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--2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
36 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
37 this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
38 are preserved on all copies.
41 Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the
42 results, provided the printed document carries a copying permission
43 notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
44 (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
46 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
47 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
48 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
49 Invariant Sections being ``GNU General Public License'' and ``GNU Free
50 Documentation License'', with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
51 Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section
52 entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
57 @title GNU Wget @value{VERSION}
58 @subtitle The non-interactive download utility
59 @subtitle Updated for Wget @value{VERSION}, @value{UPDATED}
60 @author by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} and the developers
64 Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
67 GNU Info entry for @file{wget}.
72 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
73 Copyright @copyright{} 1996--2005, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
75 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
76 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
77 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
78 Invariant Sections being ``GNU General Public License'' and ``GNU Free
79 Documentation License'', with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
80 Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section
81 entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
86 @top Wget @value{VERSION}
88 This manual documents version @value{VERSION} of GNU Wget, the freely
89 available utility for network downloads.
91 Copyright @copyright{} 1996--2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
94 * Overview:: Features of Wget.
95 * Invoking:: Wget command-line arguments.
96 * Recursive Download:: Downloading interlinked pages.
97 * Following Links:: The available methods of chasing links.
98 * Time-Stamping:: Mirroring according to time-stamps.
99 * Startup File:: Wget's initialization file.
100 * Examples:: Examples of usage.
101 * Various:: The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.
102 * Appendices:: Some useful references.
103 * Copying:: You may give out copies of Wget and of this manual.
104 * Concept Index:: Topics covered by this manual.
113 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
114 GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from
115 the Web. It supports @sc{http}, @sc{https}, and @sc{ftp} protocols, as
116 well as retrieval through @sc{http} proxies.
119 This chapter is a partial overview of Wget's features.
123 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
124 Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background,
125 while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval
126 and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By
127 contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user's presence,
128 which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
134 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
138 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
139 Wget can follow links in @sc{html} and @sc{xhtml} pages and create local
140 versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of
141 the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ``recursive
142 downloading.'' While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion
143 Standard (@file{/robots.txt}). Wget can be instructed to convert the
144 links in downloaded @sc{html} files to the local files for offline
150 File name wildcard matching and recursive mirroring of directories are
151 available when retrieving via @sc{ftp}. Wget can read the time-stamp
152 information given by both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} servers, and store it
153 locally. Thus Wget can see if the remote file has changed since last
154 retrieval, and automatically retrieve the new version if it has. This
155 makes Wget suitable for mirroring of @sc{ftp} sites, as well as home
161 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
165 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
166 Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network
167 connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will
168 keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server
169 supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the
170 download from where it left off.
175 Wget supports proxy servers, which can lighten the network load, speed
176 up retrieval and provide access behind firewalls. However, if you are
177 behind a firewall that requires that you use a socks style gateway,
178 you can get the socks library and build Wget with support for socks.
179 Wget uses the passive @sc{ftp} downloading by default, active @sc{ftp}
184 Wget supports IP version 6, the next generation of IP. IPv6 is
185 autodetected at compile-time, and can be disabled at either build or
186 run time. Binaries built with IPv6 support work well in both
187 IPv4-only and dual family environments.
191 Built-in features offer mechanisms to tune which links you wish to follow
192 (@pxref{Following Links}).
196 The progress of individual downloads is traced using a progress gauge.
197 Interactive downloads are tracked using a ``thermometer''-style gauge,
198 whereas non-interactive ones are traced with dots, each dot
199 representing a fixed amount of data received (1KB by default). Either
200 gauge can be customized to your preferences.
204 Most of the features are fully configurable, either through command line
205 options, or via the initialization file @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup
206 File}). Wget allows you to define @dfn{global} startup files
207 (@file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default) for site settings.
212 @item /usr/local/etc/wgetrc
213 Default location of the @dfn{global} startup file.
223 Finally, GNU Wget is free software. This means that everyone may use
224 it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
225 Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation
236 By default, Wget is very simple to invoke. The basic syntax is:
239 @c man begin SYNOPSIS
240 wget [@var{option}]@dots{} [@var{URL}]@dots{}
244 Wget will simply download all the @sc{url}s specified on the command
245 line. @var{URL} is a @dfn{Uniform Resource Locator}, as defined below.
247 However, you may wish to change some of the default parameters of
248 Wget. You can do it two ways: permanently, adding the appropriate
249 command to @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup File}), or specifying it on
255 * Basic Startup Options::
256 * Logging and Input File Options::
258 * Directory Options::
260 * HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options::
262 * Recursive Retrieval Options::
263 * Recursive Accept/Reject Options::
271 @dfn{URL} is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
272 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
273 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the @sc{url} syntax as per
274 @sc{rfc1738}. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
278 http://host[:port]/directory/file
279 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
282 You can also encode your username and password within a @sc{url}:
285 ftp://user:password@@host/path
286 http://user:password@@host/path
289 Either @var{user} or @var{password}, or both, may be left out. If you
290 leave out either the @sc{http} username or password, no authentication
291 will be sent. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} username, @samp{anonymous}
292 will be used. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} password, your email
293 address will be supplied as a default password.@footnote{If you have a
294 @file{.netrc} file in your home directory, password will also be
297 @strong{Important Note}: if you specify a password-containing @sc{url}
298 on the command line, the username and password will be plainly visible
299 to all users on the system, by way of @code{ps}. On multi-user systems,
300 this is a big security risk. To work around it, use @code{wget -i -}
301 and feed the @sc{url}s to Wget's standard input, each on a separate
302 line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
304 You can encode unsafe characters in a @sc{url} as @samp{%xy}, @code{xy}
305 being the hexadecimal representation of the character's @sc{ascii}
306 value. Some common unsafe characters include @samp{%} (quoted as
307 @samp{%25}), @samp{:} (quoted as @samp{%3A}), and @samp{@@} (quoted as
308 @samp{%40}). Refer to @sc{rfc1738} for a comprehensive list of unsafe
311 Wget also supports the @code{type} feature for @sc{ftp} @sc{url}s. By
312 default, @sc{ftp} documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type
313 @samp{i}), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another
314 useful mode is the @samp{a} (@dfn{ASCII}) mode, which converts the line
315 delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful
316 for text files. Here is an example:
319 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
322 Two alternative variants of @sc{url} specification are also supported,
323 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
325 @sc{ftp}-only syntax (supported by @code{NcFTP}):
330 @sc{http}-only syntax (introduced by @code{Netscape}):
335 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
336 supported in the future.
338 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
339 not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
340 with your favorite browser, like @code{Lynx} or @code{Netscape}.
345 @section Option Syntax
346 @cindex option syntax
347 @cindex syntax of options
349 Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process command-line arguments, every
350 option has a long form along with the short one. Long options are
351 more convenient to remember, but take time to type. You may freely
352 mix different option styles, or specify options after the command-line
353 arguments. Thus you may write:
356 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ -o log
359 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may
360 be omitted. Instead @samp{-o log} you can write @samp{-olog}.
