1 \input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
6 @settitle GNU Wget @value{VERSION} Manual
7 @c Disable the monstrous rectangles beside overfull hbox-es.
9 @c Use `odd' to print double-sided.
14 @c Remove this if you don't use A4 paper.
18 @c Title for man page. The weird way texi2pod.pl is written requires
19 @c the preceding @set.
21 @c man title Wget The non-interactive network downloader.
23 @dircategory Network Applications
25 * Wget: (wget). The non-interactive network downloader.
29 This file documents the GNU Wget utility for downloading network
32 @c man begin COPYRIGHT
33 Copyright @copyright{} 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,
34 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
37 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
38 this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
39 are preserved on all copies.
43 Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the
44 results, provided the printed document carries a copying permission
45 notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
46 (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
48 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
49 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
50 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
51 Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A
52 copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free
53 Documentation License''.
58 @title GNU Wget @value{VERSION}
59 @subtitle The non-interactive download utility
60 @subtitle Updated for Wget @value{VERSION}, @value{UPDATED}
61 @author by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} and others
65 Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
66 Currently maintained by Micah Cowan <micah@cowan.name>.
69 This is @strong{not} the complete manual for GNU Wget.
70 For more complete information, including more detailed explanations of
71 some of the options, and a number of commands available
72 for use with @file{.wgetrc} files and the @samp{-e} option, see the GNU
73 Info entry for @file{wget}.
78 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
85 @node Top, Overview, (dir), (dir)
86 @top Wget @value{VERSION}
92 * Overview:: Features of Wget.
93 * Invoking:: Wget command-line arguments.
94 * Recursive Download:: Downloading interlinked pages.
95 * Following Links:: The available methods of chasing links.
96 * Time-Stamping:: Mirroring according to time-stamps.
97 * Startup File:: Wget's initialization file.
98 * Examples:: Examples of usage.
99 * Various:: The stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.
100 * Appendices:: Some useful references.
101 * Copying this manual:: You may give out copies of this manual.
102 * Concept Index:: Topics covered by this manual.
105 @node Overview, Invoking, Top, Top
110 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
111 GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from
112 the Web. It supports @sc{http}, @sc{https}, and @sc{ftp} protocols, as
113 well as retrieval through @sc{http} proxies.
116 This chapter is a partial overview of Wget's features.
120 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
121 Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background,
122 while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval
123 and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By
124 contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user's presence,
125 which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
130 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
134 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
135 Wget can follow links in @sc{html}, @sc{xhtml}, and @sc{css} pages, to
136 create local versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the
137 directory structure of the original site. This is sometimes referred to
138 as ``recursive downloading.'' While doing that, Wget respects the Robot
139 Exclusion Standard (@file{/robots.txt}). Wget can be instructed to
140 convert the links in downloaded files to point at the local files, for
145 File name wildcard matching and recursive mirroring of directories are
146 available when retrieving via @sc{ftp}. Wget can read the time-stamp
147 information given by both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} servers, and store it
148 locally. Thus Wget can see if the remote file has changed since last
149 retrieval, and automatically retrieve the new version if it has. This
150 makes Wget suitable for mirroring of @sc{ftp} sites, as well as home
155 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
159 @c man begin DESCRIPTION
160 Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network
161 connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will
162 keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server
163 supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the
164 download from where it left off.
168 Wget supports proxy servers, which can lighten the network load, speed
169 up retrieval and provide access behind firewalls. Wget uses the passive
170 @sc{ftp} downloading by default, active @sc{ftp} being an option.
173 Wget supports IP version 6, the next generation of IP. IPv6 is
174 autodetected at compile-time, and can be disabled at either build or
175 run time. Binaries built with IPv6 support work well in both
176 IPv4-only and dual family environments.
179 Built-in features offer mechanisms to tune which links you wish to follow
180 (@pxref{Following Links}).
183 The progress of individual downloads is traced using a progress gauge.
184 Interactive downloads are tracked using a ``thermometer''-style gauge,
185 whereas non-interactive ones are traced with dots, each dot
186 representing a fixed amount of data received (1KB by default). Either
187 gauge can be customized to your preferences.
190 Most of the features are fully configurable, either through command line
191 options, or via the initialization file @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup
192 File}). Wget allows you to define @dfn{global} startup files
193 (@file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default) for site settings.
198 @item /usr/local/etc/wgetrc
199 Default location of the @dfn{global} startup file.
208 Finally, GNU Wget is free software. This means that everyone may use
209 it, redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
210 Public License, as published by the Free Software Foundation (see the
211 file @file{COPYING} that came with GNU Wget, for details).
214 @node Invoking, Recursive Download, Overview, Top
221 By default, Wget is very simple to invoke. The basic syntax is:
224 @c man begin SYNOPSIS
225 wget [@var{option}]@dots{} [@var{URL}]@dots{}
229 Wget will simply download all the @sc{url}s specified on the command
230 line. @var{URL} is a @dfn{Uniform Resource Locator}, as defined below.
232 However, you may wish to change some of the default parameters of
233 Wget. You can do it two ways: permanently, adding the appropriate
234 command to @file{.wgetrc} (@pxref{Startup File}), or specifying it on
240 * Basic Startup Options::
241 * Logging and Input File Options::
243 * Directory Options::
245 * HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options::
247 * Recursive Retrieval Options::
248 * Recursive Accept/Reject Options::
252 @node URL Format, Option Syntax, Invoking, Invoking
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}.
330 @node Option Syntax, Basic Startup Options, URL Format, Invoking
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 completely equivalent to:
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 = on} in
401 @file{.wgetrc} makes Wget @emph{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, Logging and Input File Options, Option Syntax, Invoking
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, Download Options, Basic Startup Options, Invoking
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 a local or external @var{file}. If @samp{-} is
484 specified as @var{file}, @sc{url}s are read from the standard input.
485 (Use @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. If @samp{--force-html} is not specified, then @var{file}
491 should consist of a series of URLs, one per line.
493 However, if you specify @samp{--force-html}, the document will be
494 regarded as @samp{html}. In that case you may have problems with
495 relative links, which you can solve either by adding @code{<base
496 href="@var{url}">} to the documents or by specifying
497 @samp{--base=@var{url}} on the command line.
499 If the @var{file} is an external one, the document will be automatically
500 treated as @samp{html} if the Content-Type matches @samp{text/html}.
501 Furthermore, the @var{file}'s location will be implicitly used as base
502 href if none was specified.
507 When input is read from a file, force it to be treated as an @sc{html}
508 file. This enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
509 @sc{html} files on your local disk, by adding @code{<base
510 href="@var{url}">} to @sc{html}, or using the @samp{--base} command-line
513 @cindex base for relative links in input file
515 @itemx --base=@var{URL}
516 Resolves relative links using @var{URL} as the point of reference,
517 when reading links from an HTML file specified via the
518 @samp{-i}/@samp{--input-file} option (together with
519 @samp{--force-html}, or when the input file was fetched remotely from
520 a server describing it as @sc{html}). This is equivalent to the
521 presence of a @code{BASE} tag in the @sc{html} input file, with
522 @var{URL} as the value for the @code{href} attribute.
524 For instance, if you specify @samp{http://foo/bar/a.html} for
525 @var{URL}, and Wget reads @samp{../baz/b.html} from the input file, it
526 would be resolved to @samp{http://foo/baz/b.html}.
529 @node Download Options, Directory Options, Logging and Input File Options, Invoking
530 @section Download Options
534 @cindex client IP address
535 @cindex IP address, client
536 @item --bind-address=@var{ADDRESS}
537 When making client TCP/IP connections, bind to @var{ADDRESS} on
538 the local machine. @var{ADDRESS} may be specified as a hostname or IP
539 address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to multiple
544 @cindex number of retries
545 @item -t @var{number}
546 @itemx --tries=@var{number}
547 Set number of retries to @var{number}. Specify 0 or @samp{inf} for
548 infinite retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the exception
549 of fatal errors like ``connection refused'' or ``not found'' (404),
550 which are not retried.
