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 1.2 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 others
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.
133 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
137 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
138 Wget can follow links in @sc{html} and @sc{xhtml} pages and create local
139 versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of
140 the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ``recursive
141 downloading.'' While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion
142 Standard (@file{/robots.txt}). Wget can be instructed to convert the
143 links in downloaded @sc{html} files to the local files for offline
148 File name wildcard matching and recursive mirroring of directories are
149 available when retrieving via @sc{ftp}. Wget can read the time-stamp
150 information given by both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} servers, and store it
151 locally. Thus Wget can see if the remote file has changed since last
152 retrieval, and automatically retrieve the new version if it has. This
153 makes Wget suitable for mirroring of @sc{ftp} sites, as well as home
158 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
162 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
163 Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network
164 connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will
165 keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server
166 supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the
167 download from where it left off.
171 Wget supports proxy servers, which can lighten the network load, speed
172 up retrieval and provide access behind firewalls. However, if you are
173 behind a firewall that requires that you use a socks style gateway,
174 you can get the socks library and build Wget with support for socks.
175 Wget uses the passive @sc{ftp} downloading by default, active @sc{ftp}
179 Wget supports IP version 6, the next generation of IP. IPv6 is
180 autodetected at compile-time, and can be disabled at either build or
181 run time. Binaries built with IPv6 support work well in both
182 IPv4-only and dual family environments.
185 Built-in features offer mechanisms to tune which links you wish to follow
186 (@pxref{Following Links}).
189 The progress of individual downloads is traced using a progress gauge.
190 Interactive downloads are tracked using a ``thermometer''-style gauge,
191 whereas non-interactive ones are traced with dots, each dot
192 representing a fixed amount of data received (1KB by default). Either
193 gauge can be customized to your preferences.
196 Most of the features are fully configurable, either through command line
197 options, or via the initialization file @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup
198 File}). Wget allows you to define @dfn{global} startup files
199 (@file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default) for site settings.
204 @item /usr/local/etc/wgetrc
205 Default location of the @dfn{global} startup file.
214 Finally, GNU Wget is free software. This means that everyone may use
215 it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
216 Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation
227 By default, Wget is very simple to invoke. The basic syntax is:
230 @c man begin SYNOPSIS
231 wget [@var{option}]@dots{} [@var{URL}]@dots{}
235 Wget will simply download all the @sc{url}s specified on the command
236 line. @var{URL} is a @dfn{Uniform Resource Locator}, as defined below.
238 However, you may wish to change some of the default parameters of
239 Wget. You can do it two ways: permanently, adding the appropriate
240 command to @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup File}), or specifying it on
246 * Basic Startup Options::
247 * Logging and Input File Options::
249 * Directory Options::
251 * HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options::
253 * Recursive Retrieval Options::
254 * Recursive Accept/Reject Options::
262 @dfn{URL} is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
263 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
264 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the @sc{url} syntax as per
265 @sc{rfc1738}. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
269 http://host[:port]/directory/file
270 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
273 You can also encode your username and password within a @sc{url}:
276 ftp://user:password@@host/path
277 http://user:password@@host/path
280 Either @var{user} or @var{password}, or both, may be left out. If you
281 leave out either the @sc{http} username or password, no authentication
282 will be sent. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} username, @samp{anonymous}
283 will be used. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} password, your email
284 address will be supplied as a default password.@footnote{If you have a
285 @file{.netrc} file in your home directory, password will also be
288 @strong{Important Note}: if you specify a password-containing @sc{url}
289 on the command line, the username and password will be plainly visible
290 to all users on the system, by way of @code{ps}. On multi-user systems,
291 this is a big security risk. To work around it, use @code{wget -i -}
292 and feed the @sc{url}s to Wget's standard input, each on a separate
293 line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
295 You can encode unsafe characters in a @sc{url} as @samp{%xy}, @code{xy}
296 being the hexadecimal representation of the character's @sc{ascii}
297 value. Some common unsafe characters include @samp{%} (quoted as
298 @samp{%25}), @samp{:} (quoted as @samp{%3A}), and @samp{@@} (quoted as
299 @samp{%40}). Refer to @sc{rfc1738} for a comprehensive list of unsafe
302 Wget also supports the @code{type} feature for @sc{ftp} @sc{url}s. By
303 default, @sc{ftp} documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type
304 @samp{i}), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another
305 useful mode is the @samp{a} (@dfn{ASCII}) mode, which converts the line
306 delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful
307 for text files. Here is an example:
310 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
313 Two alternative variants of @sc{url} specification are also supported,
314 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
316 @sc{ftp}-only syntax (supported by @code{NcFTP}):
321 @sc{http}-only syntax (introduced by @code{Netscape}):
326 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
327 supported in the future.
329 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
330 not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
331 with your favorite browser, like @code{Lynx} or @code{Netscape}.
336 @section Option Syntax
337 @cindex option syntax
338 @cindex syntax of options
340 Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process command-line arguments, every
341 option has a long form along with the short one. Long options are
342 more convenient to remember, but take time to type. You may freely
343 mix different option styles, or specify options after the command-line
344 arguments. Thus you may write:
347 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ -o log
350 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may
351 be omitted. Instead @samp{-o log} you can write @samp{-olog}.
353 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
360 This is a complete equivalent of:
363 wget -d -r -c @var{URL}
366 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
367 terminate them with @samp{--}. So the following will try to download
368 @sc{url} @samp{-x}, reporting failure to @file{log}:
374 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
375 that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be useful to
376 clear the @file{.wgetrc} settings. For instance, if your @file{.wgetrc}
377 sets @code{exclude_directories} to @file{/cgi-bin}, the following
378 example will first reset it, and then set it to exclude @file{/~nobody}
379 and @file{/~somebody}. You can also clear the lists in @file{.wgetrc}
380 (@pxref{Wgetrc Syntax}).
383 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
386 Most options that do not accept arguments are @dfn{boolean} options,
387 so named because their state can be captured with a yes-or-no
388 (``boolean'') variable. For example, @samp{--follow-ftp} tells Wget
389 to follow FTP links from HTML files and, on the other hand,
390 @samp{--no-glob} tells it not to perform file globbing on FTP URLs. A
391 boolean option is either @dfn{affirmative} or @dfn{negative}
392 (beginning with @samp{--no}). All such options share several
395 Unless stated otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is
396 the opposite of what the option accomplishes. For example, the
397 documented existence of @samp{--follow-ftp} assumes that the default
398 is to @emph{not} follow FTP links from HTML pages.
400 Affirmative options can be negated by prepending the @samp{--no-} to
401 the option name; negative options can be negated by omitting the
402 @samp{--no-} prefix. This might seem superfluous---if the default for
403 an affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide a way
404 to explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in fact change
405 the default. For instance, using @code{follow_ftp = off} in
406 @file{.wgetrc} makes Wget @emph{not} follow FTP links by default, and
407 using @samp{--no-follow-ftp} is the only way to restore the factory
408 default from the command line.