362 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
369 This is a complete equivalent of:
372 wget -d -r -c @var{URL}
375 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
376 terminate them with @samp{--}. So the following will try to download
377 @sc{url} @samp{-x}, reporting failure to @file{log}:
383 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
384 that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be useful to
385 clear the @file{.wgetrc} settings. For instance, if your @file{.wgetrc}
386 sets @code{exclude_directories} to @file{/cgi-bin}, the following
387 example will first reset it, and then set it to exclude @file{/~nobody}
388 and @file{/~somebody}. You can also clear the lists in @file{.wgetrc}
389 (@pxref{Wgetrc Syntax}).
392 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
395 Most options that do not accept arguments are @dfn{boolean} options,
396 so named because their state can be captured with a yes-or-no
397 (``boolean'') variable. For example, @samp{--follow-ftp} tells Wget
398 to follow FTP links from HTML files and, on the other hand,
399 @samp{--no-glob} tells it not to perform file globbing on FTP URLs. A
400 boolean option is either @dfn{affirmative} or @dfn{negative}
401 (beginning with @samp{--no}). All such options share several
404 Unless stated otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is
405 the opposite of what the option accomplishes. For example, the
406 documented existence of @samp{--follow-ftp} assumes that the default
407 is to @emph{not} follow FTP links from HTML pages.
409 Affirmative options can be negated by prepending the @samp{--no-} to
410 the option name; negative options can be negated by omitting the
411 @samp{--no-} prefix. This might seem superfluous---if the default for
412 an affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide a way
413 to explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in fact change
414 the default. For instance, using @code{follow_ftp = off} in
415 @file{.wgetrc} makes Wget @emph{not} follow FTP links by default, and
416 using @samp{--no-follow-ftp} is the only way to restore the factory
417 default from the command line.
419 @node Basic Startup Options
420 @section Basic Startup Options
425 Display the version of Wget.
429 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
433 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
434 specified via the @samp{-o}, output is redirected to @file{wget-log}.
436 @cindex execute wgetrc command
437 @item -e @var{command}
438 @itemx --execute @var{command}
439 Execute @var{command} as if it were a part of @file{.wgetrc}
440 (@pxref{Startup File}). A command thus invoked will be executed
441 @emph{after} the commands in @file{.wgetrc}, thus taking precedence over
442 them. If you need to specify more than one wgetrc command, use multiple
443 instances of @samp{-e}.
447 @node Logging and Input File Options
448 @section Logging and Input File Options
453 @item -o @var{logfile}
454 @itemx --output-file=@var{logfile}
455 Log all messages to @var{logfile}. The messages are normally reported
458 @cindex append to log
459 @item -a @var{logfile}
460 @itemx --append-output=@var{logfile}
461 Append to @var{logfile}. This is the same as @samp{-o}, only it appends
462 to @var{logfile} instead of overwriting the old log file. If
463 @var{logfile} does not exist, a new file is created.
468 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
469 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
470 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in
471 which case @samp{-d} will not work. Please note that compiling with
472 debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will
473 @emph{not} print any debug info unless requested with @samp{-d}.
474 @xref{Reporting Bugs}, for more information on how to use @samp{-d} for
480 Turn off Wget's output.
485 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output
490 Non-verbose output---turn off verbose without being completely quiet
491 (use @samp{-q} for that), which means that error messages and basic
492 information still get printed.
496 @itemx --input-file=@var{file}
497 Read @sc{url}s from @var{file}, in which case no @sc{url}s need to be on
498 the command line. If there are @sc{url}s both on the command line and
499 in an input file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to
500 be retrieved. The @var{file} need not be an @sc{html} document (but no
501 harm if it is)---it is enough if the @sc{url}s are just listed
504 However, if you specify @samp{--force-html}, the document will be
505 regarded as @samp{html}. In that case you may have problems with
506 relative links, which you can solve either by adding @code{<base
507 href="@var{url}">} to the documents or by specifying
508 @samp{--base=@var{url}} on the command line.
513 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an @sc{html}
514 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
515 @sc{html} files on your local disk, by adding @code{<base
516 href="@var{url}">} to @sc{html}, or using the @samp{--base} command-line
519 @cindex base for relative links in input file
521 @itemx --base=@var{URL}
522 When used in conjunction with @samp{-F}, prepends @var{URL} to relative
523 links in the file specified by @samp{-i}.
526 @node Download Options
527 @section Download Options
530 @cindex bind() address
531 @cindex client IP address
532 @cindex IP address, client
533 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
534 When making client TCP/IP connections, @code{bind()} to @var{ADDRESS} on
535 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
536 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
541 @cindex number of retries
542 @item -t @var{number}
543 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
544 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
545 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
546 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
547 which are not retried.
550 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
551 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all will
552 be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @var{file}
553 already exists, it will be overwritten. If the @var{file} is @samp{-},
554 the documents will be written to standard output (disabling @samp{-k}).
556 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only well-defined for downloading
559 @cindex clobbering, file
560 @cindex downloading multiple times
564 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
565 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
566 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
567 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
569 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, or @samp{-r},
570 downloading the same file in the same directory will result in the
571 original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy being
572 named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet again, the
573 third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on. When
574 @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will
575 refuse to download newer copies of @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore,
576 ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a misnomer in this mode---it's not
577 clobbering that's prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
578 preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version saving that's
581 When running Wget with @samp{-r}, but without @samp{-N} or @samp{-nc},
582 re-downloading a file will result in the new copy simply overwriting the
583 old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent this behavior, instead causing the
584 original version to be preserved and any newer copies on the server to
587 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r}, the
588 decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy of a file depends
589 on the local and remote timestamp and size of the file
590 (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the same
593 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
594 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
595 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
597 @cindex continue retrieval
598 @cindex incomplete downloads
599 @cindex resume download
602 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
603 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
604 by another program. For instance:
607 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
610 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
611 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
612 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
613 length of the local file.
615 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
616 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
617 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
618 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
619 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
621 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
622 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
625 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
626 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
627 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
628 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
629 start from scratch, remove the file.
631 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
632 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
633 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
634 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
635 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
636 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
638 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
639 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
640 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
641 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
642 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
643 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
644 collection or log file.
646 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
647 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
648 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
649 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
650 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
651 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
653 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
654 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
655 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
656 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
658 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
659 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
661 @cindex progress indicator
663 @item --progress=@var{type}
664 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
665 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
667 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
668 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
669 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
672 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
673 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
674 fixed amount of downloaded data.
676 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
677 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
678 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
679 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
680 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
681 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
682 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
683 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
684 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
686 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
687 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
688 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
689 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
690 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
693 @itemx --timestamping
694 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
696 @cindex server response, print
698 @itemx --server-response
699 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
702 @cindex Wget as spider
705 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
706 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
707 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
710 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
713 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
714 functionality of real web spiders.
718 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
719 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
720 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
721 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
723 Whenever Wget connects to or reads from a remote host, it checks for a
724 timeout and aborts the operation if the time expires. This prevents
725 anomalous occurrences such as hanging reads or infinite connects. The
726 only timeout enabled by default is a 900-second timeout for reading.
727 Setting timeout to 0 disables checking for timeouts.
729 Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to set any of the
730 timeout-related options.