553 @itemx --output-document=@var{file}
554 The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but all
555 will be concatenated together and written to @var{file}. If @samp{-}
556 is used as @var{file}, documents will be printed to standard output,
557 disabling link conversion. (Use @samp{./-} to print to a file
558 literally named @samp{-}.)
560 Use of @samp{-O} is @emph{not} intended to mean simply ``use the name
561 @var{file} instead of the one in the URL;'' rather, it is
562 analogous to shell redirection:
563 @samp{wget -O file http://foo} is intended to work like
564 @samp{wget -O - http://foo > file}; @file{file} will be truncated
565 immediately, and @emph{all} downloaded content will be written there.
567 For this reason, @samp{-N} (for timestamp-checking) is not supported
568 in combination with @samp{-O}: since @var{file} is always newly
569 created, it will always have a very new timestamp. A warning will be
570 issued if this combination is used.
572 Similarly, using @samp{-r} or @samp{-p} with @samp{-O} may not work as
573 you expect: Wget won't just download the first file to @var{file} and
574 then download the rest to their normal names: @emph{all} downloaded
575 content will be placed in @var{file}. This was disabled in version
576 1.11, but has been reinstated (with a warning) in 1.11.2, as there are
577 some cases where this behavior can actually have some use.
579 Note that a combination with @samp{-k} is only permitted when
580 downloading a single document, as in that case it will just convert
581 all relative URIs to external ones; @samp{-k} makes no sense for
582 multiple URIs when they're all being downloaded to a single file;
583 @samp{-k} can be used only when the output is a regular file.
585 @cindex clobbering, file
586 @cindex downloading multiple times
590 If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, Wget's
591 behavior depends on a few options, including @samp{-nc}. In certain
592 cases, the local file will be @dfn{clobbered}, or overwritten, upon
593 repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
595 When running Wget without @samp{-N}, @samp{-nc}, @samp{-r}, or
596 @samp{-p}, downloading the same file in the same directory will result
597 in the original copy of @var{file} being preserved and the second copy
598 being named @samp{@var{file}.1}. If that file is downloaded yet
599 again, the third copy will be named @samp{@var{file}.2}, and so on.
600 (This is also the behavior with @samp{-nd}, even if @samp{-r} or
601 @samp{-p} are in effect.) When @samp{-nc} is specified, this behavior
602 is suppressed, and Wget will refuse to download newer copies of
603 @samp{@var{file}}. Therefore, ``@code{no-clobber}'' is actually a
604 misnomer in this mode---it's not clobbering that's prevented (as the
605 numeric suffixes were already preventing clobbering), but rather the
606 multiple version saving that's prevented.
608 When running Wget with @samp{-r} or @samp{-p}, but without @samp{-N},
609 @samp{-nd}, or @samp{-nc}, re-downloading a file will result in the
610 new copy simply overwriting the old. Adding @samp{-nc} will prevent
611 this behavior, instead causing the original version to be preserved
612 and any newer copies on the server to be ignored.
614 When running Wget with @samp{-N}, with or without @samp{-r} or
615 @samp{-p}, the decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy
616 of a file depends on the local and remote timestamp and size of the
617 file (@pxref{Time-Stamping}). @samp{-nc} may not be specified at the
618 same time as @samp{-N}.
620 Note that when @samp{-nc} is specified, files with the suffixes
621 @samp{.html} or @samp{.htm} will be loaded from the local disk and
622 parsed as if they had been retrieved from the Web.
624 @cindex continue retrieval
625 @cindex incomplete downloads
626 @cindex resume download
629 Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you
630 want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget, or
631 by another program. For instance:
634 wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
637 If there is a file named @file{ls-lR.Z} in the current directory, Wget
638 will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and will
639 ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal to the
640 length of the local file.
642 Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want the
643 current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should the
644 connection be lost midway through. This is the default behavior.
645 @samp{-c} only affects resumption of downloads started @emph{prior} to
646 this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are still sitting around.
648 Without @samp{-c}, the previous example would just download the remote
649 file to @file{ls-lR.Z.1}, leaving the truncated @file{ls-lR.Z} file
652 Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a non-empty file, and
653 it turns out that the server does not support continued downloading,
654 Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch, which would
655 effectively ruin existing contents. If you really want the download to
656 start from scratch, remove the file.
658 Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use @samp{-c} on a file which is of
659 equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download the
660 file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when the file
661 is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because it was changed
662 on the server since your last download attempt)---because ``continuing''
663 is not meaningful, no download occurs.
665 On the other side of the coin, while using @samp{-c}, any file that's
666 bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
667 download and only @code{(length(remote) - length(local))} bytes will be
668 downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This behavior can
669 be desirable in certain cases---for instance, you can use @samp{wget -c}
670 to download just the new portion that's been appended to a data
671 collection or log file.
673 However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
674 @emph{changed}, as opposed to just @emph{appended} to, you'll end up
675 with a garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file
676 is really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be especially
677 careful of this when using @samp{-c} in conjunction with @samp{-r},
678 since every file will be considered as an "incomplete download" candidate.
680 Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
681 @samp{-c} is if you have a lame @sc{http} proxy that inserts a
682 ``transfer interrupted'' string into the local file. In the future a
683 ``rollback'' option may be added to deal with this case.
685 Note that @samp{-c} only works with @sc{ftp} servers and with @sc{http}
686 servers that support the @code{Range} header.
688 @cindex progress indicator
690 @item --progress=@var{type}
691 Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
692 indicators are ``dot'' and ``bar''.
694 The ``bar'' indicator is used by default. It draws an @sc{ascii} progress
695 bar graphics (a.k.a ``thermometer'' display) indicating the status of
696 retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the ``dot'' bar will be used by
699 Use @samp{--progress=dot} to switch to the ``dot'' display. It traces
700 the retrieval by printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a
701 fixed amount of downloaded data.
703 When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the @dfn{style} by
704 specifying the type as @samp{dot:@var{style}}. Different styles assign
705 different meaning to one dot. With the @code{default} style each dot
706 represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line.
707 The @code{binary} style has a more ``computer''-like orientation---8K
708 dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K
709 lines). The @code{mega} style is suitable for downloading very large
710 files---each dot represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a
711 cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M).
713 Note that you can set the default style using the @code{progress}
714 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
715 command line. The exception is that, when the output is not a TTY, the
716 ``dot'' progress will be favored over ``bar''. To force the bar output,
717 use @samp{--progress=bar:force}.
720 @itemx --timestamping
721 Turn on time-stamping. @xref{Time-Stamping}, for details.
723 @item --no-use-server-timestamps
724 Don't set the local file's timestamp by the one on the server.
726 By default, when a file is downloaded, it's timestamps are set to
727 match those from the remote file. This allows the use of
728 @samp{--timestamping} on subsequent invocations of wget. However, it
729 is sometimes useful to base the local file's timestamp on when it was
730 actually downloaded; for that purpose, the
731 @samp{--no-use-server-timestamps} option has been provided.
733 @cindex server response, print
735 @itemx --server-response
736 Print the headers sent by @sc{http} servers and responses sent by
739 @cindex Wget as spider
742 When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web @dfn{spider},
743 which means that it will not download the pages, just check that they
744 are there. For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:
747 wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
750 This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
751 functionality of real web spiders.
755 @itemx --timeout=@var{seconds}
756 Set the network timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. This is equivalent
757 to specifying @samp{--dns-timeout}, @samp{--connect-timeout}, and
758 @samp{--read-timeout}, all at the same time.
760 When interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and
761 abort the operation if it takes too long. This prevents anomalies
762 like hanging reads and infinite connects. The only timeout enabled by
763 default is a 900-second read timeout. Setting a timeout to 0 disables
764 it altogether. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to
765 change the default timeout settings.
767 All timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as
768 subsecond values. For example, @samp{0.1} seconds is a legal (though
769 unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts are useful for checking
770 server response times or for testing network latency.