410 @node Basic Startup Options
411 @section Basic Startup Options
416 Display the version of Wget.
420 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
424 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
425 specified via the @samp{-o}, output is redirected to @file{wget-log}.
427 @cindex execute wgetrc command
428 @item -e @var{command}
429 @itemx --execute @var{command}
430 Execute @var{command} as if it were a part of @file{.wgetrc}
431 (@pxref{Startup File}). A command thus invoked will be executed
432 @emph{after} the commands in @file{.wgetrc}, thus taking precedence over
433 them. If you need to specify more than one wgetrc command, use multiple
434 instances of @samp{-e}.
438 @node Logging and Input File Options
439 @section Logging and Input File Options
444 @item -o @var{logfile}
445 @itemx --output-file=@var{logfile}
446 Log all messages to @var{logfile}. The messages are normally reported
449 @cindex append to log
450 @item -a @var{logfile}
451 @itemx --append-output=@var{logfile}
452 Append to @var{logfile}. This is the same as @samp{-o}, only it appends
453 to @var{logfile} instead of overwriting the old log file. If
454 @var{logfile} does not exist, a new file is created.
459 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
460 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
461 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in
462 which case @samp{-d} will not work. Please note that compiling with
463 debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will
464 @emph{not} print any debug info unless requested with @samp{-d}.
465 @xref{Reporting Bugs}, for more information on how to use @samp{-d} for
471 Turn off Wget's output.
476 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output
481 Turn off verbose without being completely quiet (use @samp{-q} for
482 that), which means that error messages and basic information still get
487 @itemx --input-file=@var{file}
488 Read @sc{url}s from @var{file}. If @samp{-} is specified as
489 @var{file}, @sc{url}s are read from the standard input. (Use
490 @samp{./-} to read from a file literally named @samp{-}.)
492 If this function is used, no @sc{url}s need be present on the command
493 line. If there are @sc{url}s both on the command line and in an input
494 file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to be
495 retrieved. The @var{file} need not be an @sc{html} document (but no
496 harm if it is)---it is enough if the @sc{url}s are just listed
499 However, if you specify @samp{--force-html}, the document will be
500 regarded as @samp{html}. In that case you may have problems with
501 relative links, which you can solve either by adding @code{<base
502 href="@var{url}">} to the documents or by specifying
503 @samp{--base=@var{url}} on the command line.
508 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an @sc{html}
509 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
510 @sc{html} files on your local disk, by adding @code{<base
511 href="@var{url}">} to @sc{html}, or using the @samp{--base} command-line
514 @cindex base for relative links in input file
516 @itemx --base=@var{URL}
517 When used in conjunction with @samp{-F}, prepends @var{URL} to relative
518 links in the file specified by @samp{-i}.
521 @node Download Options
522 @section Download Options
526 @cindex client IP address
527 @cindex IP address, client
528 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
529 When making client TCP/IP connections, bind to @var{ADDRESS} on
530 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
531 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
536 @cindex number of retries
537 @item -t @var{number}
538 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
539 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
540 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
541 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
542 which are not retried.
545 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
546 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all
547 will be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @samp{-}
548 is used as @var{file}, documents will be printed to standard output,
549 disabling link conversion. (Use @samp{./-} to print to a file
550 literally named @samp{-}.)
552 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only well-defined for
553 downloading a single document.
555 @cindex clobbering, file
556 @cindex downloading multiple times
560 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
561 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
562 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
563 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
565 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, or @samp{-r},
566 downloading the same file in the same directory will result in the
567 original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy being
568 named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet again, the
569 third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on. When
570 @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will
571 refuse to download newer copies of @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore,
572 ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a misnomer in this mode---it's not
573 clobbering that's prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
574 preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version saving that's
577 When running Wget with @samp{-r}, but without @samp{-N} or @samp{-nc},
578 re-downloading a file will result in the new copy simply overwriting the
579 old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent this behavior, instead causing the
580 original version to be preserved and any newer copies on the server to
583 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r}, the
584 decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy of a file depends
585 on the local and remote timestamp and size of the file
586 (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the same
589 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
590 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
591 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
593 @cindex continue retrieval
594 @cindex incomplete downloads
595 @cindex resume download
598 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
599 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
600 by another program. For instance:
603 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
606 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
607 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
608 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
609 length of the local file.
611 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
612 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
613 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
614 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
615 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
617 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
618 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
621 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
622 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
623 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
624 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
625 start from scratch, remove the file.
627 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
628 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
629 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
630 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
631 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
632 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
634 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
635 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
636 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
637 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
638 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
639 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
640 collection or log file.
642 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
643 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
644 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
645 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
646 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
647 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
649 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
650 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
651 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
652 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
654 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
655 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
657 @cindex progress indicator
659 @item --progress=@var{type}
660 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
661 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
663 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
664 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
665 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
668 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
669 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
670 fixed amount of downloaded data.
672 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
673 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
674 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
675 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
676 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
677 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
678 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
679 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
680 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
682 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
683 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
684 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
685 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
686 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
689 @itemx --timestamping
690 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
692 @cindex server response, print
694 @itemx --server-response
695 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
698 @cindex Wget as spider
701 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
702 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
703 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
706 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
709 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
710 functionality of real web spiders.
714 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
715 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
716 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
717 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
719 When interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and
720 abort the operation if it takes too long. This prevents anomalies
721 like hanging reads and infinite connects. The only timeout enabled by
722 default is a 900-second read timeout. Setting a timeout to 0 disables
723 it altogether. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to
724 change the default timeout settings.
726 All timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as
727 subsecond values. For example, @samp{0.1} seconds is a legal (though
728 unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts are useful for checking
729 server response times or for testing network latency.
733 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
734 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
735 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
736 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
739 @cindex connect timeout
740 @cindex timeout, connect
741 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
742 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
743 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
744 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
747 @cindex timeout, read
748 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
749 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. The
750 ``time'' of this timeout refers @dfn{idle time}: if, at any point in
751 the download, no data is received for more than the specified number
752 of seconds, reading fails and the download is restarted. This option
753 does not directly affect the duration of the entire download.
755 Of course, the remote server may choose to terminate the connection
756 sooner than this option requires. The default read timeout is 900
759 @cindex bandwidth, limit
761 @cindex limit bandwidth
762 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
763 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
764 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
765 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
766 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for whatever
767 reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available bandwidth.
769 This option allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction
770 with power suffixes; for example, @samp{--limit-rate=2.5k} is a legal
773 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
774 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
775 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
776 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
777 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
778 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
782 @item -w @var{seconds}
783 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
784 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
785 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
786 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
787 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
788 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
790 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
791 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
792 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry.