734 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
735 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
736 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
737 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
740 @cindex connect timeout
741 @cindex timeout, connect
742 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
743 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
744 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
745 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
748 @cindex timeout, read
749 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
750 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. Reads that
751 take longer will fail. The default value for read timeout is 900
754 @cindex bandwidth, limit
756 @cindex limit bandwidth
757 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
758 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
759 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
760 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
761 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This kind of thing is useful when,
762 for whatever reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available
765 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
766 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
767 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
768 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
769 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
770 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
774 @item -w @var{seconds}
775 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
776 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
777 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
778 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
779 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
780 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
782 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
783 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
784 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry.
786 @cindex retries, waiting between
787 @cindex waiting between retries
788 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
789 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
790 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
791 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
792 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
793 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify. Therefore,
794 a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55
797 Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
803 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
804 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
805 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
806 to vary between 0 and 2 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
807 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
808 presence from such analysis.
810 A recent article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
811 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
812 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
813 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
816 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
817 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
824 Turn proxy support on or off. The proxy is on by default if the
825 appropriate environment variable is defined.
827 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
831 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
832 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
833 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
834 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
836 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
837 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
838 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
839 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
840 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
841 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
842 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
844 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
847 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
849 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
850 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
851 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
852 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
855 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
856 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
857 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
858 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
859 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
860 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
861 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
864 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
867 @cindex file names, restrict
868 @cindex Windows file names
869 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{mode}
870 Change which characters found in remote URLs may show up in local file
871 names generated from those URLs. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
872 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
873 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
876 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid as part of
877 file names on your operating system, as well as control characters that
878 are typically unprintable. This option is useful for changing these
879 defaults, either because you are downloading to a non-native partition,
880 or because you want to disable escaping of the control characters.
882 When mode is set to ``unix'', Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
883 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
884 default on Unix-like OS'es.
886 When mode is set to ``windows'', Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
887 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
888 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
889 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
890 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
891 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
892 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
893 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
894 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
895 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
897 If you append @samp{,nocontrol} to the mode, as in
898 @samp{unix,nocontrol}, escaping of the control characters is also
899 switched off. You can use @samp{--restrict-file-names=nocontrol} to
900 turn off escaping of control characters without affecting the choice of
901 the OS to use as file name restriction mode.
908 Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With @samp{--inet4-only}
909 or @samp{-4}, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA
910 records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in
911 URLs. Conversely, with @samp{--inet6-only} or @samp{-6}, Wget will
912 only connect to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
914 Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware
915 Wget will use the address family specified by the host's DNS record.
916 If the DNS specifies both an A record and an AAAA record, Wget will
917 try them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to.
919 These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or
920 IPv6 address families on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging
921 or to deal with broken network configuration. Only one of
922 @samp{--inet6-only} and @samp{--inet4-only} may be specified in the
923 same command. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without
926 @item --prefer-family=IPv4/IPv6/none
927 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
928 with specified address family first. IPv4 addresses are preferred by
931 This avoids spurious errors and correct attempts when accessing hosts
932 that resolve to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4 networks. For
933 example, @samp{www.kame.net} resolves to
934 @samp{2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085} and to
935 @samp{203.178.141.194}. When the preferred family is @code{IPv4}, the
936 IPv4 address is used first; when the preferred family is @code{IPv6},
937 the IPv6 address is used first; if the specified value is @code{none},
938 the address order returned by DNS is used without change.
940 Unlike @samp{-4} and @samp{-6}, this option doesn't forbid access to
941 any address family, it only changes the @emph{order} in which the
942 addresses are accessed. Also note that the reordering performed by
943 this option is @dfn{stable}---it doesn't affect order of addresses of
944 the same family. That is, the relative order of all IPv4 addresses
945 and of all IPv6 addresses remains intact in all cases.
947 @item --retry-connrefused
948 Consider ``connection refused'' a transient error and try again.
949 Normally Wget gives up on a URL when it is unable to connect to the
950 site because failure to connect is taken as a sign that the server is
951 not running at all and that retries would not help. This option is
952 for mirroring unreliable sites whose servers tend to disappear for
953 short periods of time.
956 @node Directory Options
957 @section Directory Options
961 @itemx --no-directories
962 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
963 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
964 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
965 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
968 @itemx --force-directories
969 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
970 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
971 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
972 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
975 @itemx --no-host-directories
976 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
977 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
978 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
981 @item --protocol-directories
982 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
983 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
984 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
986 @cindex cut directories
987 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
988 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
989 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
992 Take, for example, the directory at
993 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
994 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
995 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
996 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
997 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
998 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
999 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
1003 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
1005 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
1006 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
1008 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
1013 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
1014 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
1015 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
1016 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
1017 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
1019 @cindex directory prefix
1020 @item -P @var{prefix}
1021 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
1022 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
1023 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
1024 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
1029 @section HTTP Options
1032 @cindex .html extension
1034 @itemx --html-extension
1035 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
1036 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
1037 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
1038 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
1039 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
1040 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1041 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1042 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1043 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1045 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1046 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1047 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1048 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1049 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1050 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1051 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1052 Retrieval Options}).
1055 @cindex http password
1056 @cindex authentication
1057 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1058 @itemx --http-passwd=@var{password}
1059 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1060 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1061 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure) or the
1062 @code{digest} authentication scheme.
1064 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1065 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1066 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1067 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1068 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1069 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1070 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1072 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1078 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1079 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1080 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1081 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1082 documents on proxy servers.
1084 Caching is allowed by default.
1088 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1089 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1090 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1091 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1092 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1093 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1094 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1096 @cindex loading cookies
1097 @cindex cookies, loading
1098 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1099 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1100 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1101 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1103 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1104 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1105 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1106 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1107 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1108 proves your identity.
1110 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1111 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1112 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1113 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1114 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1115 cookie files in different locations:
1119 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1121 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1122 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1123 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1124 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1125 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1127 @item Internet Explorer.
1128 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1129 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1130 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1132 @item Other browsers.
1133 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1134 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1135 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1138 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1139 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1140 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1141 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1142 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1145 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1148 @cindex saving cookies
1149 @cindex cookies, saving
1150 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1151 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1152 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1153 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1155 @cindex cookies, session
1156 @cindex session cookies
1157 @item --keep-session-cookies
1158 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1159 cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they are
1160 meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit the browser.
1161 Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
1162 the home page before you can access some pages. With this option,
1163 multiple Wget runs are considered a single browser session as far as
1164 the site is concerned.
1166 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1167 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1168 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1169 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1170 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1171 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1172 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1174 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1175 @cindex ignore length
1176 @item --ignore-length
1177 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1178 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1179 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1180 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1181 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1184 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1185 if it never existed.
1188 @item --header=@var{additional-header}
1189 Define an @var{additional-header} to be passed to the @sc{http} servers.
1190 Headers must contain a @samp{:} preceded by one or more non-blank
1191 characters, and must not contain newlines.
1193 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1194 @samp{--header} more than once.
1198 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1199 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1200 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1204 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1205 previous user-defined headers.