774 @item --dns-timeout=@var{seconds}
775 Set the DNS lookup timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. DNS lookups that
776 don't complete within the specified time will fail. By default, there
777 is no timeout on DNS lookups, other than that implemented by system
780 @cindex connect timeout
781 @cindex timeout, connect
782 @item --connect-timeout=@var{seconds}
783 Set the connect timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. TCP connections that
784 take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there is no
785 connect timeout, other than that implemented by system libraries.
788 @cindex timeout, read
789 @item --read-timeout=@var{seconds}
790 Set the read (and write) timeout to @var{seconds} seconds. The
791 ``time'' of this timeout refers to @dfn{idle time}: if, at any point in
792 the download, no data is received for more than the specified number
793 of seconds, reading fails and the download is restarted. This option
794 does not directly affect the duration of the entire download.
796 Of course, the remote server may choose to terminate the connection
797 sooner than this option requires. The default read timeout is 900
800 @cindex bandwidth, limit
802 @cindex limit bandwidth
803 @item --limit-rate=@var{amount}
804 Limit the download speed to @var{amount} bytes per second. Amount may
805 be expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the @samp{k} suffix, or megabytes
806 with the @samp{m} suffix. For example, @samp{--limit-rate=20k} will
807 limit the retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for whatever
808 reason, you don't want Wget to consume the entire available bandwidth.
810 This option allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction
811 with power suffixes; for example, @samp{--limit-rate=2.5k} is a legal
814 Note that Wget implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate
815 amount of time after a network read that took less time than specified
816 by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the TCP transfer to slow
817 down to approximately the specified rate. However, it may take some
818 time for this balance to be achieved, so don't be surprised if limiting
819 the rate doesn't work well with very small files.
823 @item -w @var{seconds}
824 @itemx --wait=@var{seconds}
825 Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use of
826 this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
827 requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can be
828 specified in minutes using the @code{m} suffix, in hours using @code{h}
829 suffix, or in days using @code{d} suffix.
831 Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network or the
832 destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough to
833 reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the retry. The
834 waiting interval specified by this function is influenced by
835 @code{--random-wait}, which see.
837 @cindex retries, waiting between
838 @cindex waiting between retries
839 @item --waitretry=@var{seconds}
840 If you don't want Wget to wait between @emph{every} retrieval, but only
841 between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will
842 use @dfn{linear backoff}, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a
843 given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that
844 file, up to the maximum number of @var{seconds} you specify.
846 By default, Wget will assume a value of 10 seconds.
851 Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval programs
852 such as Wget by looking for statistically significant similarities in
853 the time between requests. This option causes the time between requests
854 to vary between 0.5 and 1.5 * @var{wait} seconds, where @var{wait} was
855 specified using the @samp{--wait} option, in order to mask Wget's
856 presence from such analysis.
858 A 2001 article in a publication devoted to development on a popular
859 consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on the fly.
860 Its author suggested blocking at the class C address level to ensure
861 automated retrieval programs were blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied
864 The @samp{--random-wait} option was inspired by this ill-advised
865 recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due to the
870 Don't use proxies, even if the appropriate @code{*_proxy} environment
874 For more information about the use of proxies with Wget, @xref{Proxies}.
879 @itemx --quota=@var{quota}
880 Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
881 specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with @samp{k} suffix), or
882 megabytes (with @samp{m} suffix).
884 Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
885 specify @samp{wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz}, all of the
886 @file{ls-lR.gz} will be downloaded. The same goes even when several
887 @sc{url}s are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
888 respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input file.
889 Thus you may safely type @samp{wget -Q2m -i sites}---download will be
890 aborted when the quota is exceeded.
892 Setting quota to 0 or to @samp{inf} unlimits the download quota.
895 @cindex caching of DNS lookups
897 Turn off caching of DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the IP
898 addresses it looked up from DNS so it doesn't have to repeatedly
899 contact the DNS server for the same (typically small) set of hosts it
900 retrieves from. This cache exists in memory only; a new Wget run will
903 However, it has been reported that in some situations it is not
904 desirable to cache host names, even for the duration of a
905 short-running application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a
906 new DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to @code{gethostbyname} or
907 @code{getaddrinfo}) each time it makes a new connection. Please note
908 that this option will @emph{not} affect caching that might be
909 performed by the resolving library or by an external caching layer,
912 If you don't understand exactly what this option does, you probably
915 @cindex file names, restrict
916 @cindex Windows file names
917 @item --restrict-file-names=@var{modes}
918 Change which characters found in remote URLs must be escaped during
919 generation of local filenames. Characters that are @dfn{restricted}
920 by this option are escaped, i.e. replaced with @samp{%HH}, where
921 @samp{HH} is the hexadecimal number that corresponds to the restricted
922 character. This option may also be used to force all alphabetical
923 cases to be either lower- or uppercase.
925 By default, Wget escapes the characters that are not valid or safe as
926 part of file names on your operating system, as well as control
927 characters that are typically unprintable. This option is useful for
928 changing these defaults, perhaps because you are downloading to a
929 non-native partition, or because you want to disable escaping of the
930 control characters, or you want to further restrict characters to only
931 those in the @sc{ascii} range of values.
933 The @var{modes} are a comma-separated set of text values. The
934 acceptable values are @samp{unix}, @samp{windows}, @samp{nocontrol},
935 @samp{ascii}, @samp{lowercase}, and @samp{uppercase}. The values
936 @samp{unix} and @samp{windows} are mutually exclusive (one will
937 override the other), as are @samp{lowercase} and
938 @samp{uppercase}. Those last are special cases, as they do not change
939 the set of characters that would be escaped, but rather force local
940 file paths to be converted either to lower- or uppercase.
942 When ``unix'' is specified, Wget escapes the character @samp{/} and
943 the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159. This is the
944 default on Unix-like operating systems.
946 When ``windows'' is given, Wget escapes the characters @samp{\},
947 @samp{|}, @samp{/}, @samp{:}, @samp{?}, @samp{"}, @samp{*}, @samp{<},
948 @samp{>}, and the control characters in the ranges 0--31 and 128--159.
949 In addition to this, Wget in Windows mode uses @samp{+} instead of
950 @samp{:} to separate host and port in local file names, and uses
951 @samp{@@} instead of @samp{?} to separate the query portion of the file
952 name from the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be saved as
953 @samp{www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah} in Unix mode would be
954 saved as @samp{www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@@input=blah} in Windows
955 mode. This mode is the default on Windows.
957 If you specify @samp{nocontrol}, then the escaping of the control
958 characters is also switched off. This option may make sense
959 when you are downloading URLs whose names contain UTF-8 characters, on
960 a system which can save and display filenames in UTF-8 (some possible
961 byte values used in UTF-8 byte sequences fall in the range of values
962 designated by Wget as ``controls'').
964 The @samp{ascii} mode is used to specify that any bytes whose values
965 are outside the range of @sc{ascii} characters (that is, greater than
966 127) shall be escaped. This can be useful when saving filenames
967 whose encoding does not match the one used locally.
974 Force connecting to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. With @samp{--inet4-only}
975 or @samp{-4}, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts, ignoring AAAA
976 records in DNS, and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in
977 URLs. Conversely, with @samp{--inet6-only} or @samp{-6}, Wget will
978 only connect to IPv6 hosts and ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.
980 Neither options should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6-aware
981 Wget will use the address family specified by the host's DNS record.
982 If the DNS responds with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, Wget will try
983 them in sequence until it finds one it can connect to. (Also see
984 @code{--prefer-family} option described below.)
986 These options can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or
987 IPv6 address families on dual family systems, usually to aid debugging
988 or to deal with broken network configuration. Only one of
989 @samp{--inet6-only} and @samp{--inet4-only} may be specified at the
990 same time. Neither option is available in Wget compiled without IPv6
993 @item --prefer-family=none/IPv4/IPv6
994 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
995 with specified address family first. The address order returned by
996 DNS is used without change by default.
998 This avoids spurious errors and connect attempts when accessing hosts
999 that resolve to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4 networks. For
1000 example, @samp{www.kame.net} resolves to
1001 @samp{2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085} and to
1002 @samp{203.178.141.194}. When the preferred family is @code{IPv4}, the
1003 IPv4 address is used first; when the preferred family is @code{IPv6},
1004 the IPv6 address is used first; if the specified value is @code{none},
1005 the address order returned by DNS is used without change.