794 @cindex retries, waiting between
795 @cindex waiting between retries
796 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
797 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
798 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
799 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
800 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
801 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify. Therefore,
802 a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55
805 Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
811 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
812 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
813 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
814 to vary between 0 and 2 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
815 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
816 presence from such analysis.
818 A recent article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
819 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
820 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
821 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
824 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
825 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
830 Don't use proxies, even if the appropriate @code{*_proxy} environment
833 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
837 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
838 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
839 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
840 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
842 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
843 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
844 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
845 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
846 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
847 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
848 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
850 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
853 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
855 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
856 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
857 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
858 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
861 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
862 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
863 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
864 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
865 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
866 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
867 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
870 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
873 @cindex file names, restrict
874 @cindex Windows file names
875 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{mode}
876 Change which characters found in remote URLs may show up in local file
877 names generated from those URLs. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
878 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
879 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
882 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid as part of
883 file names on your operating system, as well as control characters that
884 are typically unprintable. This option is useful for changing these
885 defaults, either because you are downloading to a non-native partition,
886 or because you want to disable escaping of the control characters.
888 When mode is set to ``unix'', Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
889 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
890 default on Unix-like OS'es.
892 When mode is set to ``windows'', Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
893 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
894 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
895 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
896 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
897 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
898 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
899 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
900 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
901 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
903 If you append @samp{,nocontrol} to the mode, as in
904 @samp{unix,nocontrol}, escaping of the control characters is also
905 switched off. You can use @samp{--restrict-file-names=nocontrol} to
906 turn off escaping of control characters without affecting the choice of
907 the OS to use as file name restriction mode.
914 Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With @samp{--inet4-only}
915 or @samp{-4}, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA
916 records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in
917 URLs. Conversely, with @samp{--inet6-only} or @samp{-6}, Wget will
918 only connect to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
920 Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware
921 Wget will use the address family specified by the host's DNS record.
922 If the DNS specifies both an A record and an AAAA record, Wget will
923 try them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to.
925 These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or
926 IPv6 address families on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging
927 or to deal with broken network configuration. Only one of
928 @samp{--inet6-only} and @samp{--inet4-only} may be specified in the
929 same command. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without
932 @item --prefer-family=IPv4/IPv6/none
933 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
934 with specified address family first. IPv4 addresses are preferred by
937 This avoids spurious errors and connect attempts when accessing hosts
938 that resolve to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4 networks. For
939 example, @samp{www.kame.net} resolves to
940 @samp{2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085} and to
941 @samp{203.178.141.194}. When the preferred family is @code{IPv4}, the
942 IPv4 address is used first; when the preferred family is @code{IPv6},
943 the IPv6 address is used first; if the specified value is @code{none},
944 the address order returned by DNS is used without change.
946 Unlike @samp{-4} and @samp{-6}, this option doesn't inhibit access to
947 any address family, it only changes the @emph{order} in which the
948 addresses are accessed. Also note that the reordering performed by
949 this option is @dfn{stable}---it doesn't affect order of addresses of
950 the same family. That is, the relative order of all IPv4 addresses
951 and of all IPv6 addresses remains intact in all cases.
953 @item --retry-connrefused
954 Consider ``connection refused'' a transient error and try again.
955 Normally Wget gives up on a URL when it is unable to connect to the
956 site because failure to connect is taken as a sign that the server is
957 not running at all and that retries would not help. This option is
958 for mirroring unreliable sites whose servers tend to disappear for
959 short periods of time.
963 @cindex authentication
964 @item --user=@var{user}
965 @itemx --password=@var{password}
966 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for both
967 @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval. These parameters can be overridden
968 using the @samp{--ftp-user} and @samp{--ftp-password} options for
969 @sc{ftp} connections and the @samp{--http-user} and @samp{--http-password}
970 options for @sc{http} connections.
973 @node Directory Options
974 @section Directory Options
978 @itemx --no-directories
979 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
980 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
981 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
982 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
985 @itemx --force-directories
986 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
987 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
988 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
989 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
992 @itemx --no-host-directories
993 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
994 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
995 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
998 @item --protocol-directories
999 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
1000 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
1001 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
1003 @cindex cut directories
1004 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
1005 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
1006 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
1009 Take, for example, the directory at
1010 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
1011 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
1012 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
1013 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
1014 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
1015 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
1016 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
1020 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
1022 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
1023 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
1025 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
1030 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
1031 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
1032 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
1033 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
1034 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
1036 @cindex directory prefix
1037 @item -P @var{prefix}
1038 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
1039 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
1040 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
1041 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
1046 @section HTTP Options
1049 @cindex .html extension
1051 @itemx --html-extension
1052 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
1053 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
1054 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
1055 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
1056 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
1057 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1058 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1059 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1060 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1062 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1063 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1064 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1065 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1066 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1067 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1068 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1069 Retrieval Options}).
1072 @cindex http password
1073 @cindex authentication
1074 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1075 @itemx --http-password=@var{password}
1076 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1077 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1078 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure) or the
1079 @code{digest} authentication scheme.
1081 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1082 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1083 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1084 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1085 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1086 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1087 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1090 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1097 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1098 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1099 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1100 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1101 documents on proxy servers.
1103 Caching is allowed by default.
1107 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1108 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1109 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1110 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1111 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1112 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1113 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1115 @cindex loading cookies
1116 @cindex cookies, loading
1117 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1118 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1119 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1120 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1122 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1123 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1124 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1125 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1126 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1127 proves your identity.
1129 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1130 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1131 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1132 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1133 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1134 cookie files in different locations:
1138 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1140 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1141 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1142 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1143 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1144 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1146 @item Internet Explorer.
1147 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1148 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1149 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1151 @item Other browsers.
1152 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1153 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1154 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1157 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1158 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1159 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1160 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1161 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1164 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1167 @cindex saving cookies
1168 @cindex cookies, saving
1169 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1170 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1171 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1172 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1174 @cindex cookies, session
1175 @cindex session cookies
1176 @item --keep-session-cookies
1177 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1178 cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they are
1179 meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit the browser.
1180 Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
1181 the home page before you can access some pages. With this option,
1182 multiple Wget runs are considered a single browser session as far as
1183 the site is concerned.
1185 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1186 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1187 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1188 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1189 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1190 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1191 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1193 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1194 @cindex ignore length
1195 @item --ignore-length
1196 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1197 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1198 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1199 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1200 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1203 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1204 if it never existed.
1207 @item --header=@var{header-line}
1208 Send @var{header-line} along with the rest of the headers in each
1209 @sc{http} request. The supplied header is sent as-is, which means it
1210 must contain name and value separated by colon, and must not contain
1213 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1214 @samp{--header} more than once.
1218 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1219 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1220 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1224 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1225 previous user-defined headers.