1208 @cindex proxy password
1209 @cindex proxy authentication
1210 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1211 @itemx --proxy-passwd=@var{password}
1212 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1213 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1214 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1216 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-passwd}
1217 pertain here as well.
1219 @cindex http referer
1220 @cindex referer, http
1221 @item --referer=@var{url}
1222 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1223 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1224 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1225 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1227 @cindex server response, save
1228 @item --save-headers
1229 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1230 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1233 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1234 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1235 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1237 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1238 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1239 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1240 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1241 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1244 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1245 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1246 While conceptually this is not such a bad idea, it has been abused by
1247 servers denying information to clients other than @code{Mozilla} or
1248 Microsoft @code{Internet Explorer}. This option allows you to change
1249 the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget. Use of this option is
1250 discouraged, unless you really know what you are doing.
1253 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1254 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1255 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data
1256 in the request body. @code{--post-data} sends @var{string} as data,
1257 whereas @code{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}. Other than
1258 that, they work in exactly the same way.
1260 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1261 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1262 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1263 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1264 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1265 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1266 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1267 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1268 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1270 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it will
1271 not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because URLs that
1272 process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular page
1273 (although that's technically disallowed), which does not desire or
1274 accept POST. It is not yet clear that this behavior is optimal; if it
1275 doesn't work out, it will be changed.
1277 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1278 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1283 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1284 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1285 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1286 http://server.com/auth.php
1288 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1289 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1290 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1295 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1296 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1299 To support SSL-based HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1300 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1301 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1304 @item --sslcertfile=@var{file}
1305 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1306 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1307 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1310 @cindex SSL certificate
1311 @item --sslcertkey=@var{keyfile}
1312 Read the certificate key from @var{keyfile}.
1314 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1315 @item --sslcadir=@var{directory}
1316 Specifies directory used for certificate authorities (``CA'').
1318 @item --sslcafile=@var{file}
1319 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities.
1321 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1322 @item --sslcerttype=0/1
1323 Specify the type of the client certificate: 0 means @code{PEM}
1324 (default), 1 means @code{ASN1} (@code{DER}).
1326 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1327 @item --sslcheckcert=0/1
1328 If set to 1, check the server certificate against the specified client
1329 authorities. If this is 0 (the default), Wget will break the SSL
1330 handshake if the server certificate is not valid.
1332 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1333 @item --sslprotocol=0-3
1334 Choose the SSL protocol to be used. If 0 is specified (the default),
1335 the OpenSSL library chooses the appropriate protocol automatically.
1336 Specifying 1 forces the use of SSLv2, specifying 2 forces SSLv3, and
1337 specifying 3 forces TLSv1.
1339 In most cases the OpenSSL library is capable of making an intelligent
1340 choice of the protocol, but there have been reports of sites that use
1341 old (and presumably buggy) server libraries with which a protocol has
1342 to be specified manually.
1345 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1346 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1347 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1348 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1349 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1350 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1351 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1353 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1354 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1355 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1356 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1358 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1359 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1360 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1364 @section FTP Options
1367 @cindex password, FTP
1368 @item --ftp-passwd=@var{string}
1369 Set the default FTP password to @var{string}. Without this, or the
1370 corresponding startup option, the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@},
1371 normally used for anonymous FTP.
1373 @cindex .listing files, removing
1374 @item --no-remove-listing
1375 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1376 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1377 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1378 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1379 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1380 you're running is complete).
1382 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1383 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1384 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1385 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1386 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1387 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1388 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1389 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1390 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1392 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1393 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1394 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1395 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1396 will be overwritten.
1398 @cindex globbing, toggle
1400 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1401 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1402 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1406 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1409 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1410 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1413 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1414 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1415 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1416 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1419 @item --no-passive-ftp
1420 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1421 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1422 connection rather than the other way around.
1424 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1425 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1426 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1427 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1428 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1429 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1431 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1432 @item --retr-symlinks
1433 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1434 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1435 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1436 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1437 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1439 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1440 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1441 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1442 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1445 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1446 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1447 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1450 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1451 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1452 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1453 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1454 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1455 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1456 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1457 the load on the server.
1459 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1460 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1461 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1464 @node Recursive Retrieval Options
1465 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1470 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1473 @item -l @var{depth}
1474 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1475 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1476 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1478 @cindex proxy filling
1479 @cindex delete after retrieval
1480 @cindex filling proxy cache
1481 @item --delete-after
1482 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1483 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1484 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1487 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1490 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1493 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1494 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1495 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1496 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1497 created in the first place.
1499 @cindex conversion of links
1500 @cindex link conversion
1502 @itemx --convert-links
1503 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1504 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1505 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1506 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1509 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1513 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1514 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1516 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1517 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1518 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1519 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1522 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1523 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1525 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1526 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1527 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1528 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1531 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1532 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1533 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1534 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1535 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1538 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1539 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1540 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1542 @cindex backing up converted files
1544 @itemx --backup-converted
1545 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1546 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1551 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1552 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1553 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1554 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1556 @cindex page requisites
1557 @cindex required images, downloading
1559 @itemx --page-requisites
1560 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1561 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1562 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1564 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1565 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1566 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1567 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1568 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1571 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1572 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1573 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1574 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1575 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1577 If one executes the command:
1580 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1583 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1584 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1585 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1586 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1587 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1590 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1593 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1594 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1597 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1600 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1601 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1604 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1607 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1608 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1609 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1610 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1611 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1612 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1615 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1618 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1619 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1620 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1621 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1622 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1623 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1626 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1629 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1630 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1631 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1634 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1635 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1636 @item --strict-comments
1637 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1638 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1640 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1641 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1642 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1643 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1644 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1645 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1646 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1648 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1649 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1650 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1651 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1652 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1653 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1654 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1655 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1656 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1658 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1659 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1660 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1661 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1662 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1665 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1666 option to turn it on.
1669 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1670 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1673 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1674 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1675 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1676 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files} for more details).
1678 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1679 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1680 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1681 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1683 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1684 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed.
1685 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1687 @cindex follow FTP links
1689 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1690 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1692 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1693 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1694 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1695 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1696 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1697 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1698 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1700 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1701 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1702 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1703 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
1705 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
1706 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
1709 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1712 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
1713 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
1714 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
1715 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
1716 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
1717 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
1721 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
1722 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1726 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
1727 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
1728 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
1731 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
1732 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
1733 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits} for more details.) Elements
1734 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1737 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
1738 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
1739 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits} for more details.) Elements of
1740 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1744 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
1745 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
1746 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
1747 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
1752 @node Recursive Download
1753 @chapter Recursive Download
1756 @cindex recursive download
1758 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
1759 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
1760 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
1762 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} from
1763 the given @sc{url}, documents, retrieving the files the @sc{html}
1764 document was referring to, through markup like @code{href}, or
1765 @code{src}. If the freshly downloaded file is also of type
1766 @code{text/html} or @code{application/xhtml+xml}, it will be parsed and
1769 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html} content is
1770 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
1771 @sc{html} document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
1772 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
1773 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
1774 until the specified maximum depth.
