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 GNU Wget utility for downloading network
33 @c man begin COPYRIGHT
34 Copyright @copyright{} 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
35 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
38 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
39 this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
40 are preserved on all copies.
44 Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the
45 results, provided the printed document carries a copying permission
46 notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
47 (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
49 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
50 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
51 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
52 Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A
53 copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free
54 Documentation License''.
59 @title GNU Wget @value{VERSION}
60 @subtitle The non-interactive download utility
61 @subtitle Updated for Wget @value{VERSION}, @value{UPDATED}
62 @author by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} and others
66 Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
67 Currently maintained by Micah Cowan <micah@cowan.name>.
70 This is @strong{not} the complete manual for GNU Wget.
71 For more complete information, including more detailed explanations of
72 some of the options, and a number of commands available
73 for use with @file{.wgetrc} files and the @samp{-e} option, see the GNU
74 Info entry for @file{wget}.
79 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
87 @top Wget @value{VERSION}
93 * Overview:: Features of Wget.
94 * Invoking:: Wget command-line arguments.
95 * Recursive Download:: Downloading interlinked pages.
96 * Following Links:: The available methods of chasing links.
97 * Time-Stamping:: Mirroring according to time-stamps.
98 * Startup File:: Wget's initialization file.
99 * Examples:: Examples of usage.
100 * Various:: The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.
101 * Appendices:: Some useful references.
102 * Copying this manual:: You may give out copies of Wget and of this manual.
103 * Concept Index:: Topics covered by this manual.
111 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
112 GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from
113 the Web. It supports @sc{http}, @sc{https}, and @sc{ftp} protocols, as
114 well as retrieval through @sc{http} proxies.
117 This chapter is a partial overview of Wget's features.
121 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
122 Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background,
123 while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval
124 and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By
125 contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user's presence,
126 which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
131 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
135 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
136 Wget can follow links in @sc{html} and @sc{xhtml} pages and create local
137 versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of
138 the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ``recursive
139 downloading.'' While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion
140 Standard (@file{/robots.txt}). Wget can be instructed to convert the
141 links in downloaded @sc{html} files to the local files for offline
146 File name wildcard matching and recursive mirroring of directories are
147 available when retrieving via @sc{ftp}. Wget can read the time-stamp
148 information given by both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} servers, and store it
149 locally. Thus Wget can see if the remote file has changed since last
150 retrieval, and automatically retrieve the new version if it has. This
151 makes Wget suitable for mirroring of @sc{ftp} sites, as well as home
156 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
160 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
161 Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network
162 connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will
163 keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server
164 supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the
165 download from where it left off.
169 Wget supports proxy servers, which can lighten the network load, speed
170 up retrieval and provide access behind firewalls. Wget uses the passive
171 @sc{ftp} downloading by default, active @sc{ftp} being an option.
174 Wget supports IP version 6, the next generation of IP. IPv6 is
175 autodetected at compile-time, and can be disabled at either build or
176 run time. Binaries built with IPv6 support work well in both
177 IPv4-only and dual family environments.
180 Built-in features offer mechanisms to tune which links you wish to follow
181 (@pxref{Following Links}).
184 The progress of individual downloads is traced using a progress gauge.
185 Interactive downloads are tracked using a ``thermometer''-style gauge,
186 whereas non-interactive ones are traced with dots, each dot
187 representing a fixed amount of data received (1KB by default). Either
188 gauge can be customized to your preferences.
191 Most of the features are fully configurable, either through command line
192 options, or via the initialization file @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup
193 File}). Wget allows you to define @dfn{global} startup files
194 (@file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default) for site settings.
199 @item /usr/local/etc/wgetrc
200 Default location of the @dfn{global} startup file.
209 Finally, GNU Wget is free software. This means that everyone may use
210 it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
211 Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation (see the
212 file @file{COPYING} that came with GNU Wget, for details).
222 By default, Wget is very simple to invoke. The basic syntax is:
225 @c man begin SYNOPSIS
226 wget [@var{option}]@dots{} [@var{URL}]@dots{}
230 Wget will simply download all the @sc{url}s specified on the command
231 line. @var{URL} is a @dfn{Uniform Resource Locator}, as defined below.
233 However, you may wish to change some of the default parameters of
234 Wget. You can do it two ways: permanently, adding the appropriate
235 command to @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup File}), or specifying it on
241 * Basic Startup Options::
242 * Logging and Input File Options::
244 * Directory Options::
246 * HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options::
248 * Recursive Retrieval Options::
249 * Recursive Accept/Reject Options::
257 @dfn{URL} is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. A uniform
258 resource locator is a compact string representation for a resource
259 available via the Internet. Wget recognizes the @sc{url} syntax as per
260 @sc{rfc1738}. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote
264 http://host[:port]/directory/file
265 ftp://host[:port]/directory/file
268 You can also encode your username and password within a @sc{url}:
271 ftp://user:password@@host/path
272 http://user:password@@host/path
275 Either @var{user} or @var{password}, or both, may be left out. If you
276 leave out either the @sc{http} username or password, no authentication
277 will be sent. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} username, @samp{anonymous}
278 will be used. If you leave out the @sc{ftp} password, your email
279 address will be supplied as a default password.@footnote{If you have a
280 @file{.netrc} file in your home directory, password will also be
283 @strong{Important Note}: if you specify a password-containing @sc{url}
284 on the command line, the username and password will be plainly visible
285 to all users on the system, by way of @code{ps}. On multi-user systems,
286 this is a big security risk. To work around it, use @code{wget -i -}
287 and feed the @sc{url}s to Wget's standard input, each on a separate
288 line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
290 You can encode unsafe characters in a @sc{url} as @samp{%xy}, @code{xy}
291 being the hexadecimal representation of the character's @sc{ascii}
292 value. Some common unsafe characters include @samp{%} (quoted as
293 @samp{%25}), @samp{:} (quoted as @samp{%3A}), and @samp{@@} (quoted as
294 @samp{%40}). Refer to @sc{rfc1738} for a comprehensive list of unsafe
297 Wget also supports the @code{type} feature for @sc{ftp} @sc{url}s. By
298 default, @sc{ftp} documents are retrieved in the binary mode (type
299 @samp{i}), which means that they are downloaded unchanged. Another
300 useful mode is the @samp{a} (@dfn{ASCII}) mode, which converts the line
301 delimiters between the different operating systems, and is thus useful
302 for text files. Here is an example:
305 ftp://host/directory/file;type=a
308 Two alternative variants of @sc{url} specification are also supported,
309 because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their widespreaded use.
311 @sc{ftp}-only syntax (supported by @code{NcFTP}):
316 @sc{http}-only syntax (introduced by @code{Netscape}):
321 These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being
322 supported in the future.
324 If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
325 not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
326 with your favorite browser, like @code{Lynx} or @code{Netscape}.
331 @section Option Syntax
332 @cindex option syntax
333 @cindex syntax of options
335 Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process command-line arguments, every
336 option has a long form along with the short one. Long options are
337 more convenient to remember, but take time to type. You may freely
338 mix different option styles, or specify options after the command-line
339 arguments. Thus you may write:
342 wget -r --tries=10 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ -o log
345 The space between the option accepting an argument and the argument may
346 be omitted. Instead of @samp{-o log} you can write @samp{-olog}.
348 You may put several options that do not require arguments together,
355 This is a complete equivalent of:
358 wget -d -r -c @var{URL}
361 Since the options can be specified after the arguments, you may
362 terminate them with @samp{--}. So the following will try to download
363 @sc{url} @samp{-x}, reporting failure to @file{log}:
369 The options that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
370 that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be useful to
371 clear the @file{.wgetrc} settings. For instance, if your @file{.wgetrc}
372 sets @code{exclude_directories} to @file{/cgi-bin}, the following
373 example will first reset it, and then set it to exclude @file{/~nobody}
374 and @file{/~somebody}. You can also clear the lists in @file{.wgetrc}
375 (@pxref{Wgetrc Syntax}).