1007 Unlike @samp{-4} and @samp{-6}, this option doesn't inhibit access to
1008 any address family, it only changes the @emph{order} in which the
1009 addresses are accessed. Also note that the reordering performed by
1010 this option is @dfn{stable}---it doesn't affect order of addresses of
1011 the same family. That is, the relative order of all IPv4 addresses
1012 and of all IPv6 addresses remains intact in all cases.
1014 @item --retry-connrefused
1015 Consider ``connection refused'' a transient error and try again.
1016 Normally Wget gives up on a URL when it is unable to connect to the
1017 site because failure to connect is taken as a sign that the server is
1018 not running at all and that retries would not help. This option is
1019 for mirroring unreliable sites whose servers tend to disappear for
1020 short periods of time.
1024 @cindex authentication
1025 @item --user=@var{user}
1026 @itemx --password=@var{password}
1027 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for both
1028 @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval. These parameters can be overridden
1029 using the @samp{--ftp-user} and @samp{--ftp-password} options for
1030 @sc{ftp} connections and the @samp{--http-user} and @samp{--http-password}
1031 options for @sc{http} connections.
1033 @item --ask-password
1034 Prompt for a password for each connection established. Cannot be specified
1035 when @samp{--password} is being used, because they are mutually exclusive.
1041 Turn off internationalized URI (IRI) support. Use @samp{--iri} to
1042 turn it on. IRI support is activated by default.
1044 You can set the default state of IRI support using the @code{iri}
1045 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
1048 @cindex local encoding
1049 @item --local-encoding=@var{encoding}
1051 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default system encoding. That affects
1052 how Wget converts URLs specified as arguments from locale to @sc{utf-8} for
1055 Wget use the function @code{nl_langinfo()} and then the @code{CHARSET}
1056 environment variable to get the locale. If it fails, @sc{ascii} is used.
1058 You can set the default local encoding using the @code{local_encoding}
1059 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
1062 @cindex remote encoding
1063 @item --remote-encoding=@var{encoding}
1065 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default remote server encoding.
1066 That affects how Wget converts URIs found in files from remote encoding
1067 to @sc{utf-8} during a recursive fetch. This options is only useful for
1068 IRI support, for the interpretation of non-@sc{ascii} characters.
1070 For HTTP, remote encoding can be found in HTTP @code{Content-Type}
1071 header and in HTML @code{Content-Type http-equiv} meta tag.
1073 You can set the default encoding using the @code{remoteencoding}
1074 command in @file{.wgetrc}. That setting may be overridden from the
1080 Force Wget to unlink file instead of clobbering existing file. This
1081 option is useful for downloading to the directory with hardlinks.
1085 @node Directory Options, HTTP Options, Download Options, Invoking
1086 @section Directory Options
1090 @itemx --no-directories
1091 Do not create a hierarchy of directories when retrieving recursively.
1092 With this option turned on, all files will get saved to the current
1093 directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than once, the
1094 filenames will get extensions @samp{.n}).
1097 @itemx --force-directories
1098 The opposite of @samp{-nd}---create a hierarchy of directories, even if
1099 one would not have been created otherwise. E.g. @samp{wget -x
1100 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt} will save the downloaded file to
1101 @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt}.
1104 @itemx --no-host-directories
1105 Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking
1106 Wget with @samp{-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/} will create a structure of
1107 directories beginning with @file{fly.srk.fer.hr/}. This option disables
1110 @item --protocol-directories
1111 Use the protocol name as a directory component of local file names. For
1112 example, with this option, @samp{wget -r http://@var{host}} will save to
1113 @samp{http/@var{host}/...} rather than just to @samp{@var{host}/...}.
1115 @cindex cut directories
1116 @item --cut-dirs=@var{number}
1117 Ignore @var{number} directory components. This is useful for getting a
1118 fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will
1121 Take, for example, the directory at
1122 @samp{ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. If you retrieve it with
1123 @samp{-r}, it will be saved locally under
1124 @file{ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/}. While the @samp{-nH} option can
1125 remove the @file{ftp.xemacs.org/} part, you are still stuck with
1126 @file{pub/xemacs}. This is where @samp{--cut-dirs} comes in handy; it
1127 makes Wget not ``see'' @var{number} remote directory components. Here
1128 are several examples of how @samp{--cut-dirs} option works.
1132 No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/
1134 -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/
1135 -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
1137 --cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/
1142 If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
1143 similar to a combination of @samp{-nd} and @samp{-P}. However, unlike
1144 @samp{-nd}, @samp{--cut-dirs} does not lose with subdirectories---for
1145 instance, with @samp{-nH --cut-dirs=1}, a @file{beta/} subdirectory will
1146 be placed to @file{xemacs/beta}, as one would expect.
1148 @cindex directory prefix
1149 @item -P @var{prefix}
1150 @itemx --directory-prefix=@var{prefix}
1151 Set directory prefix to @var{prefix}. The @dfn{directory prefix} is the
1152 directory where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
1153 i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is @samp{.} (the
1157 @node HTTP Options, HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, Directory Options, Invoking
1158 @section HTTP Options
1161 @cindex default page name
1163 @item --default-page=@var{name}
1164 Use @var{name} as the default file name when it isn't known (i.e., for
1165 URLs that end in a slash), instead of @file{index.html}.
1167 @cindex .html extension
1168 @cindex .css extension
1170 @itemx --adjust-extension
1171 If a file of type @samp{application/xhtml+xml} or @samp{text/html} is
1172 downloaded and the URL does not end with the regexp
1173 @samp{\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?}, this option will cause the suffix @samp{.html}
1174 to be appended to the local filename. This is useful, for instance, when
1175 you're mirroring a remote site that uses @samp{.asp} pages, but you want
1176 the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache server. Another
1177 good use for this is when you're downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
1178 like @samp{http://site.com/article.cgi?25} will be saved as
1179 @file{article.cgi?25.html}.
1181 Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every time
1182 you re-mirror a site, because Wget can't tell that the local
1183 @file{@var{X}.html} file corresponds to remote URL @samp{@var{X}} (since
1184 it doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type
1185 @samp{text/html} or @samp{application/xhtml+xml}. To prevent this
1186 re-downloading, you must use @samp{-k} and @samp{-K} so that the original
1187 version of the file will be saved as @file{@var{X}.orig} (@pxref{Recursive
1188 Retrieval Options}).
1190 As of version 1.12, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files of
1191 type @samp{text/css} end in the suffix @samp{.css}, and the option was
1192 renamed from @samp{--html-extension}, to better reflect its new
1193 behavior. The old option name is still acceptable, but should now be
1194 considered deprecated.
1196 At some point in the future, this option may well be expanded to
1197 include suffixes for other types of content, including content types
1198 that are not parsed by Wget.
1201 @cindex http password
1202 @cindex authentication
1203 @item --http-user=@var{user}
1204 @itemx --http-password=@var{password}
1205 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1206 @sc{http} server. According to the type of the challenge, Wget will
1207 encode them using either the @code{basic} (insecure),
1208 the @code{digest}, or the Windows @code{NTLM} authentication scheme.
1210 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1211 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1212 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1213 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1214 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1215 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1216 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1219 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1223 @cindex Keep-Alive, turning off
1224 @cindex Persistent Connections, disabling
1225 @item --no-http-keep-alive
1226 Turn off the ``keep-alive'' feature for HTTP downloads. Normally, Wget
1227 asks the server to keep the connection open so that, when you download
1228 more than one document from the same server, they get transferred over
1229 the same TCP connection. This saves time and at the same time reduces
1230 the load on the server.
1232 This option is useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
1233 connections don't work for you, for example due to a server bug or due
1234 to the inability of server-side scripts to cope with the connections.
1239 Disable server-side cache. In this case, Wget will send the remote
1240 server an appropriate directive (@samp{Pragma: no-cache}) to get the
1241 file from the remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
1242 This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing out-of-date
1243 documents on proxy servers.