1776 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
1777 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
1779 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
1780 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
1781 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
1782 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
1783 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
1786 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
1787 the one found on the remote server.
1789 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
1790 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
1791 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
1792 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
1794 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
1795 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
1796 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
1797 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
1798 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
1799 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
1800 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
1802 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
1803 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
1804 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
1805 consume memory and CPU.
1807 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
1808 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
1809 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
1810 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
1811 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
1812 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
1813 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
1816 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
1819 @node Following Links
1820 @chapter Following Links
1822 @cindex following links
1824 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
1825 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
1826 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
1828 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
1829 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
1830 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
1832 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
1833 links it will follow.
1836 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
1837 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
1838 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
1839 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
1840 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
1843 @node Spanning Hosts
1844 @section Spanning Hosts
1845 @cindex spanning hosts
1846 @cindex hosts, spanning
1848 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
1849 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
1850 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
1851 your Wget into a small version of google.
1853 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
1854 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
1855 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
1856 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
1857 pages refer to both interchangeably.
1860 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
1862 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
1863 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
1864 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
1865 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
1866 up much more data than you have intended.
1868 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
1870 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
1871 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
1872 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
1873 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
1874 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
1875 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
1878 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
1881 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
1882 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
1884 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
1886 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
1887 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
1888 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
1889 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
1890 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
1894 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
1900 @node Types of Files
1901 @section Types of Files
1902 @cindex types of files
1904 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
1905 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
1906 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
1907 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
1909 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
1910 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
1913 @cindex accept wildcards
1914 @cindex accept suffixes
1915 @cindex wildcards, accept
1916 @cindex suffixes, accept
1918 @item -A @var{acclist}
1919 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
1920 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
1921 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
1922 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
1923 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
1924 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
1925 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
1927 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
1928 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
1929 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
1930 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
1931 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
1932 a description of how pattern matching works.
1934 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
1935 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
1937 @cindex reject wildcards
1938 @cindex reject suffixes
1939 @cindex wildcards, reject
1940 @cindex suffixes, reject
1941 @item -R @var{rejlist}
1942 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
1943 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
1944 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
1945 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
1946 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
1948 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
1949 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
1950 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
1951 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
1952 expansion by the shell.
1955 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
1956 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
1957 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
1958 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
1960 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
1961 files; Wget must load all the @sc{html}s to know where to go at
1962 all---recursive retrieval would make no sense otherwise.
1964 @node Directory-Based Limits
1965 @section Directory-Based Limits
1967 @cindex directory limits
1969 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
1970 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
1971 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
1972 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
1973 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
1974 @file{/dev} directories.
1976 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
1977 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
1978 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
1980 @cindex directories, include
1981 @cindex include directories
1982 @cindex accept directories
1985 @itemx --include @var{list}
1986 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
1987 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
1988 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
1989 directories are absolute paths.
1991 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
1992 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
1993 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
1996 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
1999 @cindex directories, exclude
2000 @cindex exclude directories
2001 @cindex reject directories
2003 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
2004 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
2005 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
2006 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
2007 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
2008 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
2010 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
2011 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
2012 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
2013 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
2018 @itemx no_parent = on
2019 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
2020 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
2021 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
2022 parent directory/directories.
2024 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
2025 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
2026 Supposing you issue Wget with:
2029 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
2032 You may rest assured that none of the references to
2033 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
2034 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
2035 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
2036 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
2037 intelligent fashion.
2040 @node Relative Links
2041 @section Relative Links
2042 @cindex relative links
2044 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2045 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2046 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2050 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2051 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2054 These links are not relative:
2058 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2059 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2062 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2063 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2064 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2066 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2070 @section Following FTP Links
2071 @cindex following ftp links
2073 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2074 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2075 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2078 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2079 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2080 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2081 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2082 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2083 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2084 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2086 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2087 retrieved recursively further.
2090 @chapter Time-Stamping
2091 @cindex time-stamping
2092 @cindex timestamping
2093 @cindex updating the archives
2094 @cindex incremental updating
2096 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2097 Internet is updating your archives.
2099 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2100 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2101 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2102 offer the option of incremental updating.
2104 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2105 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2106 the place of the old ones.
2108 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2112 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2115 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2116 recently than the local file.
2119 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2120 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2121 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2123 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2124 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2125 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2126 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2127 does, and the remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
2129 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2130 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2134 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2135 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2136 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2139 @node Time-Stamping Usage
2140 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2141 @cindex time-stamping usage
2142 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2144 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2145 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2148 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2151 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2152 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2153 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2154 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2156 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2157 changed, and download it if it has.
2160 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2163 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2164 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2165 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2166 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2168 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2171 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2174 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2175 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2177 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2178 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2179 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2180 since the last download.
2182 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2183 command like the following, weekly:
2186 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2189 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2190 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2191 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2192 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2193 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2195 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2196 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2197 @cindex http time-stamping
2199 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2200 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2201 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2202 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2203 retrieved unconditionally.
2205 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2206 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2207 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2210 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2211 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2212 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2213 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2214 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2215 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2218 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2219 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2220 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2221 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2222 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2224 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2225 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2227 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2228 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2229 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2231 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2232 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2235 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2236 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2237 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2238 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2239 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2240 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2241 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2242 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2244 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2245 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2246 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2247 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2248 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2249 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2251 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2252 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2253 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2254 Wget may support this command in the future.
2257 @chapter Startup File
2258 @cindex startup file
2264 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2265 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2266 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2267 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2269 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2270 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2271 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2272 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2274 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2278 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2279 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2280 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2281 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2284 @node Wgetrc Location
2285 @section Wgetrc Location
2286 @cindex wgetrc location
2287 @cindex location of wgetrc
2289 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2290 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2291 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2292 from there, if it exists.
2294 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2295 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2296 further attempts will be made.
2298 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2300 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2301 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2302 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2303 Fascist admins, away!
2306 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2307 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2308 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2310 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2316 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2317 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2319 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2320 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2321 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2324 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2325 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2326 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2332 @node Wgetrc Commands
2333 @section Wgetrc Commands
2334 @cindex wgetrc commands
2336 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2337 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2338 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}. A fancier kind of
2339 Boolean allowed in some cases is the @dfn{lockable Boolean}, which may
2340 be set to @samp{on}, @samp{off}, @samp{always}, or @samp{never}. If an
2341 option is set to @samp{always} or @samp{never}, that value will be
2342 locked in for the duration of the Wget invocation---command-line options
2345 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2346 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2347 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2348 values can be any non-empty string.
2350 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2351 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2352 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2355 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2356 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2358 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2359 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2361 @item continue = on/off
2362 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2363 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2365 @item background = on/off
2366 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2369 @item backup_converted = on/off
2370 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2371 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2373 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2374 @c #### Document me!
2376 @item base = @var{string}
2377 Consider relative @sc{url}s in @sc{url} input files forced to be
2378 interpreted as @sc{html} as being relative to @var{string}---the same as
2381 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2382 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address} option.
2384 @item cache = on/off
2385 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2388 @item convert_links = on/off
2389 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2391 @item cookies = on/off
2392 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2394 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
2395 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies}.