378 wget -X '' -X /~nobody,/~somebody
381 Most options that do not accept arguments are @dfn{boolean} options,
382 so named because their state can be captured with a yes-or-no
383 (``boolean'') variable. For example, @samp{--follow-ftp} tells Wget
384 to follow FTP links from HTML files and, on the other hand,
385 @samp{--no-glob} tells it not to perform file globbing on FTP URLs. A
386 boolean option is either @dfn{affirmative} or @dfn{negative}
387 (beginning with @samp{--no}). All such options share several
390 Unless stated otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is
391 the opposite of what the option accomplishes. For example, the
392 documented existence of @samp{--follow-ftp} assumes that the default
393 is to @emph{not} follow FTP links from HTML pages.
395 Affirmative options can be negated by prepending the @samp{--no-} to
396 the option name; negative options can be negated by omitting the
397 @samp{--no-} prefix. This might seem superfluous---if the default for
398 an affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide a way
399 to explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in fact change
400 the default. For instance, using @code{follow_ftp = off} in
401 @file{.wgetrc} makes Wget @emph{not} follow FTP links by default, and
402 using @samp{--no-follow-ftp} is the only way to restore the factory
403 default from the command line.
405 @node Basic Startup Options
406 @section Basic Startup Options
411 Display the version of Wget.
415 Print a help message describing all of Wget's command-line options.
419 Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is
420 specified via the @samp{-o}, output is redirected to @file{wget-log}.
422 @cindex execute wgetrc command
423 @item -e @var{command}
424 @itemx --execute @var{command}
425 Execute @var{command} as if it were a part of @file{.wgetrc}
426 (@pxref{Startup File}). A command thus invoked will be executed
427 @emph{after} the commands in @file{.wgetrc}, thus taking precedence over
428 them. If you need to specify more than one wgetrc command, use multiple
429 instances of @samp{-e}.
433 @node Logging and Input File Options
434 @section Logging and Input File Options
439 @item -o @var{logfile}
440 @itemx --output-file=@var{logfile}
441 Log all messages to @var{logfile}. The messages are normally reported
444 @cindex append to log
445 @item -a @var{logfile}
446 @itemx --append-output=@var{logfile}
447 Append to @var{logfile}. This is the same as @samp{-o}, only it appends
448 to @var{logfile} instead of overwriting the old log file. If
449 @var{logfile} does not exist, a new file is created.
454 Turn on debug output, meaning various information important to the
455 developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Your system
456 administrator may have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in
457 which case @samp{-d} will not work. Please note that compiling with
458 debug support is always safe---Wget compiled with the debug support will
459 @emph{not} print any debug info unless requested with @samp{-d}.
460 @xref{Reporting Bugs}, for more information on how to use @samp{-d} for
466 Turn off Wget's output.
471 Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output
476 Turn off verbose without being completely quiet (use @samp{-q} for
477 that), which means that error messages and basic information still get
482 @itemx --input-file=@var{file}
483 Read @sc{url}s from @var{file}. If @samp{-} is specified as
484 @var{file}, @sc{url}s are read from the standard input. (Use
485 @samp{./-} to read from a file literally named @samp{-}.)
487 If this function is used, no @sc{url}s need be present on the command
488 line. If there are @sc{url}s both on the command line and in an input
489 file, those on the command lines will be the first ones to be
490 retrieved. The @var{file} need not be an @sc{html} document (but no
491 harm if it is)---it is enough if the @sc{url}s are just listed
494 However, if you specify @samp{--force-html}, the document will be
495 regarded as @samp{html}. In that case you may have problems with
496 relative links, which you can solve either by adding @code{<base
497 href="@var{url}">} to the documents or by specifying
498 @samp{--base=@var{url}} on the command line.
503 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an @sc{html}
504 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
505 @sc{html} files on your local disk, by adding @code{<base
506 href="@var{url}">} to @sc{html}, or using the @samp{--base} command-line
509 @cindex base for relative links in input file
511 @itemx --base=@var{URL}
512 Prepends @var{URL} to relative links read from the file specified with
513 the @samp{-i} option.
516 @node Download Options
517 @section Download Options
521 @cindex client IP address
522 @cindex IP address, client
523 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
524 When making client TCP/IP connections, bind to @var{ADDRESS} on
525 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
526 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
531 @cindex number of retries
532 @item -t @var{number}
533 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
534 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
535 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
536 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
537 which are not retried.
540 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
541 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all
542 will be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @samp{-}
543 is used as @var{file}, documents will be printed to standard output,
544 disabling link conversion. (Use @samp{./-} to print to a file
545 literally named @samp{-}.)
547 Use of @samp{-O} is @emph{not} intended to mean simply ``use the name
548 @var{file} instead of the one in the URL;'' rather, it is
549 analogous to shell redirection:
550 @samp{wget -O file http://foo} is intended to work like
551 @samp{wget -O - http://foo > file}; @file{file} will be truncated
552 immediately, and @emph{all} downloaded content will be written there.
554 For this reason, @samp{-N} (for timestamp-checking) is not supported
555 in combination with @samp{-O}: since @var{file} is always newly
556 created, it will always have a very new timestamp. Contrary to some
557 users' expectations, the combination has never worked, and as of
558 version 1.11, it results in an error.
560 Similarly, using @samp{-r} or @samp{-p} with @samp{-O} may not work as
561 you expect: Wget won't just download the first file to @var{file} and
562 then download the rest to their normal names: @emph{all} downloaded
563 content will be placed in @var{file}. This was disabled in version
564 1.11, but has been reinstated (with a warning) in 1.11.2, as there are
565 some cases where this behavior can actually have some use.
567 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only permitted when
568 downloading a single document, as in that case it will just convert
569 all relative URIs to external ones; @samp{-k} makes no sense for
570 multiple URIs when they're all being downloaded to a single file.
572 @cindex clobbering, file
573 @cindex downloading multiple times
577 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
578 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
579 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
580 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
582 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, @samp{-r}, or @samp{p},
583 downloading the same file in the same directory will result in the
584 original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy being
585 named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet again, the
586 third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on. When
587 @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior is suppressed, and Wget will
588 refuse to download newer copies of @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore,
589 ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a misnomer in this mode---it's not
590 clobbering that's prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
591 preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version saving that's
594 When running Wget with @samp{-r} or @samp{-p}, but without @samp{-N}
595 or @samp{-nc}, re-downloading a file will result in the new copy
596 simply overwriting the old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent this
597 behavior, instead causing the original version to be preserved and any
598 newer copies on the server to be ignored.
600 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r} or
601 @samp{-p}, the decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy
602 of a file depends on the local and remote timestamp and size of the
603 file (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the
604 same time as @samp{-N}.
606 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
607 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
608 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
610 @cindex continue retrieval
611 @cindex incomplete downloads
612 @cindex resume download
615 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
616 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
617 by another program. For instance:
620 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
623 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
624 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
625 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
626 length of the local file.
628 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
629 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
630 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
631 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
632 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
634 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
635 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
638 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
639 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
640 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
641 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
642 start from scratch, remove the file.
644 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
645 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
646 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
647 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
648 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
649 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
651 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
652 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
653 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
654 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
655 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
656 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
657 collection or log file.
659 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
660 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
661 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
662 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
663 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
664 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
666 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
667 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
668 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
669 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
671 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
672 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
674 @cindex progress indicator
676 @item --progress=@var{type}
677 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
678 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
680 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
681 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
682 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
685 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
686 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
687 fixed amount of downloaded data.
689 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
690 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
691 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
692 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
693 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
694 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
695 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
696 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
697 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
699 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
700 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
701 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
702 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
703 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
706 @itemx --timestamping
707 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
709 @cindex server response, print
711 @itemx --server-response
712 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
715 @cindex Wget as spider
718 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
719 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
720 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
723 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
726 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
727 functionality of real web spiders.