1227 As of Wget 1.10, this option can be used to override headers otherwise
1228 generated automatically. This example instructs Wget to connect to
1229 localhost, but to specify @samp{foo.bar} in the @code{Host} header:
1232 wget --header="Host: foo.bar" http://localhost/
1235 In versions of Wget prior to 1.10 such use of @samp{--header} caused
1236 sending of duplicate headers.
1239 @cindex proxy password
1240 @cindex proxy authentication
1241 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1242 @itemx --proxy-password=@var{password}
1243 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1244 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1245 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1247 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-password}
1248 pertain here as well.
1250 @cindex http referer
1251 @cindex referer, http
1252 @item --referer=@var{url}
1253 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1254 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1255 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1256 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1258 @cindex server response, save
1259 @item --save-headers
1260 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1261 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1264 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1265 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1266 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1268 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1269 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1270 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1271 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1272 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1275 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1276 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1277 While this is not such a bad idea in theory, it has been abused by
1278 servers denying information to clients other than (historically)
1279 Netscape or, more frequently, Microsoft Internet Explorer. This
1280 option allows you to change the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget.
1281 Use of this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
1284 Specifying empty user agent with @samp{--user-agent=""} instructs Wget
1285 not to send the @code{User-Agent} header in @sc{http} requests.
1288 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1289 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1290 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data
1291 in the request body. @code{--post-data} sends @var{string} as data,
1292 whereas @code{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}. Other than
1293 that, they work in exactly the same way.
1295 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1296 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1297 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1298 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1299 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1300 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1301 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1302 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1303 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1305 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it
1306 will not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because
1307 URLs that process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular
1308 page, which does not desire or accept POST. It is not completely
1309 clear that this behavior is optimal; if it doesn't work out, it might
1310 be changed in the future.
1312 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1313 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1318 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1319 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1320 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1321 http://server.com/auth.php
1323 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1324 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1325 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1329 If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication,
1330 the above will not work because @samp{--save-cookies} will not save
1331 them (and neither will browsers) and the @file{cookies.txt} file will
1332 be empty. In that case use @samp{--keep-session-cookies} along with
1333 @samp{--save-cookies} to force saving of session cookies.
1336 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1337 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1340 To support encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1341 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1342 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1345 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1346 @item --secure-protocol=@var{protocol}
1347 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto},
1348 @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. If @samp{auto} is used,
1349 the SSL library is given the liberty of choosing the appropriate
1350 protocol automatically, which is achieved by sending an SSLv2 greeting
1351 and announcing support for SSLv3 and TLSv1. This is the default.
1353 Specifying @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, or @samp{TLSv1} forces the use
1354 of the corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old and
1355 buggy SSL server implementations that make it hard for OpenSSL to
1356 choose the correct protocol version. Fortunately, such servers are
1359 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1360 @item --no-check-certificate
1361 Don't check the server certificate against the available certificate
1362 authorities. Also don't require the URL host name to match the common
1363 name presented by the certificate.
1365 As of Wget 1.10, the default is to verify the server's certificate
1366 against the recognized certificate authorities, breaking the SSL
1367 handshake and aborting the download if the verification fails.
1368 Although this provides more secure downloads, it does break
1369 interoperability with some sites that worked with previous Wget
1370 versions, particularly those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise
1371 invalid certificates. This option forces an ``insecure'' mode of
1372 operation that turns the certificate verification errors into warnings
1373 and allows you to proceed.
1375 If you encounter ``certificate verification'' errors or ones saying
1376 that ``common name doesn't match requested host name'', you can use
1377 this option to bypass the verification and proceed with the download.
1378 @emph{Only use this option if you are otherwise convinced of the
1379 site's authenticity, or if you really don't care about the validity of
1380 its certificate.} It is almost always a bad idea not to check the
1381 certificates when transmitting confidential or important data.
1383 @cindex SSL certificate
1384 @item --certificate=@var{file}
1385 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1386 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1387 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1390 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1391 @item --certificate-type=@var{type}
1392 Specify the type of the client certificate. Legal values are
1393 @samp{PEM} (assumed by default) and @samp{DER}, also known as
1396 @item --private-key=@var{file}
1397 Read the private key from @var{file}. This allows you to provide the
1398 private key in a file separate from the certificate.
1400 @item --private-key-type=@var{type}
1401 Specify the type of the private key. Accepted values are @samp{PEM}
1402 (the default) and @samp{DER}.
1404 @item --ca-certificate=@var{file}
1405 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities
1406 (``CA'') to verify the peers. The certificates must be in PEM format.
1408 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1409 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1411 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1412 @item --ca-directory=@var{directory}
1413 Specifies directory containing CA certificates in PEM format. Each
1414 file contains one CA certificate, and the file name is based on a hash
1415 value derived from the certificate. This is achieved by processing a
1416 certificate directory with the @code{c_rehash} utility supplied with
1417 OpenSSL. Using @samp{--ca-directory} is more efficient than
1418 @samp{--ca-certificate} when many certificates are installed because
1419 it allows Wget to fetch certificates on demand.
1421 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1422 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1424 @cindex entropy, specifying source of
1425 @cindex randomness, specifying source of
1426 @item --random-file=@var{file}
1427 Use @var{file} as the source of random data for seeding the
1428 pseudo-random number generator on systems without @file{/dev/random}.
1430 On such systems the SSL library needs an external source of randomness
1431 to initialize. Randomness may be provided by EGD (see
1432 @samp{--egd-file} below) or read from an external source specified by
1433 the user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random data
1434 in @code{$RANDFILE} or, if that is unset, in @file{$HOME/.rnd}. If
1435 none of those are available, it is likely that SSL encryption will not
1438 If you're getting the ``Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG; disabling SSL.''
1439 error, you should provide random data using some of the methods
1443 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1444 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1445 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1446 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1447 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1448 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1449 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1451 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1452 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1453 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1454 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1456 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1457 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1458 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1462 @section FTP Options
1466 @cindex ftp password
1467 @cindex ftp authentication
1468 @item --ftp-user=@var{user}
1469 @itemx --ftp-password=@var{password}
1470 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1471 @sc{ftp} server. Without this, or the corresponding startup option,
1472 the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, normally used for anonymous
1475 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1476 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1477 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1478 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1479 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1480 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1481 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1484 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1488 @cindex .listing files, removing
1489 @item --no-remove-listing
1490 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1491 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1492 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1493 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1494 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1495 you're running is complete).
1497 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1498 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1499 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1500 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1501 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1502 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1503 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1504 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1505 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1507 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1508 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1509 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1510 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1511 will be overwritten.
1513 @cindex globbing, toggle
1515 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1516 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1517 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1521 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1524 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1525 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1528 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1529 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1530 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1531 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1534 @item --no-passive-ftp
1535 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1536 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1537 connection rather than the other way around.