1245 Caching is allowed by default.
1249 Disable the use of cookies. Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining
1250 server-side state. The server sends the client a cookie using the
1251 @code{Set-Cookie} header, and the client responds with the same cookie
1252 upon further requests. Since cookies allow the server owners to keep
1253 track of visitors and for sites to exchange this information, some
1254 consider them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
1255 however, @emph{storing} cookies is not on by default.
1257 @cindex loading cookies
1258 @cindex cookies, loading
1259 @item --load-cookies @var{file}
1260 Load cookies from @var{file} before the first HTTP retrieval.
1261 @var{file} is a textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's
1262 @file{cookies.txt} file.
1264 You will typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
1265 that you be logged in to access some or all of their content. The login
1266 process typically works by the web server issuing an @sc{http} cookie
1267 upon receiving and verifying your credentials. The cookie is then
1268 resent by the browser when accessing that part of the site, and so
1269 proves your identity.
1271 Mirroring such a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your
1272 browser sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
1273 @samp{--load-cookies}---simply point Wget to the location of the
1274 @file{cookies.txt} file, and it will send the same cookies your browser
1275 would send in the same situation. Different browsers keep textual
1276 cookie files in different locations:
1280 The cookies are in @file{~/.netscape/cookies.txt}.
1282 @item Mozilla and Netscape 6.x.
1283 Mozilla's cookie file is also named @file{cookies.txt}, located
1284 somewhere under @file{~/.mozilla}, in the directory of your profile.
1285 The full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
1286 @file{~/.mozilla/default/@var{some-weird-string}/cookies.txt}.
1288 @item Internet Explorer.
1289 You can produce a cookie file Wget can use by using the File menu,
1290 Import and Export, Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet
1291 Explorer 5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.
1293 @item Other browsers.
1294 If you are using a different browser to create your cookies,
1295 @samp{--load-cookies} will only work if you can locate or produce a
1296 cookie file in the Netscape format that Wget expects.
1299 If you cannot use @samp{--load-cookies}, there might still be an
1300 alternative. If your browser supports a ``cookie manager'', you can use
1301 it to view the cookies used when accessing the site you're mirroring.
1302 Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually instruct Wget
1303 to send those cookies, bypassing the ``official'' cookie support:
1306 wget --no-cookies --header "Cookie: @var{name}=@var{value}"
1309 @cindex saving cookies
1310 @cindex cookies, saving
1311 @item --save-cookies @var{file}
1312 Save cookies to @var{file} before exiting. This will not save cookies
1313 that have expired or that have no expiry time (so-called ``session
1314 cookies''), but also see @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
1316 @cindex cookies, session
1317 @cindex session cookies
1318 @item --keep-session-cookies
1319 When specified, causes @samp{--save-cookies} to also save session
1320 cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they are
1321 meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit the browser.
1322 Saving them is useful on sites that require you to log in or to visit
1323 the home page before you can access some pages. With this option,
1324 multiple Wget runs are considered a single browser session as far as
1325 the site is concerned.
1327 Since the cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
1328 Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget's
1329 @samp{--load-cookies} recognizes those as session cookies, but it might
1330 confuse other browsers. Also note that cookies so loaded will be
1331 treated as other session cookies, which means that if you want
1332 @samp{--save-cookies} to preserve them again, you must use
1333 @samp{--keep-session-cookies} again.
1335 @cindex Content-Length, ignore
1336 @cindex ignore length
1337 @item --ignore-length
1338 Unfortunately, some @sc{http} servers (@sc{cgi} programs, to be more
1339 precise) send out bogus @code{Content-Length} headers, which makes Wget
1340 go wild, as it thinks not all the document was retrieved. You can spot
1341 this syndrome if Wget retries getting the same document again and again,
1342 each time claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed on
1345 With this option, Wget will ignore the @code{Content-Length} header---as
1346 if it never existed.
1349 @item --header=@var{header-line}
1350 Send @var{header-line} along with the rest of the headers in each
1351 @sc{http} request. The supplied header is sent as-is, which means it
1352 must contain name and value separated by colon, and must not contain
1355 You may define more than one additional header by specifying
1356 @samp{--header} more than once.
1360 wget --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2' \
1361 --header='Accept-Language: hr' \
1362 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
1366 Specification of an empty string as the header value will clear all
1367 previous user-defined headers.
1369 As of Wget 1.10, this option can be used to override headers otherwise
1370 generated automatically. This example instructs Wget to connect to
1371 localhost, but to specify @samp{foo.bar} in the @code{Host} header:
1374 wget --header="Host: foo.bar" http://localhost/
1377 In versions of Wget prior to 1.10 such use of @samp{--header} caused
1378 sending of duplicate headers.
1381 @item --max-redirect=@var{number}
1382 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
1383 The default is 20, which is usually far more than necessary. However, on
1384 those occasions where you want to allow more (or fewer), this is the
1388 @cindex proxy password
1389 @cindex proxy authentication
1390 @item --proxy-user=@var{user}
1391 @itemx --proxy-password=@var{password}
1392 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} for
1393 authentication on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
1394 @code{basic} authentication scheme.
1396 Security considerations similar to those with @samp{--http-password}
1397 pertain here as well.
1399 @cindex http referer
1400 @cindex referer, http
1401 @item --referer=@var{url}
1402 Include `Referer: @var{url}' header in HTTP request. Useful for
1403 retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they are
1404 always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only come out
1405 properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that point to them.
1407 @cindex server response, save
1408 @item --save-headers
1409 Save the headers sent by the @sc{http} server to the file, preceding the
1410 actual contents, with an empty line as the separator.
1413 @item -U @var{agent-string}
1414 @itemx --user-agent=@var{agent-string}
1415 Identify as @var{agent-string} to the @sc{http} server.
1417 The @sc{http} protocol allows the clients to identify themselves using a
1418 @code{User-Agent} header field. This enables distinguishing the
1419 @sc{www} software, usually for statistical purposes or for tracing of
1420 protocol violations. Wget normally identifies as
1421 @samp{Wget/@var{version}}, @var{version} being the current version
1424 However, some sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring
1425 the output according to the @code{User-Agent}-supplied information.
1426 While this is not such a bad idea in theory, it has been abused by
1427 servers denying information to clients other than (historically)
1428 Netscape or, more frequently, Microsoft Internet Explorer. This
1429 option allows you to change the @code{User-Agent} line issued by Wget.
1430 Use of this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
1433 Specifying empty user agent with @samp{--user-agent=""} instructs Wget
1434 not to send the @code{User-Agent} header in @sc{http} requests.
1437 @item --post-data=@var{string}
1438 @itemx --post-file=@var{file}
1439 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the specified
1440 data in the request body. @samp{--post-data} sends @var{string} as
1441 data, whereas @samp{--post-file} sends the contents of @var{file}.
1442 Other than that, they work in exactly the same way. In particular,
1443 they @emph{both} expect content of the form @code{key1=value1&key2=value2},
1444 with percent-encoding for special characters; the only difference is
1445 that one expects its content as a command-line paramter and the other
1446 accepts its content from a file. In particular, @samp{--post-file} is
1447 @emph{not} for transmitting files as form attachments: those must
1448 appear as @code{key=value} data (with appropriate percent-coding) just
1449 like everything else. Wget does not currently support
1450 @code{multipart/form-data} for transmitting POST data; only
1451 @code{application/x-www-form-urlencoded}. Only one of
1452 @samp{--post-data} and @samp{--post-file} should be specified.
1454 Please be aware that Wget needs to know the size of the POST data in
1455 advance. Therefore the argument to @code{--post-file} must be a regular
1456 file; specifying a FIFO or something like @file{/dev/stdin} won't work.
1457 It's not quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
1458 HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1 introduces @dfn{chunked} transfer that
1459 doesn't require knowing the request length in advance, a client can't
1460 use chunked unless it knows it's talking to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it
1461 can't know that until it receives a response, which in turn requires the
1462 request to have been completed -- a chicken-and-egg problem.