731 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
732 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
733 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
734 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
736 When interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and
737 abort the operation if it takes too long. This prevents anomalies
738 like hanging reads and infinite connects. The only timeout enabled by
739 default is a 900-second read timeout. Setting a timeout to 0 disables
740 it altogether. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to
741 change the default timeout settings.
743 All timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as
744 subsecond values. For example, @samp{0.1} seconds is a legal (though
745 unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts are useful for checking
746 server response times or for testing network latency.
750 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
751 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
752 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
753 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
756 @cindex connect timeout
757 @cindex timeout, connect
758 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
759 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
760 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
761 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
764 @cindex timeout, read
765 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
766 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. The
767 ``time'' of this timeout refers to @dfn{idle time}: if, at any point in
768 the download, no data is received for more than the specified number
769 of seconds, reading fails and the download is restarted. This option
770 does not directly affect the duration of the entire download.
772 Of course, the remote server may choose to terminate the connection
773 sooner than this option requires. The default read timeout is 900
776 @cindex bandwidth, limit
778 @cindex limit bandwidth
779 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
780 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
781 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
782 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
783 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for whatever
784 reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available bandwidth.
786 This option allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction
787 with power suffixes; for example, @samp{--limit-rate=2.5k} is a legal
790 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
791 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
792 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
793 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
794 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
795 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
799 @item -w @var{seconds}
800 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
801 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
802 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
803 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
804 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
805 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
807 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
808 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
809 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry. The
810 waiting interval specified by this function is influenced by
811 @code{--random-wait}, which see.
813 @cindex retries, waiting between
814 @cindex waiting between retries
815 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
816 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
817 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
818 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
819 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
820 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify. Therefore,
821 a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55
824 Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
830 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
831 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
832 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
833 to vary between 0.5 and 1.5 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
834 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
835 presence from such analysis.
837 A 2001 article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
838 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
839 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
840 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
843 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
844 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
849 Don't use proxies, even if the appropriate @code{*_proxy} environment
853 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
858 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
859 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
860 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
861 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
863 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
864 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
865 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
866 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
867 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
868 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
869 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
871 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
874 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
876 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
877 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
878 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
879 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
882 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
883 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
884 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
885 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
886 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
887 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
888 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
891 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
894 @cindex file names, restrict
895 @cindex Windows file names
896 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{mode}
897 Change which characters found in remote URLs may show up in local file
898 names generated from those URLs. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
899 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
900 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
903 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid as part of
904 file names on your operating system, as well as control characters that
905 are typically unprintable. This option is useful for changing these
906 defaults, either because you are downloading to a non-native partition,
907 or because you want to disable escaping of the control characters.
909 When mode is set to ``unix'', Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
910 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
911 default on Unix-like OS'es.
913 When mode is set to ``windows'', Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
914 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
915 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
916 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
917 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
918 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
919 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
920 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
921 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
922 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
924 If you append @samp{,nocontrol} to the mode, as in
925 @samp{unix,nocontrol}, escaping of the control characters is also
926 switched off. You can use @samp{--restrict-file-names=nocontrol} to
927 turn off escaping of control characters without affecting the choice of
928 the OS to use as file name restriction mode.
935 Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With @samp{--inet4-only}
936 or @samp{-4}, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA
937 records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in
938 URLs. Conversely, with @samp{--inet6-only} or @samp{-6}, Wget will
939 only connect to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
941 Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware
942 Wget will use the address family specified by the host's DNS record.
943 If the DNS responds with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, Wget will try
944 them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to. (Also see
945 @code{--prefer-family} option described below.)
947 These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or
948 IPv6 address families on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging
949 or to deal with broken network configuration. Only one of
950 @samp{--inet6-only} and @samp{--inet4-only} may be specified at the
951 same time. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without IPv6
954 @item --prefer-family=IPv4/IPv6/none
955 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
956 with specified address family first. IPv4 addresses are preferred by
959 This avoids spurious errors and connect attempts when accessing hosts
960 that resolve to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4 networks. For
961 example, @samp{www.kame.net} resolves to
962 @samp{2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085} and to
963 @samp{203.178.141.194}. When the preferred family is @code{IPv4}, the
964 IPv4 address is used first; when the preferred family is @code{IPv6},
965 the IPv6 address is used first; if the specified value is @code{none},
966 the address order returned by DNS is used without change.
968 Unlike @samp{-4} and @samp{-6}, this option doesn't inhibit access to
969 any address family, it only changes the @emph{order} in which the
970 addresses are accessed. Also note that the reordering performed by
971 this option is @dfn{stable}---it doesn't affect order of addresses of
972 the same family. That is, the relative order of all IPv4 addresses
973 and of all IPv6 addresses remains intact in all cases.
975 @item --retry-connrefused
976 Consider ``connection refused'' a transient error and try again.
977 Normally Wget gives up on a URL when it is unable to connect to the
978 site because failure to connect is taken as a sign that the server is
979 not running at all and that retries would not help. This option is
980 for mirroring unreliable sites whose servers tend to disappear for
981 short periods of time.
985 @cindex authentication
986 @item --user=@var{user}
987 @itemx --password=@var{password}
988 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for both
989 @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval. These parameters can be overridden
990 using the @samp{--ftp-user} and @samp{--ftp-password} options for
991 @sc{ftp} connections and the @samp{--http-user} and @samp{--http-password}
992 options for @sc{http} connections.
995 Prompt for a password for each connection established. Cannot be specified
996 when @samp{--password} is being used, because they are mutually exclusive.
999 @node Directory Options
1000 @section Directory Options
1004 @itemx --no-directories
1005 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
1006 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
1007 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
1008 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
1011 @itemx --force-directories
1012 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
1013 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
1014 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
1015 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
1018 @itemx --no-host-directories
1019 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
1020 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
1021 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
1024 @item --protocol-directories
1025 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
1026 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
1027 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
1029 @cindex cut directories
1030 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
1031 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
1032 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
1035 Take, for example, the directory at
1036 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
1037 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
1038 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
1039 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
1040 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
1041 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
1042 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
1046 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
1048 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
1049 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
1051 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
1056 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
1057 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
1058 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
1059 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
1060 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
1062 @cindex directory prefix
1063 @item -P @var{prefix}
1064 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
1065 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
1066 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
1067 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
1072 @section HTTP Options
1075 @cindex .html extension
1077 @itemx --html-extension
1078 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
1079 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
1080 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
1081 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
1082 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
1083 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1084 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1085 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1086 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1088 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1089 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1090 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1091 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1092 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1093 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1094 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1095 Retrieval Options}).
1098 @cindex http password
1099 @cindex authentication
1100 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1101 @itemx --http-password=@var{password}
1102 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1103 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1104 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure),
1105 the @code{digest}, or the Windows @code{NTLM} authentication scheme.
1107 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1108 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1109 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1110 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1111 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1112 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1113 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1116 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1123 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1124 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1125 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1126 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1127 documents on proxy servers.
1129 Caching is allowed by default.
1133 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1134 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1135 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1136 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1137 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1138 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1139 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1141 @cindex loading cookies
1142 @cindex cookies, loading
1143 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1144 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1145 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1146 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1148 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1149 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1150 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1151 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1152 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1153 proves your identity.
1155 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1156 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1157 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1158 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1159 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1160 cookie files in different locations:
1164 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1166 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1167 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1168 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1169 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1170 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1172 @item Internet Explorer.
1173 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1174 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1175 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1177 @item Other browsers.
1178 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1179 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1180 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1183 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1184 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1185 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1186 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1187 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1190 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1193 @cindex saving cookies
1194 @cindex cookies, saving
1195 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1196 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1197 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1198 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1200 @cindex cookies, session
1201 @cindex session cookies
1202 @item --keep-session-cookies
1203 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1204 cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they are
1205 meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit the browser.
1206 Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
1207 the home page before you can access some pages. With this option,
1208 multiple Wget runs are considered a single browser session as far as
1209 the site is concerned.