1539 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1540 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1541 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1542 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1543 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1544 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1546 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1547 @item --retr-symlinks
1548 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1549 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1550 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1551 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1552 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1554 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1555 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1556 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1557 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1560 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1561 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1562 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1565 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1566 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1567 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1568 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1569 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1570 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1571 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1572 the load on the server.
1574 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1575 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1576 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1579 @node Recursive Retrieval Options
1580 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1585 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1588 @item -l @var{depth}
1589 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1590 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1591 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1593 @cindex proxy filling
1594 @cindex delete after retrieval
1595 @cindex filling proxy cache
1596 @item --delete-after
1597 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1598 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1599 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1602 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1605 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1608 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1609 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1610 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1611 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1612 created in the first place.
1614 @cindex conversion of links
1615 @cindex link conversion
1617 @itemx --convert-links
1618 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1619 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1620 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1621 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1624 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1628 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1629 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1631 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1632 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1633 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1634 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1637 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1638 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1640 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1641 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1642 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1643 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1646 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1647 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1648 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1649 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1650 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1653 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1654 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1655 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1657 @cindex backing up converted files
1659 @itemx --backup-converted
1660 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1661 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1666 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1667 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1668 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1669 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1671 @cindex page requisites
1672 @cindex required images, downloading
1674 @itemx --page-requisites
1675 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1676 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1677 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1679 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1680 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1681 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1682 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1683 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1686 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1687 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1688 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1689 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1690 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1692 If one executes the command:
1695 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1698 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1699 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1700 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1701 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1702 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1705 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1708 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1709 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1712 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1715 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1716 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1719 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1722 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1723 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1724 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1725 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1726 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1727 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1730 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1733 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1734 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1735 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1736 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1737 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1738 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1741 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1744 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1745 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1746 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1749 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1750 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1751 @item --strict-comments
1752 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1753 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1755 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1756 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1757 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1758 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1759 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1760 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1761 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1763 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1764 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1765 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1766 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1767 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1768 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1769 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1770 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1771 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1773 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1774 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1775 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1776 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1777 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1780 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1781 option to turn it on.
1784 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1785 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1788 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1789 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1790 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1791 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files} for more details).
1793 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1794 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1795 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1796 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1798 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1799 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed.
1800 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1802 @cindex follow FTP links
1804 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1805 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1807 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1808 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1809 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1810 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1811 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1812 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1813 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1815 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1816 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1817 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1818 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
1820 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
1821 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
1824 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1827 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
1828 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
1829 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
1830 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
1831 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
1832 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
1836 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
1837 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1841 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
1842 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
1843 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
1846 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
1847 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
1848 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits} for more details.) Elements
1849 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1852 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
1853 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
1854 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits} for more details.) Elements of
1855 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1859 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
1860 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
1861 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
1862 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
1867 @node Recursive Download
1868 @chapter Recursive Download
1871 @cindex recursive download
1873 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
1874 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
1875 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
1877 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} from
1878 the given @sc{url}, documents, retrieving the files the @sc{html}
1879 document was referring to, through markup like @code{href}, or
1880 @code{src}. If the freshly downloaded file is also of type
1881 @code{text/html} or @code{application/xhtml+xml}, it will be parsed and
1884 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html} content is
1885 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
1886 @sc{html} document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
1887 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
1888 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
1889 until the specified maximum depth.
1891 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
1892 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
1894 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
1895 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
1896 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
1897 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
1898 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
1901 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
1902 the one found on the remote server.
1904 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
1905 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
1906 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
1907 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
1909 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
1910 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
1911 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
1912 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
1913 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
1914 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
1915 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
1917 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
1918 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
1919 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
1920 consume memory and CPU.
1922 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
1923 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
1924 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
1925 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
1926 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
1927 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
1928 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
1931 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
1934 @node Following Links
1935 @chapter Following Links
1937 @cindex following links
1939 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
1940 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
1941 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
1943 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
1944 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
1945 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
1947 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
1948 links it will follow.
1951 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
1952 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
1953 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
1954 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
1955 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
1958 @node Spanning Hosts
1959 @section Spanning Hosts
1960 @cindex spanning hosts
1961 @cindex hosts, spanning
1963 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
1964 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
1965 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
1966 your Wget into a small version of google.
1968 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
1969 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
1970 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
1971 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
1972 pages refer to both interchangeably.
1975 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
1977 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
1978 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
1979 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
1980 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
1981 up much more data than you have intended.
1983 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
1985 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
1986 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
1987 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
1988 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
1989 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
1990 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
1993 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
1996 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
1997 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
1999 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
2001 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
2002 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
2003 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
2004 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
2005 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
2009 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
2015 @node Types of Files
2016 @section Types of Files
2017 @cindex types of files
2019 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
2020 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
2021 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
2022 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
2024 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
2025 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
2028 @cindex accept wildcards
2029 @cindex accept suffixes
2030 @cindex wildcards, accept
2031 @cindex suffixes, accept
2033 @item -A @var{acclist}
2034 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
2035 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
2036 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
2037 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
2038 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
2039 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
2040 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
2042 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
2043 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
2044 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
2045 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
2046 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
2047 a description of how pattern matching works.
2049 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
2050 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
2052 @cindex reject wildcards
2053 @cindex reject suffixes
2054 @cindex wildcards, reject
2055 @cindex suffixes, reject
2056 @item -R @var{rejlist}
2057 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
2058 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
2059 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
2060 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
2061 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
2063 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
2064 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
2065 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
2066 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
2067 expansion by the shell.
2070 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
2071 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
2072 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
2073 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
2075 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
2076 files; Wget must load all the @sc{html}s to know where to go at
2077 all---recursive retrieval would make no sense otherwise.
2079 @node Directory-Based Limits
2080 @section Directory-Based Limits
2082 @cindex directory limits
2084 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
2085 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
2086 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
2087 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
2088 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
2089 @file{/dev} directories.
2091 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
2092 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
2093 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
2095 @cindex directories, include
2096 @cindex include directories
2097 @cindex accept directories
2100 @itemx --include @var{list}
2101 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
2102 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
2103 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
2104 directories are absolute paths.
2106 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
2107 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
2108 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
2111 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
2114 @cindex directories, exclude
2115 @cindex exclude directories
2116 @cindex reject directories
2118 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
2119 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
2120 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
2121 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
2122 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
2123 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
2125 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
2126 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
2127 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
2128 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
2133 @itemx no_parent = on
2134 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
2135 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
2136 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
2137 parent directory/directories.
2139 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
2140 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
2141 Supposing you issue Wget with:
2144 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
2147 You may rest assured that none of the references to
2148 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
2149 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
2150 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
2151 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
2152 intelligent fashion.
2155 @node Relative Links
2156 @section Relative Links
2157 @cindex relative links
2159 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2160 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2161 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2165 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2166 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2169 These links are not relative:
2173 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2174 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2177 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2178 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2179 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2181 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2185 @section Following FTP Links
2186 @cindex following ftp links
2188 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2189 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2190 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2193 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2194 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2195 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2196 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2197 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2198 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2199 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2201 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2202 retrieved recursively further.