2397 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
2398 Save cookies to @var{file}. See @samp{--save-cookies}.
2400 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2401 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2403 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2404 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components.
2406 @item debug = on/off
2407 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2409 @item delete_after = on/off
2410 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2412 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2413 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P}.
2415 @item dirstruct = on/off
2416 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2419 @item dns_cache = on/off
2420 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2421 option is normally used to turn it off. Same as @samp{--dns-cache}.
2423 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2424 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2426 @item domains = @var{string}
2427 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2429 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2430 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2431 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2432 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2433 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2434 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2435 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2437 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2438 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2439 the retrieval (50 by default).
2441 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2442 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2444 @item egd_file = @var{string}
2445 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2448 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2449 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2450 download---the same as @samp{-X} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2452 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2453 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2455 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2456 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2457 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2459 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2460 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, just like
2461 @samp{--follow-tags}.
2463 @item force_html = on/off
2464 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2465 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2467 @item ftp_passwd = @var{string}
2468 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2469 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2470 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2472 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2474 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2475 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2479 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2481 @item header = @var{string}
2482 Define an additional header, like @samp{--header}.
2484 @item html_extension = on/off
2485 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2486 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files without it, like
2489 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2490 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). The same as
2491 `--http-keep-alive'.
2493 @item http_passwd = @var{string}
2494 Set @sc{http} password.
2496 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2497 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2500 @item http_user = @var{string}
2501 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}.
2503 @item ignore_length = on/off
2504 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2505 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2507 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2508 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, just like
2509 @samp{--ignore-tags}.
2511 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2512 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2513 downloading---the same as @samp{-I}.
2515 @item inet4_only = on/off
2516 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2517 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2518 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2519 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2521 @item inet6_only = on/off
2522 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2523 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2526 @item input = @var{string}
2527 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i}.
2529 @item kill_longer = on/off
2530 Consider data longer than specified in content-length header as invalid
2531 (and retry getting it). The default behavior is to save as much data
2532 as there is, provided there is more than or equal to the value in
2533 @code{Content-Length}.
2535 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2536 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
2537 The same as @samp{--limit-rate}.
2539 @item logfile = @var{string}
2540 Set logfile---the same as @samp{-o}.
2542 @item login = @var{string}
2543 Your user name on the remote machine, for @sc{ftp}. Defaults to
2546 @item mirror = on/off
2547 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
2549 @item netrc = on/off
2550 Turn reading netrc on or off.
2552 @item noclobber = on/off
2555 @item no_parent = on/off
2556 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
2557 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2559 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
2560 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
2561 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
2563 @item output_document = @var{string}
2564 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O}.
2566 @item page_requisites = on/off
2567 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
2568 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
2570 @item passive_ftp = on/off/always/never
2571 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
2572 @samp{--passive-ftp} option. Some scripts and @samp{.pm} (Perl
2573 module) files download files using @samp{wget --passive-ftp}. If your
2574 firewall does not allow this, you can set @samp{passive_ftp = never}
2575 to override the command-line.
2577 @item post_data = @var{string}
2578 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
2579 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data}.
2581 @item post_file = @var{file}
2582 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
2583 @var{file} in the request body. The same as @samp{--post-file}.
2585 @item prefer_family = IPv4/IPv6/none
2586 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
2587 with specified address family first. IPv4 addresses are preferred by
2588 default. The same as @samp{--prefer-family}, which see for a detailed
2589 discussion of why this is useful.
2591 @item progress = @var{string}
2592 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are ``dot'' and
2595 @item protocol_directories = on/off
2596 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
2597 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
2599 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
2600 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like @samp{--proxy-user}.
2602 @item proxy_passwd = @var{string}
2603 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like @samp{--proxy-passwd}.
2605 @item quiet = on/off
2606 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
2608 @item quota = @var{quota}
2609 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
2610 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
2611 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
2612 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
2613 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
2614 to 5 mbytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
2617 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
2618 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as @samp{--read-timeout}.
2620 @item reclevel = @var{n}
2621 Recursion level---the same as @samp{-l}.
2623 @item recursive = on/off
2624 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
2626 @item referer = @var{string}
2627 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like @samp{--referer}. (Note it
2628 was the folks who wrote the @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of
2629 ``referrer'' wrong.)
2631 @item relative_only = on/off
2632 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
2635 @item remove_listing = on/off
2636 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
2637 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
2639 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
2640 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
2641 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
2643 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
2644 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
2645 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
2647 @item retry_connrefused = on/off
2648 When set to on, consider ``connection refused'' a transient
2649 error---the same as @samp{--retry-connrefused}.
2651 @item robots = on/off
2652 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
2653 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
2654 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
2655 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
2658 @item server_response = on/off
2659 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
2660 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
2662 @item span_hosts = on/off
2665 @item ssl_cert_file = @var{string}
2666 Set the client certificate file name to @var{string}. The same as
2667 @samp{--sslcertfile}.
2669 @item ssl_cert_key = @var{string}
2670 Set the certificate key file to @var{string}. The same as
2671 @samp{--sslcertkey}.
2673 @item ssl_ca_dir = @var{string}
2674 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2677 @item ssl_ca_file = @var{string}
2678 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{string}. The same
2679 as @samp{--sslcafile}.
2681 @item ssl_cert_type = 0/1
2682 Specify the type of the client certificate: 0 means @code{PEM}
2683 (default), 1 means @code{ASN1} (@code{DER}). The same as
2684 @samp{--sslcerttype}.
2686 @item ssl_check_cert = 0/1
2687 If this is set to 1, the server certificate is checked against the
2688 specified client authorities. The same as @samp{--sslcheckcert}.
2690 @item ssl_protocol = 0-3
2691 Choose the SSL protocol to be used. 0 means choose automatically, 1
2692 means force SSLv2, 2 means force SSLv3, and 3 means force TLSv1. The
2693 same as @samp{--sslprotocol}.
2695 @item strict_comments = on/off
2696 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
2698 @item timeout = @var{n}
2699 Set timeout value---the same as @samp{-T}.
2701 @item timestamping = on/off
2702 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
2704 @item tries = @var{n}
2705 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t}.
2707 @item use_proxy = on/off
2708 Turn proxy support on/off. The same as @samp{-Y}.
2710 @item verbose = on/off
2711 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
2713 @item wait = @var{n}
2714 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w}.
2716 @item waitretry = @var{n}
2717 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
2718 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry}. Note that this is turned on by
2719 default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
2721 @item randomwait = on/off
2722 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
2723 @samp{--random-wait}.
2727 @section Sample Wgetrc
2728 @cindex sample wgetrc
2730 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
2731 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
2732 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
2733 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
2735 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
2736 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
2740 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
2747 @c man begin EXAMPLES
2748 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
2752 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
2753 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
2754 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
2758 @section Simple Usage
2762 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
2765 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
2769 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
2770 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
2771 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
2772 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
2773 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
2774 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
2777 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
2781 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
2782 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
2783 shall use @samp{-t}.