1211 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1212 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1213 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1214 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1215 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1216 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1217 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1219 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1220 @cindex ignore length
1221 @item --ignore-length
1222 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1223 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1224 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1225 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1226 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1229 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1230 if it never existed.
1233 @item --header=@var{header-line}
1234 Send @var{header-line} along with the rest of the headers in each
1235 @sc{http} request. The supplied header is sent as-is, which means it
1236 must contain name and value separated by colon, and must not contain
1239 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1240 @samp{--header} more than once.
1244 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1245 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1246 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1250 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1251 previous user-defined headers.
1253 As of Wget 1.10, this option can be used to override headers otherwise
1254 generated automatically. This example instructs Wget to connect to
1255 localhost, but to specify @samp{foo.bar} in the @code{Host} header:
1258 wget --header="Host: foo.bar" http://localhost/
1261 In versions of Wget prior to 1.10 such use of @samp{--header} caused
1262 sending of duplicate headers.
1265 @item --max-redirect=@var{number}
1266 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
1267 The default is 20, which is usually far more than necessary. However, on
1268 those occasions where you want to allow more (or fewer), this is the
1272 @cindex proxy password
1273 @cindex proxy authentication
1274 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1275 @itemx --proxy-password=@var{password}
1276 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1277 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1278 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1280 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-password}
1281 pertain here as well.
1283 @cindex http referer
1284 @cindex referer, http
1285 @item --referer=@var{url}
1286 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1287 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1288 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1289 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1291 @cindex server response, save
1292 @item --save-headers
1293 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1294 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1297 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1298 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1299 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1301 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1302 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1303 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1304 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1305 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1308 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1309 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1310 While this is not such a bad idea in theory, it has been abused by
1311 servers denying information to clients other than (historically)
1312 Netscape or, more frequently, Microsoft Internet Explorer. This
1313 option allows you to change the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget.
1314 Use of this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
1317 Specifying empty user agent with @samp{--user-agent=""} instructs Wget
1318 not to send the @code{User-Agent} header in @sc{http} requests.
1321 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1322 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1323 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified data
1324 in the request body. @code{--post-data} sends @var{string} as data,
1325 whereas @code{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}. Other than
1326 that, they work in exactly the same way.
1328 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1329 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1330 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1331 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1332 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1333 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1334 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1335 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1336 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1338 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it
1339 will not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because
1340 URLs that process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular
1341 page, which does not desire or accept POST. It is not completely
1342 clear that this behavior is optimal; if it doesn't work out, it might
1343 be changed in the future.
1345 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1346 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1351 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1352 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1353 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1354 http://server.com/auth.php
1356 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1357 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1358 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1362 If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication,
1363 the above will not work because @samp{--save-cookies} will not save
1364 them (and neither will browsers) and the @file{cookies.txt} file will
1365 be empty. In that case use @samp{--keep-session-cookies} along with
1366 @samp{--save-cookies} to force saving of session cookies.
1368 @cindex Content-Disposition
1369 @item --content-disposition
1371 If this is set to on, experimental (not fully-functional) support for
1372 @code{Content-Disposition} headers is enabled. This can currently result in
1373 extra round-trips to the server for a @code{HEAD} request, and is known
1374 to suffer from a few bugs, which is why it is not currently enabled by default.
1376 This option is useful for some file-downloading CGI programs that use
1377 @code{Content-Disposition} headers to describe what the name of a
1378 downloaded file should be.
1380 @cindex authentication
1381 @item --auth-no-challenge
1383 If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication
1384 information (plaintext username and password) for all requests, just
1385 like Wget 1.10.2 and prior did by default.
1387 Use of this option is not recommended, and is intended only to support
1388 some few obscure servers, which never send HTTP authentication
1389 challenges, but accept unsolicited auth info, say, in addition to
1390 form-based authentication.
1394 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1395 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1398 To support encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1399 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1400 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1403 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1404 @item --secure-protocol=@var{protocol}
1405 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto},
1406 @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. If @samp{auto} is used,
1407 the SSL library is given the liberty of choosing the appropriate
1408 protocol automatically, which is achieved by sending an SSLv2 greeting
1409 and announcing support for SSLv3 and TLSv1. This is the default.
1411 Specifying @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, or @samp{TLSv1} forces the use
1412 of the corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old and
1413 buggy SSL server implementations that make it hard for OpenSSL to
1414 choose the correct protocol version. Fortunately, such servers are
1417 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1418 @item --no-check-certificate
1419 Don't check the server certificate against the available certificate
1420 authorities. Also don't require the URL host name to match the common
1421 name presented by the certificate.
1423 As of Wget 1.10, the default is to verify the server's certificate
1424 against the recognized certificate authorities, breaking the SSL
1425 handshake and aborting the download if the verification fails.
1426 Although this provides more secure downloads, it does break
1427 interoperability with some sites that worked with previous Wget
1428 versions, particularly those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise
1429 invalid certificates. This option forces an ``insecure'' mode of
1430 operation that turns the certificate verification errors into warnings
1431 and allows you to proceed.
1433 If you encounter ``certificate verification'' errors or ones saying
1434 that ``common name doesn't match requested host name'', you can use
1435 this option to bypass the verification and proceed with the download.
1436 @emph{Only use this option if you are otherwise convinced of the
1437 site's authenticity, or if you really don't care about the validity of
1438 its certificate.} It is almost always a bad idea not to check the
1439 certificates when transmitting confidential or important data.
1441 @cindex SSL certificate
1442 @item --certificate=@var{file}
1443 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1444 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1445 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1448 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1449 @item --certificate-type=@var{type}
1450 Specify the type of the client certificate. Legal values are
1451 @samp{PEM} (assumed by default) and @samp{DER}, also known as
1454 @item --private-key=@var{file}
1455 Read the private key from @var{file}. This allows you to provide the
1456 private key in a file separate from the certificate.
1458 @item --private-key-type=@var{type}
1459 Specify the type of the private key. Accepted values are @samp{PEM}
1460 (the default) and @samp{DER}.
1462 @item --ca-certificate=@var{file}
1463 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities
1464 (``CA'') to verify the peers. The certificates must be in PEM format.
1466 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1467 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1469 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1470 @item --ca-directory=@var{directory}
1471 Specifies directory containing CA certificates in PEM format. Each
1472 file contains one CA certificate, and the file name is based on a hash
1473 value derived from the certificate. This is achieved by processing a
1474 certificate directory with the @code{c_rehash} utility supplied with
1475 OpenSSL. Using @samp{--ca-directory} is more efficient than
1476 @samp{--ca-certificate} when many certificates are installed because
1477 it allows Wget to fetch certificates on demand.
1479 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1480 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1482 @cindex entropy, specifying source of
1483 @cindex randomness, specifying source of
1484 @item --random-file=@var{file}
1485 Use @var{file} as the source of random data for seeding the
1486 pseudo-random number generator on systems without @file{/dev/random}.
1488 On such systems the SSL library needs an external source of randomness
1489 to initialize. Randomness may be provided by EGD (see
1490 @samp{--egd-file} below) or read from an external source specified by
1491 the user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random data
1492 in @code{$RANDFILE} or, if that is unset, in @file{$HOME/.rnd}. If
1493 none of those are available, it is likely that SSL encryption will not
1496 If you're getting the ``Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG; disabling SSL.''
1497 error, you should provide random data using some of the methods
1501 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1502 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1503 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1504 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1505 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1506 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1507 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1509 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1510 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1511 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1512 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1514 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1515 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1516 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1520 @section FTP Options
1524 @cindex ftp password
1525 @cindex ftp authentication
1526 @item --ftp-user=@var{user}
1527 @itemx --ftp-password=@var{password}
1528 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1529 @sc{ftp} server. Without this, or the corresponding startup option,
1530 the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, normally used for anonymous
1533 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1534 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1535 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1536 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1537 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1538 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1539 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1542 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1546 @cindex .listing files, removing
1547 @item --no-remove-listing
1548 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1549 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1550 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1551 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1552 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1553 you're running is complete).