2205 @chapter Time-Stamping
2206 @cindex time-stamping
2207 @cindex timestamping
2208 @cindex updating the archives
2209 @cindex incremental updating
2211 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2212 Internet is updating your archives.
2214 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2215 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2216 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2217 offer the option of incremental updating.
2219 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2220 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2221 the place of the old ones.
2223 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2227 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2230 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2231 recently than the local file.
2234 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2235 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2236 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2238 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2239 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2240 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2241 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2242 does, and the remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
2244 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2245 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2249 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2250 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2251 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2254 @node Time-Stamping Usage
2255 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2256 @cindex time-stamping usage
2257 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2259 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2260 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2263 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2266 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2267 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2268 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2269 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2271 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2272 changed, and download it if it has.
2275 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2278 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2279 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2280 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2281 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2283 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2286 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2289 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2290 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2292 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2293 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2294 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2295 since the last download.
2297 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2298 command like the following, weekly:
2301 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2304 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2305 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2306 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2307 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2308 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2310 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2311 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2312 @cindex http time-stamping
2314 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2315 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2316 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2317 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2318 retrieved unconditionally.
2320 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2321 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2322 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2325 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2326 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2327 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2328 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2329 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2330 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2333 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2334 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2335 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2336 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2337 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2339 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2340 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2342 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2343 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2344 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2346 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2347 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2350 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2351 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2352 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2353 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2354 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2355 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2356 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2357 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2359 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2360 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2361 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2362 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2363 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2364 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2366 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2367 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2368 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2369 Wget may support this command in the future.
2372 @chapter Startup File
2373 @cindex startup file
2379 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2380 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2381 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2382 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2384 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2385 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2386 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2387 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2389 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2393 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2394 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2395 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2396 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2399 @node Wgetrc Location
2400 @section Wgetrc Location
2401 @cindex wgetrc location
2402 @cindex location of wgetrc
2404 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2405 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2406 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2407 from there, if it exists.
2409 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2410 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2411 further attempts will be made.
2413 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2415 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2416 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2417 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2418 Fascist admins, away!
2421 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2422 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2423 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2425 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2431 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2432 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2434 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2435 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2436 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2439 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2440 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2441 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2447 @node Wgetrc Commands
2448 @section Wgetrc Commands
2449 @cindex wgetrc commands
2451 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2452 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2453 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}.
2455 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2456 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2457 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2458 values can be any non-empty string.
2460 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2461 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2462 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2465 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2466 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2468 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2469 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2471 @item continue = on/off
2472 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2473 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2475 @item background = on/off
2476 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2479 @item backup_converted = on/off
2480 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2481 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2483 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2484 @c #### Document me!
2486 @item base = @var{string}
2487 Consider relative @sc{url}s in @sc{url} input files forced to be
2488 interpreted as @sc{html} as being relative to @var{string}---the same as
2489 @samp{--base=@var{string}}.
2491 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2492 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address=@var{address}}.
2494 @item ca_certificate = @var{file}
2495 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{file}. The same
2496 as @samp{--ca-certificate=@var{file}}.
2498 @item ca_directory = @var{directory}
2499 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2500 @samp{--ca-directory=@var{directory}}.
2502 @item cache = on/off
2503 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2506 @item certificate = @var{file}
2507 Set the client certificate file name to @var{file}. The same as
2508 @samp{--certificate=@var{file}}.
2510 @item certificate_type = @var{string}
2511 Specify the type of the client certificate, legal values being
2512 @samp{PEM} (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2513 @samp{--certificate-type=@var{string}}.
2515 @item check_certificate = on/off
2516 If this is set to off, the server certificate is not checked against
2517 the specified client authorities. The default is ``on''. The same as
2518 @samp{--check-certificate}.
2520 @item convert_links = on/off
2521 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2523 @item cookies = on/off
2524 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2526 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2527 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2529 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2530 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components. Equivalent to
2531 @samp{--cut-dirs=@var{n}}.
2533 @item debug = on/off
2534 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2536 @item delete_after = on/off
2537 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2539 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2540 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P @var{string}}.
2542 @item dirstruct = on/off
2543 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2546 @item dns_cache = on/off
2547 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2548 option is normally used to turn it off and is equivalent to
2549 @samp{--no-dns-cache}.
2551 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2552 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2554 @item domains = @var{string}
2555 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2557 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2558 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2559 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2560 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2561 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2562 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2563 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2565 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2566 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2567 the retrieval (50 by default).
2569 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2570 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2572 @item egd_file = @var{file}
2573 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2574 @samp{--egd-file=@var{file}}.
2576 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2577 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2578 download---the same as @samp{-X @var{string}} (@pxref{Directory-Based
2581 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2582 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains=@var{string}} (@pxref{Spanning
2585 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2586 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2587 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2589 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2590 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval,
2591 just like @samp{--follow-tags=@var{string}}.
2593 @item force_html = on/off
2594 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2595 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2597 @item ftp_password = @var{string}
2598 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2599 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2600 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2602 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2604 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2605 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2608 @item ftp_user = @var{string}
2609 Set @sc{ftp} user to @var{string}.
2611 This command used to be named @code{login} prior to Wget 1.10.
2614 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2616 @item header = @var{string}
2617 Define a header for HTTP doewnloads, like using
2618 @samp{--header=@var{string}}.
2620 @item html_extension = on/off
2621 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2622 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files without it, like @samp{-E}.
2624 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2625 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). Turning it
2626 off is equivalent to @samp{--no-http-keep-alive}.
2628 @item http_password = @var{string}
2629 Set @sc{http} password, equivalent to
2630 @samp{--http-password=@var{string}}.
2632 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2633 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2636 @item http_user = @var{string}
2637 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}, equivalent to
2638 @samp{--http-user=@var{string}}.
2640 @item ignore_length = on/off
2641 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2642 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2644 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2645 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, like
2646 @samp{--ignore-tags=@var{string}}.
2648 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2649 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2650 downloading---the same as @samp{-I @var{string}}.
2652 @item inet4_only = on/off
2653 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2654 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2655 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2656 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2658 @item inet6_only = on/off
2659 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2660 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2663 @item input = @var{file}
2664 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i @var{file}}.
2666 @item kill_longer = on/off
2667 Consider data longer than specified in content-length header as invalid
2668 (and retry getting it). The default behavior is to save as much data
2669 as there is, provided there is more than or equal to the value in
2670 @code{Content-Length}.
2672 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2673 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
2674 The same as @samp{--limit-rate=@var{rate}}.
2676 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
2677 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies @var{file}}.