1464 Note: if Wget is redirected after the POST request is completed, it
1465 will not send the POST data to the redirected URL. This is because
1466 URLs that process POST often respond with a redirection to a regular
1467 page, which does not desire or accept POST. It is not completely
1468 clear that this behavior is optimal; if it doesn't work out, it might
1469 be changed in the future.
1471 This example shows how to log to a server using POST and then proceed to
1472 download the desired pages, presumably only accessible to authorized
1477 # @r{Log in to the server. This can be done only once.}
1478 wget --save-cookies cookies.txt \
1479 --post-data 'user=foo&password=bar' \
1480 http://server.com/auth.php
1482 # @r{Now grab the page or pages we care about.}
1483 wget --load-cookies cookies.txt \
1484 -p http://server.com/interesting/article.php
1488 If the server is using session cookies to track user authentication,
1489 the above will not work because @samp{--save-cookies} will not save
1490 them (and neither will browsers) and the @file{cookies.txt} file will
1491 be empty. In that case use @samp{--keep-session-cookies} along with
1492 @samp{--save-cookies} to force saving of session cookies.
1494 @cindex Content-Disposition
1495 @item --content-disposition
1497 If this is set to on, experimental (not fully-functional) support for
1498 @code{Content-Disposition} headers is enabled. This can currently result in
1499 extra round-trips to the server for a @code{HEAD} request, and is known
1500 to suffer from a few bugs, which is why it is not currently enabled by default.
1502 This option is useful for some file-downloading CGI programs that use
1503 @code{Content-Disposition} headers to describe what the name of a
1504 downloaded file should be.
1506 @cindex Trust server names
1507 @item --trust-server-names
1509 If this is set to on, on a redirect the last component of the
1510 redirection URL will be used as the local file name. By default it is
1511 used the last component in the original URL.
1513 @cindex authentication
1514 @item --auth-no-challenge
1516 If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication
1517 information (plaintext username and password) for all requests, just
1518 like Wget 1.10.2 and prior did by default.
1520 Use of this option is not recommended, and is intended only to support
1521 some few obscure servers, which never send HTTP authentication
1522 challenges, but accept unsolicited auth info, say, in addition to
1523 form-based authentication.
1527 @node HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, FTP Options, HTTP Options, Invoking
1528 @section HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options
1531 To support encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) downloads, Wget must be compiled
1532 with an external SSL library, currently OpenSSL. If Wget is compiled
1533 without SSL support, none of these options are available.
1536 @cindex SSL protocol, choose
1537 @item --secure-protocol=@var{protocol}
1538 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto},
1539 @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. If @samp{auto} is used,
1540 the SSL library is given the liberty of choosing the appropriate
1541 protocol automatically, which is achieved by sending an SSLv2 greeting
1542 and announcing support for SSLv3 and TLSv1. This is the default.
1544 Specifying @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, or @samp{TLSv1} forces the use
1545 of the corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old and
1546 buggy SSL server implementations that make it hard for OpenSSL to
1547 choose the correct protocol version. Fortunately, such servers are
1550 @cindex SSL certificate, check
1551 @item --no-check-certificate
1552 Don't check the server certificate against the available certificate
1553 authorities. Also don't require the URL host name to match the common
1554 name presented by the certificate.
1556 As of Wget 1.10, the default is to verify the server's certificate
1557 against the recognized certificate authorities, breaking the SSL
1558 handshake and aborting the download if the verification fails.
1559 Although this provides more secure downloads, it does break
1560 interoperability with some sites that worked with previous Wget
1561 versions, particularly those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise
1562 invalid certificates. This option forces an ``insecure'' mode of
1563 operation that turns the certificate verification errors into warnings
1564 and allows you to proceed.
1566 If you encounter ``certificate verification'' errors or ones saying
1567 that ``common name doesn't match requested host name'', you can use
1568 this option to bypass the verification and proceed with the download.
1569 @emph{Only use this option if you are otherwise convinced of the
1570 site's authenticity, or if you really don't care about the validity of
1571 its certificate.} It is almost always a bad idea not to check the
1572 certificates when transmitting confidential or important data.
1574 @cindex SSL certificate
1575 @item --certificate=@var{file}
1576 Use the client certificate stored in @var{file}. This is needed for
1577 servers that are configured to require certificates from the clients
1578 that connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and this
1581 @cindex SSL certificate type, specify
1582 @item --certificate-type=@var{type}
1583 Specify the type of the client certificate. Legal values are
1584 @samp{PEM} (assumed by default) and @samp{DER}, also known as
1587 @item --private-key=@var{file}
1588 Read the private key from @var{file}. This allows you to provide the
1589 private key in a file separate from the certificate.
1591 @item --private-key-type=@var{type}
1592 Specify the type of the private key. Accepted values are @samp{PEM}
1593 (the default) and @samp{DER}.
1595 @item --ca-certificate=@var{file}
1596 Use @var{file} as the file with the bundle of certificate authorities
1597 (``CA'') to verify the peers. The certificates must be in PEM format.
1599 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1600 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1602 @cindex SSL certificate authority
1603 @item --ca-directory=@var{directory}
1604 Specifies directory containing CA certificates in PEM format. Each
1605 file contains one CA certificate, and the file name is based on a hash
1606 value derived from the certificate. This is achieved by processing a
1607 certificate directory with the @code{c_rehash} utility supplied with
1608 OpenSSL. Using @samp{--ca-directory} is more efficient than
1609 @samp{--ca-certificate} when many certificates are installed because
1610 it allows Wget to fetch certificates on demand.
1612 Without this option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
1613 system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation time.
1615 @cindex entropy, specifying source of
1616 @cindex randomness, specifying source of
1617 @item --random-file=@var{file}
1618 Use @var{file} as the source of random data for seeding the
1619 pseudo-random number generator on systems without @file{/dev/random}.
1621 On such systems the SSL library needs an external source of randomness
1622 to initialize. Randomness may be provided by EGD (see
1623 @samp{--egd-file} below) or read from an external source specified by
1624 the user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random data
1625 in @code{$RANDFILE} or, if that is unset, in @file{$HOME/.rnd}. If
1626 none of those are available, it is likely that SSL encryption will not
1629 If you're getting the ``Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG; disabling SSL.''
1630 error, you should provide random data using some of the methods
1634 @item --egd-file=@var{file}
1635 Use @var{file} as the EGD socket. EGD stands for @dfn{Entropy
1636 Gathering Daemon}, a user-space program that collects data from
1637 various unpredictable system sources and makes it available to other
1638 programs that might need it. Encryption software, such as the SSL
1639 library, needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
1640 number generator used to produce cryptographically strong keys.
1642 OpenSSL allows the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
1643 @code{RAND_FILE} environment variable. If this variable is unset, or
1644 if the specified file does not produce enough randomness, OpenSSL will
1645 read random data from EGD socket specified using this option.
1647 If this option is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is
1648 not used), EGD is never contacted. EGD is not needed on modern Unix
1649 systems that support @file{/dev/random}.
1652 @node FTP Options, Recursive Retrieval Options, HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Options, Invoking
1653 @section FTP Options
1657 @cindex ftp password
1658 @cindex ftp authentication
1659 @item --ftp-user=@var{user}
1660 @itemx --ftp-password=@var{password}
1661 Specify the username @var{user} and password @var{password} on an
1662 @sc{ftp} server. Without this, or the corresponding startup option,
1663 the password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, normally used for anonymous
1666 Another way to specify username and password is in the @sc{url} itself
1667 (@pxref{URL Format}). Either method reveals your password to anyone who
1668 bothers to run @code{ps}. To prevent the passwords from being seen,
1669 store them in @file{.wgetrc} or @file{.netrc}, and make sure to protect
1670 those files from other users with @code{chmod}. If the passwords are
1671 really important, do not leave them lying in those files either---edit
1672 the files and delete them after Wget has started the download.
1675 For more information about security issues with Wget, @xref{Security
1679 @cindex .listing files, removing
1680 @item --no-remove-listing
1681 Don't remove the temporary @file{.listing} files generated by @sc{ftp}
1682 retrievals. Normally, these files contain the raw directory listings
1683 received from @sc{ftp} servers. Not removing them can be useful for
1684 debugging purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
1685 contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a mirror
1686 you're running is complete).
