032 This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
4033 proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may
4034 consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
4035 library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General
4036 Public License instead of this License.
4041 @unnumbered Concept Index