1555 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1556 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1557 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1558 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1559 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1560 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1561 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1562 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1563 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1565 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1566 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1567 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1568 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1569 will be overwritten.
1571 @cindex globbing, toggle
1573 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1574 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1575 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1579 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1582 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1583 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1586 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1587 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1588 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1589 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1592 @item --no-passive-ftp
1593 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1594 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1595 connection rather than the other way around.
1597 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1598 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1599 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1600 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1601 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1602 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1604 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1605 @item --retr-symlinks
1606 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1607 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1608 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1609 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1610 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1612 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1613 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1614 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1615 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1618 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1619 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1620 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1623 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1624 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1625 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1626 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1627 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1628 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1629 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1630 the load on the server.
1632 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1633 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1634 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1637 @node Recursive Retrieval Options
1638 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1643 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1646 @item -l @var{depth}
1647 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1648 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1649 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1651 @cindex proxy filling
1652 @cindex delete after retrieval
1653 @cindex filling proxy cache
1654 @item --delete-after
1655 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1656 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1657 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1660 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1663 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1666 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1667 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1668 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1669 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1670 created in the first place.
1672 @cindex conversion of links
1673 @cindex link conversion
1675 @itemx --convert-links
1676 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1677 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1678 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1679 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1682 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1686 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1687 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1689 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1690 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1691 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1692 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1695 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1696 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1698 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1699 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1700 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1701 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1704 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1705 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1706 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1707 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1708 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1711 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1712 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1713 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1715 @cindex backing up converted files
1717 @itemx --backup-converted
1718 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1719 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1724 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1725 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1726 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1727 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1729 @cindex page requisites
1730 @cindex required images, downloading
1732 @itemx --page-requisites
1733 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1734 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1735 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1737 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1738 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1739 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1740 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1741 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1744 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1745 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1746 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1747 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1748 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1750 If one executes the command:
1753 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1756 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1757 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1758 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1759 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1760 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1763 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1766 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1767 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1770 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1773 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1774 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1777 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1780 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1781 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1782 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1783 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1784 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1785 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1788 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1791 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1792 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1793 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1794 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1795 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1796 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1799 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1802 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1803 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1804 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1807 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1808 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1809 @item --strict-comments
1810 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1811 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1813 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1814 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1815 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1816 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1817 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1818 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1819 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1821 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1822 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1823 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1824 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1825 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1826 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1827 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1828 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1829 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1831 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1832 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1833 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1834 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1835 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1838 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1839 option to turn it on.
1842 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1843 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1846 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1847 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1848 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1849 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files}). Note that if
1850 any of the wildcard characters, @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[} or
1851 @samp{]}, appear in an element of @var{acclist} or @var{rejlist},
1852 it will be treated as a pattern, rather than a suffix.
1854 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1855 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1856 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1857 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1859 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1860 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed.
1861 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1863 @cindex follow FTP links
1865 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1866 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1868 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1869 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1870 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1871 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1872 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1873 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1874 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1876 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1877 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1878 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1879 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
1881 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
1882 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
1885 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1888 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
1889 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
1890 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
1891 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
1892 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
1893 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
1898 Ignore case when matching files and directories. This influences the
1899 behavior of -R, -A, -I, and -X options, as well as globbing
1900 implemented when downloading from FTP sites. For example, with this
1901 option, @samp{-A *.txt} will match @samp{file1.txt}, but also
1902 @samp{file2.TXT}, @samp{file3.TxT}, and so on.
1906 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
1907 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1911 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
1912 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
1913 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
1916 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
1917 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
1918 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements
1919 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1922 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
1923 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
1924 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements of
1925 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
1929 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
1930 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
1931 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
1932 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
1937 @node Recursive Download
1938 @chapter Recursive Download
1941 @cindex recursive download
1943 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
1944 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
1945 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
1947 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} from
1948 the given @sc{url}, documents, retrieving the files the @sc{html}
1949 document was referring to, through markup like @code{href}, or
1950 @code{src}. If the freshly downloaded file is also of type
1951 @code{text/html} or @code{application/xhtml+xml}, it will be parsed and
1954 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html} content is
1955 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
1956 @sc{html} document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
1957 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
1958 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
1959 until the specified maximum depth.
1961 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
1962 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
1964 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
1965 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
1966 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
1967 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
1968 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
1971 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
1972 the one found on the remote server.
1974 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
1975 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
1976 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
1977 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
1979 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
1980 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
1981 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
1982 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
1983 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
1984 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
1985 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
1987 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
1988 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
1989 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
1990 consume memory and CPU.
1992 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
1993 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
1994 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
1995 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
1996 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
1997 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
1998 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
2001 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
2004 @node Following Links
2005 @chapter Following Links
2007 @cindex following links
2009 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
2010 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
2011 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
2013 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
2014 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
2015 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
2017 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
2018 links it will follow.
2021 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
2022 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
2023 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
2024 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
2025 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
2028 @node Spanning Hosts
2029 @section Spanning Hosts
2030 @cindex spanning hosts
2031 @cindex hosts, spanning
2033 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
2034 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
2035 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
2036 your Wget into a small version of google.
2038 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
2039 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
2040 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
2041 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
2042 pages refer to both interchangeably.
2045 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
2047 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
2048 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
2049 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
2050 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
2051 up much more data than you have intended.
2053 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
2055 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
2056 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
2057 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
2058 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
2059 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
2060 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
2063 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
2066 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
2067 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
2069 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
2071 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
2072 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
2073 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
2074 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
2075 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
2079 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
2085 @node Types of Files
2086 @section Types of Files
2087 @cindex types of files
2089 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
2090 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
2091 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
2092 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
2094 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
2095 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
2098 @cindex accept wildcards
2099 @cindex accept suffixes
2100 @cindex wildcards, accept
2101 @cindex suffixes, accept
2103 @item -A @var{acclist}
2104 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
2105 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
2106 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
2107 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
2108 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
2109 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
2110 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
2112 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
2113 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
2114 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
2115 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
2116 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
2117 a description of how pattern matching works.
2119 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
2120 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
2122 @cindex reject wildcards
2123 @cindex reject suffixes
2124 @cindex wildcards, reject
2125 @cindex suffixes, reject
2126 @item -R @var{rejlist}
2127 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
2128 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
2129 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
2130 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
2131 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
2133 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
2134 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
2135 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
2136 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
2137 expansion by the shell.
2141 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
2142 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
2143 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
2144 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
2146 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
2147 files (as determined by a @samp{.htm} or @samp{.html} filename
2148 prefix). This behavior may not be desirable for all users, and may be
2149 changed for future versions of Wget.
2151 Note, too, that query strings (strings at the end of a URL beginning
2152 with a question mark (@samp{?}) are not included as part of the
2153 filename for accept/reject rules, even though these will actually
2154 contribute to the name chosen for the local file. It is expected that
2155 a future version of Wget will provide an option to allow matching
2156 against query strings.
2158 Finally, it's worth noting that the accept/reject lists are matched
2159 @emph{twice} against downloaded files: once against the URL's filename
2160 portion, to determine if the file should be downloaded in the first
2161 place; then, after it has been accepted and successfully downloaded,
2162 the local file's name is also checked against the accept/reject lists
2163 to see if it should be removed. The rationale was that, since
2164 @samp{.htm} and @samp{.html} files are always downloaded regardless of
2165 accept/reject rules, they should be removed @emph{after} being
2166 downloaded and scanned for links, if they did match the accept/reject
2167 lists. However, this can lead to unexpected results, since the local
2168 filenames can differ from the original URL filenames in the following
2169 ways, all of which can change whether an accept/reject rule matches:
2173 If the local file already exists and @samp{--no-directories} was
2174 specified, a numeric suffix will be appended to the original name.