1688 Note that even though Wget writes to a known filename for this file,
1689 this is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
1690 @file{.listing} a symbolic link to @file{/etc/passwd} or something and
1691 asking @code{root} to run Wget in his or her directory. Depending on
1692 the options used, either Wget will refuse to write to @file{.listing},
1693 making the globbing/recursion/time-stamping operation fail, or the
1694 symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the actual
1695 @file{.listing} file, or the listing will be written to a
1696 @file{.listing.@var{number}} file.
1698 Even though this situation isn't a problem, though, @code{root} should
1699 never run Wget in a non-trusted user's directory. A user could do
1700 something as simple as linking @file{index.html} to @file{/etc/passwd}
1701 and asking @code{root} to run Wget with @samp{-N} or @samp{-r} so the file
1702 will be overwritten.
1704 @cindex globbing, toggle
1706 Turn off @sc{ftp} globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like
1707 special characters (@dfn{wildcards}), like @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[}
1708 and @samp{]} to retrieve more than one file from the same directory at
1712 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/*.msg
1715 By default, globbing will be turned on if the @sc{url} contains a
1716 globbing character. This option may be used to turn globbing on or off
1719 You may have to quote the @sc{url} to protect it from being expanded by
1720 your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a directory listing, which is
1721 system-specific. This is why it currently works only with Unix @sc{ftp}
1722 servers (and the ones emulating Unix @code{ls} output).
1725 @item --no-passive-ftp
1726 Disable the use of the @dfn{passive} FTP transfer mode. Passive FTP
1727 mandates that the client connect to the server to establish the data
1728 connection rather than the other way around.
1730 If the machine is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
1731 active FTP should work equally well. Behind most firewall and NAT
1732 configurations passive FTP has a better chance of working. However,
1733 in some rare firewall configurations, active FTP actually works when
1734 passive FTP doesn't. If you suspect this to be the case, use this
1735 option, or set @code{passive_ftp=off} in your init file.
1737 @cindex symbolic links, retrieving
1738 @item --retr-symlinks
1739 Usually, when retrieving @sc{ftp} directories recursively and a symbolic
1740 link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a
1741 matching symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
1742 pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless this recursive retrieval
1743 would have encountered it separately and downloaded it anyway.
1745 When @samp{--retr-symlinks} is specified, however, symbolic links are
1746 traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time, this
1747 option does not cause Wget to traverse symlinks to directories and
1748 recurse through them, but in the future it should be enhanced to do
1751 Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
1752 specified on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
1753 this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always traversed in this
1757 @node Recursive Retrieval Options, Recursive Accept/Reject Options, FTP Options, Invoking
1758 @section Recursive Retrieval Options
1763 Turn on recursive retrieving. @xref{Recursive Download}, for more
1766 @item -l @var{depth}
1767 @itemx --level=@var{depth}
1768 Specify recursion maximum depth level @var{depth} (@pxref{Recursive
1769 Download}). The default maximum depth is 5.
1771 @cindex proxy filling
1772 @cindex delete after retrieval
1773 @cindex filling proxy cache
1774 @item --delete-after
1775 This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
1776 @emph{after} having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
1777 pages through a proxy, e.g.:
1780 wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
1783 The @samp{-r} option is to retrieve recursively, and @samp{-nd} to not
1786 Note that @samp{--delete-after} deletes files on the local machine. It
1787 does not issue the @samp{DELE} command to remote FTP sites, for
1788 instance. Also note that when @samp{--delete-after} is specified,
1789 @samp{--convert-links} is ignored, so @samp{.orig} files are simply not
1790 created in the first place.
1792 @cindex conversion of links
1793 @cindex link conversion
1795 @itemx --convert-links
1796 After the download is complete, convert the links in the document to
1797 make them suitable for local viewing. This affects not only the visible
1798 hyperlinks, but any part of the document that links to external content,
1799 such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks to non-@sc{html}
1802 Each link will be changed in one of the two ways:
1806 The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget will be changed to
1807 refer to the file they point to as a relative link.
1809 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1810 @file{/bar/img.gif}, also downloaded, then the link in @file{doc.html}
1811 will be modified to point to @samp{../bar/img.gif}. This kind of
1812 transformation works reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.
1815 The links to files that have not been downloaded by Wget will be changed
1816 to include host name and absolute path of the location they point to.
1818 Example: if the downloaded file @file{/foo/doc.html} links to
1819 @file{/bar/img.gif} (or to @file{../bar/img.gif}), then the link in
1820 @file{doc.html} will be modified to point to
1821 @file{http://@var{hostname}/bar/img.gif}.
1824 Because of this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
1825 downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was not
1826 downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet address rather than
1827 presenting a broken link. The fact that the former links are converted
1828 to relative links ensures that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to
1831 Note that only at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
1832 been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by @samp{-k} will be
1833 performed at the end of all the downloads.
1835 @cindex backing up converted files
1837 @itemx --backup-converted
1838 When converting a file, back up the original version with a @samp{.orig}
1839 suffix. Affects the behavior of @samp{-N} (@pxref{HTTP Time-Stamping
1844 Turn on options suitable for mirroring. This option turns on recursion
1845 and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps @sc{ftp}
1846 directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
1847 @samp{-r -N -l inf --no-remove-listing}.
1849 @cindex page requisites
1850 @cindex required images, downloading
1852 @itemx --page-requisites
1853 This option causes Wget to download all the files that are necessary to
1854 properly display a given @sc{html} page. This includes such things as
1855 inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
1857 Ordinarily, when downloading a single @sc{html} page, any requisite documents
1858 that may be needed to display it properly are not downloaded. Using
1859 @samp{-r} together with @samp{-l} can help, but since Wget does not
1860 ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined documents, one is
1861 generally left with ``leaf documents'' that are missing their
1864 For instance, say document @file{1.html} contains an @code{<IMG>} tag
1865 referencing @file{1.gif} and an @code{<A>} tag pointing to external
1866 document @file{2.html}. Say that @file{2.html} is similar but that its
1867 image is @file{2.gif} and it links to @file{3.html}. Say this
1868 continues up to some arbitrarily high number.
1870 If one executes the command:
1873 wget -r -l 2 http://@var{site}/1.html
1876 then @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, @file{2.gif}, and
1877 @file{3.html} will be downloaded. As you can see, @file{3.html} is
1878 without its requisite @file{3.gif} because Wget is simply counting the
1879 number of hops (up to 2) away from @file{1.html} in order to determine
1880 where to stop the recursion. However, with this command:
1883 wget -r -l 2 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1886 all the above files @emph{and} @file{3.html}'s requisite @file{3.gif}
1887 will be downloaded. Similarly,
1890 wget -r -l 1 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1893 will cause @file{1.html}, @file{1.gif}, @file{2.html}, and @file{2.gif}
1894 to be downloaded. One might think that:
1897 wget -r -l 0 -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1900 would download just @file{1.html} and @file{1.gif}, but unfortunately
1901 this is not the case, because @samp{-l 0} is equivalent to
1902 @samp{-l inf}---that is, infinite recursion. To download a single @sc{html}
1903 page (or a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
1904 @samp{-i} @sc{url} input file) and its (or their) requisites, simply leave off
1905 @samp{-r} and @samp{-l}:
1908 wget -p http://@var{site}/1.html
1911 Note that Wget will behave as if @samp{-r} had been specified, but only
1912 that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links from that
1913 page to external documents will not be followed. Actually, to download
1914 a single page and all its requisites (even if they exist on separate
1915 websites), and make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
1916 likes to use a few options in addition to @samp{-p}:
1919 wget -E -H -k -K -p http://@var{site}/@var{document}
1922 To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that Wget's idea of an
1923 external document link is any URL specified in an @code{<A>} tag, an
1924 @code{<AREA>} tag, or a @code{<LINK>} tag other than @code{<LINK
1927 @cindex @sc{html} comments
1928 @cindex comments, @sc{html}
1929 @item --strict-comments
1930 Turn on strict parsing of @sc{html} comments. The default is to terminate
1931 comments at the first occurrence of @samp{-->}.