2679 @item logfile = @var{file}
2680 Set logfile to @var{file}, the same as @samp{-o @var{file}}.
2682 @item mirror = on/off
2683 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
2685 @item netrc = on/off
2686 Turn reading netrc on or off.
2688 @item noclobber = on/off
2691 @item no_parent = on/off
2692 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
2693 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2695 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
2696 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
2697 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
2699 @item output_document = @var{file}
2700 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O @var{file}}.
2702 @item page_requisites = on/off
2703 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
2704 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
2706 @item passive_ftp = on/off
2707 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
2708 @samp{--passive-ftp} option.
2710 @itemx password = @var{string}
2711 Specify password @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
2712 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_password} and
2713 @samp{http_password} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
2715 @item post_data = @var{string}
2716 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
2717 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data=@var{string}}.
2719 @item post_file = @var{file}
2720 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
2721 @var{file} in the request body. The same as
2722 @samp{--post-file=@var{file}}.
2724 @item prefer_family = IPv4/IPv6/none
2725 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
2726 with specified address family first. IPv4 addresses are preferred by
2727 default. The same as @samp{--prefer-family}, which see for a detailed
2728 discussion of why this is useful.
2730 @item private_key = @var{file}
2731 Set the private key file to @var{file}. The same as
2732 @samp{--private-key=@var{file}}.
2734 @item private_key_type = @var{string}
2735 Specify the type of the private key, legal values being @samp{PEM}
2736 (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2737 @samp{--private-type=@var{string}}.
2739 @item progress = @var{string}
2740 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are @samp{dot}
2741 and @samp{bar}. Equivalent to @samp{--progress=@var{string}}.
2743 @item protocol_directories = on/off
2744 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
2745 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
2747 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
2748 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like
2749 @samp{--proxy-user=@var{string}}.
2751 @item proxy_password = @var{string}
2752 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like
2753 @samp{--proxy-password=@var{string}}.
2755 @item quiet = on/off
2756 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
2758 @item quota = @var{quota}
2759 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
2760 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
2761 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
2762 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
2763 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
2764 to 5 megabytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
2767 @item random_file = @var{file}
2768 Use @var{file} as a source of randomness on systems lacking
2771 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
2772 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as
2773 @samp{--read-timeout=@var{n}}.
2775 @item reclevel = @var{n}
2776 Recursion level (depth)---the same as @samp{-l @var{n}}.
2778 @item recursive = on/off
2779 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
2781 @item referer = @var{string}
2782 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like
2783 @samp{--referer=@var{string}}. (Note it was the folks who wrote the
2784 @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of ``referrer'' wrong.)
2786 @item relative_only = on/off
2787 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
2790 @item remove_listing = on/off
2791 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
2792 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
2794 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
2795 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
2796 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
2798 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
2799 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
2800 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
2802 @item retry_connrefused = on/off
2803 When set to on, consider ``connection refused'' a transient
2804 error---the same as @samp{--retry-connrefused}.
2806 @item robots = on/off
2807 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
2808 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
2809 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
2810 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
2813 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
2814 Save cookies to @var{file}. The same as @samp{--save-cookies
2817 @item secure_protocol = @var{string}
2818 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto}
2819 (the default), @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. The same
2820 as @samp{--secure-protocol=@var{string}}.
2822 @item server_response = on/off
2823 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
2824 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
2826 @item span_hosts = on/off
2829 @item strict_comments = on/off
2830 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
2832 @item timeout = @var{n}
2833 Set all applicable timeout values to @var{n}, the same as @samp{-T
2836 @item timestamping = on/off
2837 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
2839 @item tries = @var{n}
2840 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t @var{n}}.
2842 @item use_proxy = on/off
2843 When set to off, don't use proxy even when proxy-related environment
2844 variables are set. In that case it is the same as using
2847 @item user = @var{string}
2848 Specify username @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
2849 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_user} and
2850 @samp{http_user} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
2852 @item verbose = on/off
2853 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
2855 @item wait = @var{n}
2856 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w
2859 @item waitretry = @var{n}
2860 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
2861 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry=@var{n}}. Note that this is
2862 turned on by default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
2864 @item randomwait = on/off
2865 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
2866 @samp{--random-wait}.
2870 @section Sample Wgetrc
2871 @cindex sample wgetrc
2873 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
2874 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
2875 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
2876 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
2878 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
2879 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
2883 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
2890 @c man begin EXAMPLES
2891 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
2895 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
2896 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
2897 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
2901 @section Simple Usage
2905 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
2908 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
2912 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
2913 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
2914 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
2915 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
2916 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
2917 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
2920 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
2924 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
2925 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
2926 shall use @samp{-t}.
2929 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
2932 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
2933 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
2936 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
2940 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
2944 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
2945 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
2948 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2953 @node Advanced Usage
2954 @section Advanced Usage
2958 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
2965 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
2969 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
2970 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
2971 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
2974 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
2978 The same as the above, but convert the links in the @sc{html} files to
2979 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
2982 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
2986 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
2987 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
2988 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
2989 references the downloaded links.
2992 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
2995 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
2996 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
2997 depending on where they were on the remote server.
3000 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
3001 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
3002 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
3003 subdirectory of the current directory.
3006 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
3007 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3011 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
3015 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
3019 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
3022 wget --save-headers http://www.lycos.com/
3027 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
3031 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
3035 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
3036 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
3037 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
3041 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
3044 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
3045 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
3046 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
3047 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
3048 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
3052 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
3053 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
3057 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
3061 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
3062 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
3065 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
3068 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
3069 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
3072 @cindex redirecting output
3074 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
3078 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
3081 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
3082 documents from remote hotlists:
3085 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
3089 @node Very Advanced Usage
3090 @section Very Advanced Usage
3095 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
3096 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
3097 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
3098 to recheck a site each Sunday:
3102 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3106 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
3107 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
3108 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
3109 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
3110 would look like this:
3113 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3114 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3118 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
3119 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
3120 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
3121 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
3122 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
3125 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3126 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
3130 Or, with less typing:
3133 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3142 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
3145 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers
3146 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
3147 * Mailing List:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
3148 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
3149 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
3150 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
3157 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
3158 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
3159 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
3160 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
3161 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
3162 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
3163 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
3164 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
3165 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
3166 using an authorized proxy.
3168 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
3169 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
3170 the following environment variables:
3174 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{http}
3178 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
3179 connections. It is quite common that @sc{http_proxy} and @sc{ftp_proxy}
3180 are set to the same @sc{url}.
3183 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
3184 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
3185 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
3189 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
3190 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3194 @itemx proxy = on/off
3195 This option and the corresponding command may be used to suppress the
3196 use of proxy, even if the appropriate environment variables are set.
3198 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3199 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3200 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3201 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3202 specified by the environment.
3205 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3206 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3207 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3208 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3209 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3211 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3212 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3213 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3214 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3218 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3221 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3222 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3223 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_password} to set the proxy
3224 username and password.