2176 If @samp{--html-extension} was specified, the local filename will have
2177 @samp{.html} appended to it. If Wget is invoked with @samp{-E -A.php},
2178 a filename such as @samp{index.php} will match be accepted, but upon
2179 download will be named @samp{index.php.html}, which no longer matches,
2180 and so the file will be deleted.
2182 Query strings do not contribute to URL matching, but are included in
2183 local filenames, and so @emph{do} contribute to filename matching.
2187 This behavior, too, is considered less-than-desirable, and may change
2188 in a future version of Wget.
2190 @node Directory-Based Limits
2191 @section Directory-Based Limits
2193 @cindex directory limits
2195 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
2196 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
2197 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
2198 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
2199 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
2200 @file{/dev} directories.
2202 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
2203 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
2204 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
2206 @cindex directories, include
2207 @cindex include directories
2208 @cindex accept directories
2211 @itemx --include @var{list}
2212 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
2213 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
2214 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
2215 directories are absolute paths.
2217 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
2218 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
2219 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
2222 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
2225 @cindex directories, exclude
2226 @cindex exclude directories
2227 @cindex reject directories
2229 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
2230 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
2231 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
2232 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
2233 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
2234 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
2236 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
2237 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
2238 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
2239 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
2244 @itemx no_parent = on
2245 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
2246 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
2247 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
2248 parent directory/directories.
2250 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
2251 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
2252 Supposing you issue Wget with:
2255 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
2258 You may rest assured that none of the references to
2259 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
2260 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
2261 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
2262 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
2263 intelligent fashion.
2265 @strong{Note} that, for HTTP (and HTTPS), the trailing slash is very
2266 important to @samp{--no-parent}. HTTP has no concept of a ``directory''---Wget
2267 relies on you to indicate what's a directory and what isn't. In
2268 @samp{http://foo/bar/}, Wget will consider @samp{bar} to be a
2269 directory, while in @samp{http://foo/bar} (no trailing slash),
2270 @samp{bar} will be considered a filename (so @samp{--no-parent} would be
2271 meaningless, as its parent is @samp{/}).
2274 @node Relative Links
2275 @section Relative Links
2276 @cindex relative links
2278 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2279 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2280 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2284 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2285 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2288 These links are not relative:
2292 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2293 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2296 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2297 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2298 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2300 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2304 @section Following FTP Links
2305 @cindex following ftp links
2307 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2308 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2309 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2312 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2313 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2314 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2315 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2316 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2317 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2318 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2320 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2321 retrieved recursively further.
2324 @chapter Time-Stamping
2325 @cindex time-stamping
2326 @cindex timestamping
2327 @cindex updating the archives
2328 @cindex incremental updating
2330 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2331 Internet is updating your archives.
2333 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2334 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2335 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2336 offer the option of incremental updating.
2338 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2339 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2340 the place of the old ones.
2342 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2346 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2349 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2350 recently than the local file.
2353 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2354 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2355 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2357 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2358 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2359 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2360 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2361 does, and the remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
2363 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2364 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2368 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2369 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2370 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2373 @node Time-Stamping Usage
2374 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2375 @cindex time-stamping usage
2376 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2378 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2379 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2382 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2385 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2386 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2387 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2388 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2390 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2391 changed, and download it if it has.
2394 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2397 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2398 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2399 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2400 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2402 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2405 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2408 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2409 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2411 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2412 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2413 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2414 since the last download.
2416 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2417 command like the following, weekly:
2420 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2423 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2424 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2425 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2426 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2427 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2429 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2430 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2431 @cindex http time-stamping
2433 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2434 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2435 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2436 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2437 retrieved unconditionally.
2439 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2440 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2441 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2444 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2445 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2446 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2447 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2448 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2449 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2452 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2453 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2454 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2455 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2456 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2458 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2459 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2461 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2462 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2463 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2465 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2466 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2469 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2470 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2471 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2472 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2473 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2474 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2475 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2476 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2478 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2479 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2480 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2481 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2482 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2483 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2485 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2486 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2487 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2488 Wget may support this command in the future.
2491 @chapter Startup File
2492 @cindex startup file
2498 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2499 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2500 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2501 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2503 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2504 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2505 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2506 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2508 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2512 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2513 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2514 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2515 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2518 @node Wgetrc Location
2519 @section Wgetrc Location
2520 @cindex wgetrc location
2521 @cindex location of wgetrc
2523 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2524 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2525 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2526 from there, if it exists.
2528 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2529 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2530 further attempts will be made.
2532 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2534 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2535 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2536 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2537 Fascist admins, away!
2540 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2541 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2542 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2544 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2550 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2551 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2553 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2554 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2555 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2558 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2559 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2560 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2566 @node Wgetrc Commands
2567 @section Wgetrc Commands
2568 @cindex wgetrc commands
2570 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2571 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2572 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}.
2574 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2575 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2576 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2577 values can be any non-empty string.
2579 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2580 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2581 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2584 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2585 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2587 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2588 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2590 @item background = on/off
2591 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2594 @item backup_converted = on/off
2595 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2596 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2598 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2599 @c #### Document me!
2601 @item base = @var{string}
2602 Consider relative @sc{url}s in @sc{url} input files forced to be
2603 interpreted as @sc{html} as being relative to @var{string}---the same as
2604 @samp{--base=@var{string}}.
2606 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2607 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address=@var{address}}.
2609 @item ca_certificate = @var{file}
2610 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{file}. The same
2611 as @samp{--ca-certificate=@var{file}}.
2613 @item ca_directory = @var{directory}
2614 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2615 @samp{--ca-directory=@var{directory}}.
2617 @item cache = on/off
2618 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2621 @item certificate = @var{file}
2622 Set the client certificate file name to @var{file}. The same as
2623 @samp{--certificate=@var{file}}.
2625 @item certificate_type = @var{string}
2626 Specify the type of the client certificate, legal values being
2627 @samp{PEM} (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2628 @samp{--certificate-type=@var{string}}.
2630 @item check_certificate = on/off
2631 If this is set to off, the server certificate is not checked against
2632 the specified client authorities. The default is ``on''. The same as
2633 @samp{--check-certificate}.
2635 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2636 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2638 @item content_disposition = on/off
2639 Turn on recognition of the (non-standard) @samp{Content-Disposition}
2640 HTTP header---if set to @samp{on}, the same as @samp{--content-disposition}.
2642 @item continue = on/off
2643 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2644 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2646 @item convert_links = on/off
2647 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2649 @item cookies = on/off
2650 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2652 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2653 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components. Equivalent to
2654 @samp{--cut-dirs=@var{n}}.
2656 @item debug = on/off
2657 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2659 @item delete_after = on/off
2660 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2662 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2663 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P @var{string}}.
2665 @item dirstruct = on/off
2666 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2669 @item dns_cache = on/off
2670 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2671 option is normally used to turn it off and is equivalent to
2672 @samp{--no-dns-cache}.
2674 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2675 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2677 @item domains = @var{string}
2678 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2680 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2681 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2682 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2683 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2684 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2685 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2686 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2688 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2689 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2691 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2692 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2693 the retrieval (50 by default).
2695 @item egd_file = @var{file}
2696 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2697 @samp{--egd-file=@var{file}}.
2699 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2700 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2701 download---the same as @samp{-X @var{string}} (@pxref{Directory-Based
2704 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2705 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains=@var{string}} (@pxref{Spanning
2708 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2709 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2710 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2712 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2713 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval,
2714 just like @samp{--follow-tags=@var{string}}.
2716 @item force_html = on/off
2717 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2718 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2720 @item ftp_password = @var{string}
2721 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2722 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2723 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2725 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2727 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2728 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2731 @item ftp_user = @var{string}
2732 Set @sc{ftp} user to @var{string}.
2734 This command used to be named @code{login} prior to Wget 1.10.
2737 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2739 @item header = @var{string}
2740 Define a header for HTTP downloads, like using
2741 @samp{--header=@var{string}}.