2786 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
2789 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
2790 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
2793 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
2797 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
2801 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
2802 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
2805 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2810 @node Advanced Usage
2811 @section Advanced Usage
2815 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
2822 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
2826 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
2827 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
2828 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
2831 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
2835 The same as the above, but convert the links in the @sc{html} files to
2836 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
2839 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
2843 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
2844 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
2845 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
2846 references the downloaded links.
2849 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
2852 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
2853 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
2854 depending on where they were on the remote server.
2857 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
2858 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
2859 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
2860 subdirectory of the current directory.
2863 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
2864 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
2868 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
2872 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
2876 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
2879 wget --save-headers http://www.lycos.com/
2884 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
2888 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
2892 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
2893 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
2894 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
2898 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
2901 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
2902 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
2903 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
2904 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
2905 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
2909 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
2910 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
2914 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
2918 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
2919 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
2922 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
2925 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
2926 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
2929 @cindex redirecting output
2931 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
2935 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
2938 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
2939 documents from remote hotlists:
2942 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
2946 @node Very Advanced Usage
2947 @section Very Advanced Usage
2952 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
2953 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
2954 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
2955 to recheck a site each Sunday:
2959 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
2963 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
2964 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
2965 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
2966 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
2967 would look like this:
2970 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
2971 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
2975 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
2976 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
2977 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
2978 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
2979 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
2982 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
2983 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
2987 Or, with less typing:
2990 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
2999 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
3002 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers
3003 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
3004 * Mailing List:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
3005 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
3006 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
3007 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
3014 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
3015 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
3016 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
3017 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
3018 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
3019 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
3020 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
3021 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
3022 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
3023 using an authorized proxy.
3025 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
3026 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
3027 the following environment variables:
3031 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{http}
3035 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
3036 connections. It is quite common that @sc{http_proxy} and @sc{ftp_proxy}
3037 are set to the same @sc{url}.
3040 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
3041 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
3042 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
3046 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
3047 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3053 @itemx proxy = on/off
3054 This option may be used to turn the proxy support on or off. Proxy
3055 support is on by default, provided that the appropriate environment
3058 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3059 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3060 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3061 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3062 specified by the environment.
3065 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3066 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3067 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3068 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3069 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3071 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3072 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3073 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3074 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3078 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3081 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3082 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3083 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_passwd} to set the proxy
3084 username and password.
3087 @section Distribution
3088 @cindex latest version
3090 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3091 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3092 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3093 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3096 @section Mailing List
3097 @cindex mailing list
3100 There are several Wget-related mailing lists, all hosted by
3101 SunSITE.dk. The general discussion list is at
3102 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk}. It is the preferred place for bug reports
3103 and suggestions, as well as for discussion of development. You are
3104 invited to subscribe.
3106 To subscribe, simply send mail to @email{wget-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}
3107 and follow the instructions. Unsubscribe by mailing to
3108 @email{wget-unsubscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The mailing list is archived at
3109 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3110 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}.
3112 The second mailing list is at @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk}, and is
3113 used to submit patches for review by Wget developers. A ``patch'' is
3114 a textual representation of change to source code, readable by both
3115 humans and programs. The file @file{PATCHES} that comes with Wget
3116 covers the creation and submitting of patches in detail. Please don't
3117 send general suggestions or bug reports to @samp{wget-patches}; use it
3118 only for patch submissions.
3120 To subscribe, simply send mail to @email{wget-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}
3121 and follow the instructions. Unsubscribe by mailing to
3122 @email{wget-unsubscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The mailing list is archived at
3123 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3125 Finally, there is a read-only list at @email{wget-cvs@@sunsite.dk}
3126 that tracks commits to the Wget CVS repository. To subscribe to that
3127 list, send mail to @email{wget-cvs-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The list
3130 @node Reporting Bugs
3131 @section Reporting Bugs
3133 @cindex reporting bugs
3137 You are welcome to send bug reports about GNU Wget to
3138 @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}.
3140 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3145 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3146 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3147 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3148 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug.
3151 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3152 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 -Y0
3153 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3154 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3155 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3156 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3158 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3159 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3160 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3161 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3162 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3166 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3167 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3168 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3169 with debug support on.
3171 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3172 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3173 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3174 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3175 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3176 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3177 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3180 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3181 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3182 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3188 @section Portability
3190 @cindex operating systems
3192 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3193 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3194 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3195 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3197 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds
3198 of Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, OSF (aka
3199 Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some of
3200 those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3201 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3202 system, we would like to know about it.
3204 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3205 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3206 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3207 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3208 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3209 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3210 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3211 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3212 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3213 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3214 Windows-related features might look at them.
3218 @cindex signal handling
3221 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3222 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3223 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3224 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3225 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3228 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3231 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3234 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3235 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3240 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3243 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3244 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3245 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3248 @node Robot Exclusion
3249 @section Robot Exclusion
3250 @cindex robot exclusion
3252 @cindex server maintenance
3254 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3255 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3256 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3258 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3259 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3260 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3261 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3262 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3263 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3264 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3265 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3266 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3267 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3268 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3269 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3271 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3272 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3273 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3274 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3275 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3276 they will permit access.
3278 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3279 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3280 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3281 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3282 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3283 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3286 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3287 can downloads large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3288 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3289 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3292 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3295 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3296 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3297 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3298 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3301 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3302 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3303 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3304 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3305 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3306 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3307 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3308 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3310 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3312 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3313 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3314 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3318 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3321 This is explained in some detail at
3322 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3323 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3326 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3327 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3328 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3329 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3331 @node Security Considerations
3332 @section Security Considerations
3335 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3336 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3337 main issues, and some solutions.
3341 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3342 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3343 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3344 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3345 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3348 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3349 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3352 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3353 solution for this at the moment.
3356 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3357 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3358 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3363 @section Contributors
3364 @cindex contributors
3367 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org}.
3370 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org}.
3372 However, its development could never have gone as far as it has, were it
3373 not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature
3374 proposals, patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3376 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3380 Karsten Thygesen---donated system resources such as the mailing list,
3381 web space, and @sc{ftp} space, along with a lot of time to make these
3385 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3388 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3392 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3396 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3397 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3400 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3401 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3405 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3408 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the Italian translation.
3412 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3416 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3421 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3424 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3428 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization and other
3432 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3436 The people who provided donations for development, including Brian
3440 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
3441 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
3442 that make maintenance so much fun:
3462 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
3482 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
3485 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
3505 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
3524 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
3536 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
3537 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
3538 (Simos KSenitellis),
3546 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
3552 Alexander V. Lukyanov,
3583 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
3585 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}gues,
3588 Juan Jose Rodrigues,
3602 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
3616 Douglas E. Wegscheid,
3627 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
3628 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
3635 @cindex free software
3637 GNU Wget is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL),
3638 which makes it @dfn{free software}. Please note that ``free'' in ``free
3639 software'' refers to liberty, not price. As some people like to point
3640 out, it's the ``free'' of ``free speech'', not the ``free'' of ``free
3643 The exact and legally binding distribution terms are spelled out below.
3644 The GPL guarantees that you have the right (freedom) to run and change
3645 GNU Wget and distribute it to others, and even---if you want---charge
3646 money for doing any of those things. With these rights comes the
3647 obligation to distribute the source code along with the software and to
3648 grant your recipients the same rights and impose the same restrictions.