3227 @section Distribution
3228 @cindex latest version
3230 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3231 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3232 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3233 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3236 @section Mailing List
3237 @cindex mailing list
3240 There are several Wget-related mailing lists, all hosted by
3241 SunSITE.dk. The general discussion list is at
3242 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk}. It is the preferred place for bug reports
3243 and suggestions, as well as for discussion of development. You are
3244 invited to subscribe.
3246 To subscribe, simply send mail to @email{wget-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}
3247 and follow the instructions. Unsubscribe by mailing to
3248 @email{wget-unsubscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The mailing list is archived at
3249 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3250 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}.
3252 The second mailing list is at @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk}, and is
3253 used to submit patches for review by Wget developers. A ``patch'' is
3254 a textual representation of change to source code, readable by both
3255 humans and programs. The file @file{PATCHES} that comes with Wget
3256 covers the creation and submitting of patches in detail. Please don't
3257 send general suggestions or bug reports to @samp{wget-patches}; use it
3258 only for patch submissions.
3260 To subscribe, simply send mail to @email{wget-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}
3261 and follow the instructions. Unsubscribe by mailing to
3262 @email{wget-unsubscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The mailing list is archived at
3263 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3265 @node Reporting Bugs
3266 @section Reporting Bugs
3268 @cindex reporting bugs
3272 You are welcome to send bug reports about GNU Wget to
3273 @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}.
3275 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3280 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3281 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3282 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3283 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug.
3286 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3287 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 -Y0
3288 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3289 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3290 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3291 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3293 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3294 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3295 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3296 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3297 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3301 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3302 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3303 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3304 with debug support on.
3306 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3307 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3308 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3309 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3310 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3311 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3312 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3315 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3316 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3317 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3323 @section Portability
3325 @cindex operating systems
3327 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3328 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3329 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3330 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3332 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds
3333 of Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, OSF (aka
3334 Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some of
3335 those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3336 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3337 system, we would like to know about it.
3339 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3340 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3341 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3342 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3343 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3344 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3345 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3346 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3347 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3348 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3349 Windows-related features might look at them.
3353 @cindex signal handling
3356 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3357 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3358 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3359 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3360 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3363 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3366 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3369 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3370 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3375 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3378 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3379 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3380 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3383 @node Robot Exclusion
3384 @section Robot Exclusion
3385 @cindex robot exclusion
3387 @cindex server maintenance
3389 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3390 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3391 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3393 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3394 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3395 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3396 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3397 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3398 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3399 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3400 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3401 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3402 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3403 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3404 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3406 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3407 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3408 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3409 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3410 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3411 they will permit access.
3413 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3414 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3415 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3416 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3417 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3418 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3421 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3422 can downloads large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3423 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3424 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3427 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3430 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3431 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3432 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3433 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3436 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3437 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3438 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3439 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3440 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3441 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3442 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3443 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3445 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3447 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3448 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3449 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3453 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3456 This is explained in some detail at
3457 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3458 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3461 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3462 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3463 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3464 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3466 @node Security Considerations
3467 @section Security Considerations
3470 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3471 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3472 main issues, and some solutions.
3476 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3477 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3478 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3479 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3480 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3483 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3484 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3487 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3488 solution for this at the moment.
3491 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3492 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3493 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3498 @section Contributors
3499 @cindex contributors
3502 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org}.
3505 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org}.
3507 However, its development could never have gone as far as it has, were it
3508 not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature
3509 proposals, patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3511 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3514 @item Mauro Tortonesi---contributed high-quality IPv6 code and many
3517 @item Dan Harkless---contributed a lot of code and documentation of
3518 extremely high quality, as well as the @code{--page-requisites} and
3519 related options. He was the principal maintainer for some time and
3522 @item Ian Abbott---contributed bug fixes, Windows-related fixes, and
3523 provided a prototype implementation of the breadth-first recursive
3524 download. Co-maintained Wget during the 1.8 release cycle.
3527 The dotsrc.org crew, in particular Karsten Thygesen---donated system
3528 resources such as the mailing list, web space, @sc{ftp} space, and
3529 version control repositories, along with a lot of time to make these
3530 actually work. Christian Reiniger was of invaluable help with setting
3534 Heiko Herold---provided high-quality Windows builds and contributed
3535 bug and build reports for many years.
3538 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3541 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3545 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3549 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3550 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3553 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3554 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3558 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3561 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the initial Italian
3566 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3570 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3575 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3578 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3582 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization, Makefile
3583 layout and many other things.
3586 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3590 People who provided donations for development---including Brian Gough.
3593 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
3594 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
3595 that make maintenance so much fun:
3614 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
3623 Bertrand Demiddelaer,
3636 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
3639 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
3658 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
3677 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
3690 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
3691 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
3692 (Simos KSenitellis),
3701 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
3707 Alexander V. Lukyanov,
3742 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
3744 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}guez,
3747 Juan Jose Rodriguez,
3765 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
3779 Douglas E. Wegscheid,
3790 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
3791 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
3798 @cindex free software
3800 GNU Wget is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL),
3801 which makes it @dfn{free software}. Please note that ``free'' in ``free
3802 software'' refers to liberty, not price. As some people like to point
3803 out, it's the ``free'' of ``free speech'', not the ``free'' of ``free
3806 The exact and legally binding distribution terms are spelled out below.
3807 The GPL guarantees that you have the right (freedom) to run and change
3808 GNU Wget and distribute it to others, and even---if you want---charge
3809 money for doing any of those things. With these rights comes the
3810 obligation to distribute the source code along with the software and to
3811 grant your recipients the same rights and impose the same restrictions.
3813 This licensing model is also known as @dfn{open source} because it,
3814 among other things, makes sure that all recipients will receive the
3815 source code along with the program, and be able to improve it. The GNU
3816 project prefers the term ``free software'' for reasons outlined at
3817 @url{http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html}.
3819 The exact license terms are defined by this paragraph and the GNU
3820 General Public License it refers to:
3823 GNU Wget is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
3824 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
3825 Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
3826 option) any later version.
3828 GNU Wget is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
3829 ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
3830 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
3833 A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as part of this
3834 manual; if you did not receive it, write to the Free Software
3835 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
3838 In addition to this, this manual is free in the same sense:
3841 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3842 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
3843 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
3844 Invariant Sections being ``GNU General Public License'' and ``GNU Free
3845 Documentation License'', with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
3846 Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section
3847 entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
3850 @c #### Maybe we should wrap these licenses in ifinfo? Stallman says
3851 @c that the GFDL needs to be present in the manual, and to me it would
3852 @c suck to include the license for the manual and not the license for
3855 The full texts of the GNU General Public License and of the GNU Free
3856 Documentation License are available below.
3859 * GNU General Public License::
3860 * GNU Free Documentation License::
3868 @unnumbered Concept Index