2743 @item html_extension = on/off
2744 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2745 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files without it, like @samp{-E}.
2747 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2748 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). Turning it
2749 off is equivalent to @samp{--no-http-keep-alive}.
2751 @item http_password = @var{string}
2752 Set @sc{http} password, equivalent to
2753 @samp{--http-password=@var{string}}.
2755 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2756 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2759 @item http_user = @var{string}
2760 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}, equivalent to
2761 @samp{--http-user=@var{string}}.
2763 @item https_proxy = @var{string}
2764 Use @var{string} as @sc{https} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2767 @item ignore_case = on/off
2768 When set to on, match files and directories case insensitively; the
2769 same as @samp{--ignore-case}.
2771 @item ignore_length = on/off
2772 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2773 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2775 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2776 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, like
2777 @samp{--ignore-tags=@var{string}}.
2779 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2780 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2781 downloading---the same as @samp{-I @var{string}}.
2783 @item inet4_only = on/off
2784 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2785 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2786 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2787 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2789 @item inet6_only = on/off
2790 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2791 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2794 @item input = @var{file}
2795 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i @var{file}}.
2797 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2798 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
2799 The same as @samp{--limit-rate=@var{rate}}.
2801 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
2802 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies @var{file}}.
2804 @item logfile = @var{file}
2805 Set logfile to @var{file}, the same as @samp{-o @var{file}}.
2807 @item max_redirect = @var{number}
2808 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
2809 See @samp{--max-redirect=@var{number}}.
2811 @item mirror = on/off
2812 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
2814 @item netrc = on/off
2815 Turn reading netrc on or off.
2817 @item no_clobber = on/off
2820 @item no_parent = on/off
2821 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
2822 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
2824 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
2825 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
2826 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
2828 @item output_document = @var{file}
2829 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O @var{file}}.
2831 @item page_requisites = on/off
2832 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
2833 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
2835 @item passive_ftp = on/off
2836 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
2837 @samp{--passive-ftp} option.
2839 @itemx password = @var{string}
2840 Specify password @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
2841 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_password} and
2842 @samp{http_password} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
2844 @item post_data = @var{string}
2845 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
2846 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data=@var{string}}.
2848 @item post_file = @var{file}
2849 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
2850 @var{file} in the request body. The same as
2851 @samp{--post-file=@var{file}}.
2853 @item prefer_family = IPv4/IPv6/none
2854 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
2855 with specified address family first. IPv4 addresses are preferred by
2856 default. The same as @samp{--prefer-family}, which see for a detailed
2857 discussion of why this is useful.
2859 @item private_key = @var{file}
2860 Set the private key file to @var{file}. The same as
2861 @samp{--private-key=@var{file}}.
2863 @item private_key_type = @var{string}
2864 Specify the type of the private key, legal values being @samp{PEM}
2865 (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2866 @samp{--private-type=@var{string}}.
2868 @item progress = @var{string}
2869 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are @samp{dot}
2870 and @samp{bar}. Equivalent to @samp{--progress=@var{string}}.
2872 @item protocol_directories = on/off
2873 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
2874 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
2876 @item proxy_password = @var{string}
2877 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like
2878 @samp{--proxy-password=@var{string}}.
2880 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
2881 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like
2882 @samp{--proxy-user=@var{string}}.
2884 @item quiet = on/off
2885 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
2887 @item quota = @var{quota}
2888 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
2889 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
2890 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
2891 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
2892 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
2893 to 5 megabytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
2896 @item random_file = @var{file}
2897 Use @var{file} as a source of randomness on systems lacking
2900 @item random_wait = on/off
2901 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
2902 @samp{--random-wait}.
2904 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
2905 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as
2906 @samp{--read-timeout=@var{n}}.
2908 @item reclevel = @var{n}
2909 Recursion level (depth)---the same as @samp{-l @var{n}}.
2911 @item recursive = on/off
2912 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
2914 @item referer = @var{string}
2915 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like
2916 @samp{--referer=@var{string}}. (Note that it was the folks who wrote
2917 the @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of ``referrer'' wrong.)
2919 @item relative_only = on/off
2920 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
2923 @item remove_listing = on/off
2924 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
2925 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
2927 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
2928 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
2929 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
2931 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
2932 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
2933 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
2935 @item retry_connrefused = on/off
2936 When set to on, consider ``connection refused'' a transient
2937 error---the same as @samp{--retry-connrefused}.
2939 @item robots = on/off
2940 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
2941 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
2942 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
2943 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
2946 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
2947 Save cookies to @var{file}. The same as @samp{--save-cookies
2950 @item secure_protocol = @var{string}
2951 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto}
2952 (the default), @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. The same
2953 as @samp{--secure-protocol=@var{string}}.
2955 @item server_response = on/off
2956 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
2957 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
2959 @item span_hosts = on/off
2962 @item strict_comments = on/off
2963 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
2965 @item timeout = @var{n}
2966 Set all applicable timeout values to @var{n}, the same as @samp{-T
2969 @item timestamping = on/off
2970 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
2972 @item tries = @var{n}
2973 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t @var{n}}.
2975 @item use_proxy = on/off
2976 When set to off, don't use proxy even when proxy-related environment
2977 variables are set. In that case it is the same as using
2980 @item user = @var{string}
2981 Specify username @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
2982 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_user} and
2983 @samp{http_user} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
2985 @item verbose = on/off
2986 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
2988 @item wait = @var{n}
2989 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w
2992 @item wait_retry = @var{n}
2993 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
2994 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry=@var{n}}. Note that this is
2995 turned on by default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
2999 @section Sample Wgetrc
3000 @cindex sample wgetrc
3002 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
3003 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
3004 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
3005 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
3007 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
3008 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
3012 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
3019 @c man begin EXAMPLES
3020 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
3024 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
3025 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
3026 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
3030 @section Simple Usage
3034 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
3037 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
3041 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
3042 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
3043 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
3044 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
3045 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
3046 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
3049 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
3053 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
3054 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
3055 shall use @samp{-t}.
3058 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
3061 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
3062 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
3065 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
3069 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
3073 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
3074 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
3077 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
3082 @node Advanced Usage
3083 @section Advanced Usage
3087 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
3094 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
3098 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
3099 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
3100 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
3103 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3107 The same as the above, but convert the links in the @sc{html} files to
3108 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
3111 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3115 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
3116 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
3117 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
3118 references the downloaded links.
3121 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3124 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
3125 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
3126 depending on where they were on the remote server.
3129 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
3130 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
3131 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
3132 subdirectory of the current directory.
3135 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
3136 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3140 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
3144 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
3148 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
3151 wget --save-headers http://www.lycos.com/
3156 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
3160 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
3164 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
3165 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
3166 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
3170 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
3173 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
3174 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
3175 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
3176 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
3177 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
3181 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
3182 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
3186 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
3190 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
3191 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
3194 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
3197 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
3198 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
3201 @cindex redirecting output
3203 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
3207 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
3210 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
3211 documents from remote hotlists:
3214 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
3218 @node Very Advanced Usage
3219 @section Very Advanced Usage
3224 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
3225 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
3226 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
3227 to recheck a site each Sunday:
3231 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3235 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
3236 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
3237 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
3238 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
3239 would look like this:
3242 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3243 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3247 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
3248 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
3249 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
3250 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
3251 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
3254 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3255 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
3259 Or, with less typing:
3262 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3271 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
3274 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers.
3275 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
3276 * Web Site:: GNU Wget's presence on the World Wide Web.
3277 * Mailing List:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
3278 * Internet Relay Chat:: Wget's presence on IRC.
3279 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
3280 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
3281 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
3288 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
3289 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
3290 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
3291 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
3292 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
3293 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
3294 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
3295 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
3296 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
3297 using an authorized proxy.