3650 This licensing model is also known as @dfn{open source} because it,
3651 among other things, makes sure that all recipients will receive the
3652 source code along with the program, and be able to improve it. The GNU
3653 project prefers the term ``free software'' for reasons outlined at
3654 @url{http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html}.
3656 The exact license terms are defined by this paragraph and the GNU
3657 General Public License it refers to:
3660 GNU Wget is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
3661 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
3662 Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
3663 option) any later version.
3665 GNU Wget is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
3666 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
3667 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
3670 A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as part of this
3671 manual; if you did not receive it, write to the Free Software
3672 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
3675 In addition to this, this manual is free in the same sense:
3678 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3679 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
3680 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
3681 Invariant Sections being ``GNU General Public License'' and ``GNU Free
3682 Documentation License'', with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
3683 Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section
3684 entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
3687 @c #### Maybe we should wrap these licenses in ifinfo? Stallman says
3688 @c that the GFDL needs to be present in the manual, and to me it would
3689 @c suck to include the license for the manual and not the license for
3692 The full texts of the GNU General Public License and of the GNU Free
3693 Documentation License are available below.
3696 * GNU General Public License::
3697 * GNU Free Documentation License::
3700 @node GNU General Public License
3701 @section GNU General Public License
3702 @center Version 2, June 1991
3705 Copyright @copyright{} 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3706 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
3708 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
3709 of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
3712 @unnumberedsec Preamble
3714 The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
3715 freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
3716 License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
3717 software---to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
3718 General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
3719 Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
3720 using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
3721 the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
3724 When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
3725 price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
3726 have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
3727 this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
3728 if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
3729 in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
3731 To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
3732 anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
3733 These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
3734 distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
3736 For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
3737 gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
3738 you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
3739 source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
3742 We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
3743 (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
3744 distribute and/or modify the software.
3746 Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
3747 that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
3748 software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
3749 want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so
3750 that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original
3751 authors' reputations.
3753 Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
3754 patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
3755 program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
3756 program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
3757 patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
3759 The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
3760 modification follow.
3763 @unnumberedsec TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
3766 @center TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
3771 This License applies to any program or other work which contains
3772 a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
3773 under the terms of this General Public License. The ``Program'', below,
3774 refers to any such program or work, and a ``work based on the Program''
3775 means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
3776 that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
3777 either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
3778 language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
3779 the term ``modification''.) Each licensee is addressed as ``you''.
3781 Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
3782 covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
3783 running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
3784 is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
3785 Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
3786 Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
3789 You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
3790 source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
3791 conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
3792 copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
3793 notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
3794 and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
3795 along with the Program.
3797 You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
3798 you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
3801 You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion
3802 of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and
3803 distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
3804 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
3808 You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
3809 stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
3812 You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
3813 whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
3814 part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
3815 parties under the terms of this License.
3818 If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
3819 when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
3820 interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
3821 announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
3822 notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
3823 a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
3824 these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
3825 License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
3826 does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
3827 the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
3830 These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
3831 identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
3832 and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
3833 themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
3834 sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
3835 distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
3836 on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
3837 this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
3838 entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
3840 Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
3841 your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
3842 exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
3843 collective works based on the Program.
3845 In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
3846 with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of
3847 a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under
3848 the scope of this License.
3851 You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
3852 under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
3853 Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
3857 Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
3858 source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
3859 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
3862 Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
3863 years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
3864 cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
3865 machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
3866 distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
3867 customarily used for software interchange; or,
3870 Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
3871 to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
3872 allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
3873 received the program in object code or executable form with such
3874 an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
3877 The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
3878 making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
3879 code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
3880 associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
3881 control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a
3882 special exception, the source code distributed need not include
3883 anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
3884 form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
3885 operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
3886 itself accompanies the executable.
3888 If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering
3889 access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent
3890 access to copy the source code from the same place counts as
3891 distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not
3892 compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
3895 You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
3896 except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt
3897 otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
3898 void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
3899 However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under
3900 this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
3901 parties remain in full compliance.
3904 You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
3905 signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
3906 distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
3907 prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by
3908 modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
3909 Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and
3910 all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying
3911 the Program or works based on it.
3914 Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
3915 Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
3916 original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
3917 these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further
3918 restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
3919 You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
3923 If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
3924 infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
3925 conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
3926 otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
3927 excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot
3928 distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
3929 License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
3930 may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent
3931 license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
3932 all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
3933 the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
3934 refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
3936 If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
3937 any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
3938 apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other
3941 It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
3942 patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any
3943 such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the
3944 integrity of the free software distribution system, which is
3945 implemented by public license practices. Many people have made
3946 generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed
3947 through that system in reliance on consistent application of that
3948 system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing
3949 to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot
3952 This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to
3953 be a consequence of the rest of this License.
3956 If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in
3957 certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
3958 original copyright holder who places the Program under this License
3959 may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding
3960 those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among
3961 countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates
3962 the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
3965 The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions
3966 of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will
3967 be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
3968 address new problems or concerns.
3970 Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
3971 specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and ``any
3972 later version'', you have the option of following the terms and conditions
3973 either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
3974 Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of
3975 this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
3979 If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
3980 programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author
3981 to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free
3982 Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes
3983 make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals
3984 of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and
3985 of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
3988 @heading NO WARRANTY
3996 BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
3997 FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN
3998 OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
3999 PROVIDE THE PROGRAM ``AS IS'' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
4000 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
4001 MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS
4002 TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
4003 PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING,
4004 REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
4007 IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
4008 WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
4009 REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
4010 INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING
4011 OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
4012 TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY
4013 YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER
4014 PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE
4015 POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
4019 @heading END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
4022 @center END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
4026 @unnumberedsec How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
4028 If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
4029 possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
4030 free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
4032 To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest
4033 to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
4034 convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
4035 the ``copyright'' line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
4038 @var{one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does.}
4039 Copyright (C) 20@var{yy} @var{name of author}
4041 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
4042 modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
4043 as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
4044 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
4046 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
4047 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
4048 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
4049 GNU General Public License for more details.
4051 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
4052 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
4053 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
4056 Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
4058 If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
4059 when it starts in an interactive mode:
4062 Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 20@var{yy} @var{name of author}
4063 Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
4064 type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome
4065 to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'
4069 The hypothetical commands @samp{show w} and @samp{show c} should show
4070 the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the
4071 commands you use may be called something other than @samp{show w} and
4072 @samp{show c}; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items---whatever
4075 You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
4076 school, if any, to sign a ``copyright disclaimer'' for the program, if
4077 necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
4081 Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright
4082 interest in the program `Gnomovision'
4083 (which makes passes at compilers) written
4086 @var{signature of Ty Coon}, 1 April 1989
4087 Ty Coon, President of Vice
4091 This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
4092 proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may
4093 consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
4094 library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General
4095 Public License instead of this License.
4100 @unnumbered Concept Index