3299 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
3300 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
3301 the following environment variables:
3306 If set, the @code{http_proxy} and @code{https_proxy} variables should
3307 contain the @sc{url}s of the proxies for @sc{http} and @sc{https}
3308 connections respectively.
3311 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
3312 connections. It is quite common that @code{http_proxy} and
3313 @code{ftp_proxy} are set to the same @sc{url}.
3316 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
3317 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
3318 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
3322 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
3323 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3327 @itemx proxy = on/off
3328 This option and the corresponding command may be used to suppress the
3329 use of proxy, even if the appropriate environment variables are set.
3331 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3332 @itemx https_proxy = @var{URL}
3333 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3334 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3335 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3336 specified by the environment.
3339 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3340 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3341 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3342 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3343 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3345 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3346 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3347 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3348 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3352 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3355 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3356 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3357 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_password} to set the proxy
3358 username and password.
3361 @section Distribution
3362 @cindex latest version
3364 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3365 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3366 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3367 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3373 The official web site for GNU Wget is at
3374 @url{http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/}. However, most useful
3375 information resides at ``The Wget Wgiki'',
3376 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/}.
3379 @section Mailing List
3380 @cindex mailing list
3383 There are several Wget-related mailing lists. The general discussion
3384 list is at @email{wget@@sunsite.dk}. It is the preferred place for
3385 support requests and suggestions, as well as for discussion of
3386 development. You are invited to subscribe.
3388 To subscribe, simply send mail to @email{wget-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}
3389 and follow the instructions. Unsubscribe by mailing to
3390 @email{wget-unsubscribe@@sunsite.dk}. The mailing list is archived at
3391 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3392 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}.
3394 Another mailing list is at @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk}, and is
3395 used to submit patches for review by Wget developers. A ``patch'' is
3396 a textual representation of change to source code, readable by both
3397 humans and programs. The
3398 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/PatchGuidelines} page
3399 covers the creation and submitting of patches in detail. Please don't
3400 send general suggestions or bug reports to @samp{wget-patches}; use it
3401 only for patch submissions.
3403 Subscription is the same as above for @email{wget@@sunsite.dk}, except
3404 that you send to @email{wget-patches-subscribe@@sunsite.dk}, instead.
3405 The mailing list is archived at
3406 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3408 Finally, there is the @email{wget-notify@@addictivecode.org} mailing
3409 list. This is a non-discussion list that receives commit notifications
3410 from the source repository, and also bug report-change notifications.
3411 This is the highest-traffic list for Wget, and is recommended only for
3412 people who are seriously interested in ongoing Wget development.
3413 Subscription is through the @code{mailman} interface at
3414 @url{http://addictivecode.org/mailman/listinfo/wget-notify}.
3416 @node Internet Relay Chat
3417 @section Internet Relay Chat
3418 @cindex Internet Relay Chat
3422 While, at the time of this writing, there is very low activity, we do
3423 have a support channel set up via IRC at @code{irc.freenode.org},
3424 @code{#wget}. Come check it out!
3426 @node Reporting Bugs
3427 @section Reporting Bugs
3429 @cindex reporting bugs
3433 You are welcome to submit bug reports via the GNU Wget bug tracker (see
3434 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/BugTracker}).
3436 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3441 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3442 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3443 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3444 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug, but you might want to
3445 double-check the documentation and the mailing lists (@pxref{Mailing
3449 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3450 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 --no-proxy
3451 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3452 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3453 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3454 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3456 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3457 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3458 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3459 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3460 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3464 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3465 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3466 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3467 with debug support on.
3469 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3470 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3471 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3472 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3473 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3474 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3475 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3478 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3479 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3480 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3486 @section Portability
3488 @cindex operating systems
3490 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3491 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3492 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3493 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3495 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds of
3496 Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, Mac OS X, OSF
3497 (aka Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some
3498 of those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3499 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3500 system, we would like to know about it.
3502 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3503 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3504 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3505 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3506 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3507 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3508 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3509 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3510 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3511 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3512 Windows-related features might look at them.
3514 Support for building on MS-DOS via DJGPP has been contributed by Gisle
3515 Vanem; a port to VMS is maintained by Steven Schweda, and is available
3516 at @url{http://antinode.org/}.
3520 @cindex signal handling
3523 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3524 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3525 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3526 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3527 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3530 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3533 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3536 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3537 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3542 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3545 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3546 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3547 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3550 @node Robot Exclusion
3551 @section Robot Exclusion
3552 @cindex robot exclusion
3554 @cindex server maintenance
3556 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3557 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3558 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3560 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3561 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3562 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3563 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3564 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3565 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3566 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3567 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3568 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3569 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3570 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3571 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3573 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3574 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3575 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3576 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3577 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3578 they will permit access.
3580 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3581 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3582 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3583 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3584 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3585 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3588 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3589 can downloads large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3590 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3591 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3594 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3597 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3598 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3599 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3600 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3603 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3604 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3605 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3606 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3607 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3608 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3609 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3610 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3612 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3614 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3615 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3616 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3620 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3623 This is explained in some detail at
3624 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3625 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3628 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3629 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3630 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3631 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3633 @node Security Considerations
3634 @section Security Considerations
3637 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3638 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3639 main issues, and some solutions.
3643 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3644 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3645 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3646 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3647 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3650 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3651 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3654 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3655 solution for this at the moment.
3658 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3659 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3660 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3665 @section Contributors
3666 @cindex contributors
3669 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3672 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3674 and it is currently maintained by Micah Cowan @email{micah@@cowan.name}.
3676 However, the development of Wget could never have gone as far as it has, were
3677 it not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature proposals,
3678 patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3680 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3683 @item Dan Harkless---contributed a lot of code and documentation of
3684 extremely high quality, as well as the @code{--page-requisites} and
3685 related options. He was the principal maintainer for some time and
3688 @item Ian Abbott---contributed bug fixes, Windows-related fixes, and
3689 provided a prototype implementation of the breadth-first recursive
3690 download. Co-maintained Wget during the 1.8 release cycle.
3693 The dotsrc.org crew, in particular Karsten Thygesen---donated system
3694 resources such as the mailing list, web space, @sc{ftp} space, and
3695 version control repositories, along with a lot of time to make these
3696 actually work. Christian Reiniger was of invaluable help with setting
3700 Heiko Herold---provided high-quality Windows builds and contributed
3701 bug and build reports for many years.
3704 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3707 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3711 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3715 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3716 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3719 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3720 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3724 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3727 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the initial Italian
3732 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3736 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3741 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3744 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3748 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization, Makefile
3749 layout and many other things.
3752 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3756 Mauro Tortonesi---Improved IPv6 support, adding support for dual
3757 family systems. Refactored and enhanced FTP IPv6 code. Maintained GNU
3758 Wget from 2004--2007.
3761 Christopher G.@: Lewis---Maintenance of the Windows version of GNU WGet.
3764 Gisle Vanem---Many helpful patches and improvements, especially for
3765 Windows and MS-DOS support.
3768 Ralf Wildenhues---Contributed patches to convert Wget to use Automake as
3769 part of its build process, and various bugfixes.
3772 People who provided donations for development---including Brian Gough.
3775 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
3776 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
3777 that make maintenance so much fun:
3797 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
3806 Bertrand Demiddelaer,
3807 Alexander Dergachev,
3820 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
3823 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
3842 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
3861 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
3874 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
3875 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
3876 (Simos KSenitellis),
3885 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
3891 Alexander V.@: Lukyanov,
3900 Matthew J.@: Mellon,
3932 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
3934 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}guez,
3937 Juan Jose Rodriguez,
3939 Maciej W.@: Rozycki,
3945 Steven M.@: Schweda,
3955 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
3970 Douglas E.@: Wegscheid,
3972 Joshua David Williams,
3983 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
3984 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
3986 @node Copying this manual
3987 @appendix Copying this manual
3990 * GNU Free Documentation License:: Licnse for copying this manual.
3997 @unnumbered Concept Index