1933 According to specifications, @sc{html} comments are expressed as @sc{sgml}
1934 @dfn{declarations}. Declaration is special markup that begins with
1935 @samp{<!} and ends with @samp{>}, such as @samp{<!DOCTYPE ...>}, that
1936 may contain comments between a pair of @samp{--} delimiters. @sc{html}
1937 comments are ``empty declarations'', @sc{sgml} declarations without any
1938 non-comment text. Therefore, @samp{<!--foo-->} is a valid comment, and
1939 so is @samp{<!--one-- --two-->}, but @samp{<!--1--2-->} is not.
1941 On the other hand, most @sc{html} writers don't perceive comments as anything
1942 other than text delimited with @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}, which is not
1943 quite the same. For example, something like @samp{<!------------>}
1944 works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is a multiple
1945 of four (!). If not, the comment technically lasts until the next
1946 @samp{--}, which may be at the other end of the document. Because of
1947 this, many popular browsers completely ignore the specification and
1948 implement what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
1949 @samp{<!--} and @samp{-->}.
1951 Until version 1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
1952 missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in browsers, but had
1953 the misfortune of containing non-compliant comments. Beginning with
1954 version 1.9, Wget has joined the ranks of clients that implements
1955 ``naive'' comments, terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
1958 If, for whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
1959 option to turn it on.
1962 @node Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Exit Status, Recursive Retrieval Options, Invoking
1963 @section Recursive Accept/Reject Options
1966 @item -A @var{acclist} --accept @var{acclist}
1967 @itemx -R @var{rejlist} --reject @var{rejlist}
1968 Specify comma-separated lists of file name suffixes or patterns to
1969 accept or reject (@pxref{Types of Files}). Note that if
1970 any of the wildcard characters, @samp{*}, @samp{?}, @samp{[} or
1971 @samp{]}, appear in an element of @var{acclist} or @var{rejlist},
1972 it will be treated as a pattern, rather than a suffix.
1974 @item -D @var{domain-list}
1975 @itemx --domains=@var{domain-list}
1976 Set domains to be followed. @var{domain-list} is a comma-separated list
1977 of domains. Note that it does @emph{not} turn on @samp{-H}.
1979 @item --exclude-domains @var{domain-list}
1980 Specify the domains that are @emph{not} to be followed
1981 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
1983 @cindex follow FTP links
1985 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents. Without this option,
1986 Wget will ignore all the @sc{ftp} links.
1988 @cindex tag-based recursive pruning
1989 @item --follow-tags=@var{list}
1990 Wget has an internal table of @sc{html} tag / attribute pairs that it
1991 considers when looking for linked documents during a recursive
1992 retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
1993 considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags in a
1994 comma-separated @var{list} with this option.
1996 @item --ignore-tags=@var{list}
1997 This is the opposite of the @samp{--follow-tags} option. To skip
1998 certain @sc{html} tags when recursively looking for documents to download,
1999 specify them in a comma-separated @var{list}.
2001 In the past, this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
2002 and its requisites, using a command-line like:
2005 wget --ignore-tags=a,area -H -k -K -r http://@var{site}/@var{document}
2008 However, the author of this option came across a page with tags like
2009 @code{<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">} and came to the realization that
2010 specifying tags to ignore was not enough. One can't just tell Wget to
2011 ignore @code{<LINK>}, because then stylesheets will not be downloaded.
2012 Now the best bet for downloading a single page and its requisites is the
2013 dedicated @samp{--page-requisites} option.
2018 Ignore case when matching files and directories. This influences the
2019 behavior of -R, -A, -I, and -X options, as well as globbing
2020 implemented when downloading from FTP sites. For example, with this
2021 option, @samp{-A *.txt} will match @samp{file1.txt}, but also
2022 @samp{file2.TXT}, @samp{file3.TxT}, and so on.
2026 Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
2027 (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2031 Follow relative links only. Useful for retrieving a specific home page
2032 without any distractions, not even those from the same hosts
2033 (@pxref{Relative Links}).
2036 @itemx --include-directories=@var{list}
2037 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2038 downloading (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements
2039 of @var{list} may contain wildcards.
2042 @itemx --exclude-directories=@var{list}
2043 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2044 download (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}). Elements of
2045 @var{list} may contain wildcards.
2049 Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively.
2050 This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
2051 @emph{below} a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.
2052 @xref{Directory-Based Limits}, for more details.
2057 @node Exit Status, , Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Invoking
2058 @section Exit Status
2060 @c man begin EXITSTATUS
2062 Wget may return one of several error codes if it encounters problems.
2067 No problems occurred.
2073 Parse error---for instance, when parsing command-line options, the
2074 @samp{.wgetrc} or @samp{.netrc}...
2083 SSL verification failure.
2086 Username/password authentication failure.
2092 Server issued an error response.
2096 With the exceptions of 0 and 1, the lower-numbered exit codes take
2097 precedence over higher-numbered ones, when multiple types of errors
2100 In versions of Wget prior to 1.12, Wget's exit status tended to be
2101 unhelpful and inconsistent. Recursive downloads would virtually always
2102 return 0 (success), regardless of any issues encountered, and
2103 non-recursive fetches only returned the status corresponding to the
2104 most recently-attempted download.
2108 @node Recursive Download, Following Links, Invoking, Top
2109 @chapter Recursive Download
2112 @cindex recursive download
2114 GNU Wget is capable of traversing parts of the Web (or a single
2115 @sc{http} or @sc{ftp} server), following links and directory structure.
2116 We refer to this as to @dfn{recursive retrieval}, or @dfn{recursion}.
2118 With @sc{http} @sc{url}s, Wget retrieves and parses the @sc{html} or
2119 @sc{css} from the given @sc{url}, retrieving the files the document
2120 refers to, through markup like @code{href} or @code{src}, or @sc{css}
2121 @sc{uri} values specified using the @samp{url()} functional notation.
2122 If the freshly downloaded file is also of type @code{text/html},
2123 @code{application/xhtml+xml}, or @code{text/css}, it will be parsed
2124 and followed further.
2126 Recursive retrieval of @sc{http} and @sc{html}/@sc{css} content is
2127 @dfn{breadth-first}. This means that Wget first downloads the requested
2128 document, then the documents linked from that document, then the
2129 documents linked by them, and so on. In other words, Wget first
2130 downloads the documents at depth 1, then those at depth 2, and so on
2131 until the specified maximum depth.
2133 The maximum @dfn{depth} to which the retrieval may descend is specified
2134 with the @samp{-l} option. The default maximum depth is five layers.
2136 When retrieving an @sc{ftp} @sc{url} recursively, Wget will retrieve all
2137 the data from the given directory tree (including the subdirectories up
2138 to the specified depth) on the remote server, creating its mirror image
2139 locally. @sc{ftp} retrieval is also limited by the @code{depth}
2140 parameter. Unlike @sc{http} recursion, @sc{ftp} recursion is performed
2143 By default, Wget will create a local directory tree, corresponding to
2144 the one found on the remote server.
2146 Recursive retrieving can find a number of applications, the most
2147 important of which is mirroring. It is also useful for @sc{www}
2148 presentations, and any other opportunities where slow network
2149 connections should be bypassed by storing the files locally.
2151 You should be warned that recursive downloads can overload the remote
2152 servers. Because of that, many administrators frown upon them and may
2153 ban access from your site if they detect very fast downloads of big
2154 amounts of content. When downloading from Internet servers, consider
2155 using the @samp{-w} option to introduce a delay between accesses to the
2156 server. The download will take a while longer, but the server
2157 administrator will not be alarmed by your rudeness.
2159 Of course, recursive download may cause problems on your machine. If
2160 left to run unchecked, it can easily fill up the disk. If downloading
2161 from local network, it can also take bandwidth on the system, as well as
2162 consume memory and CPU.
2164 Try to specify the criteria that match the kind of download you are
2165 trying to achieve. If you want to download only one page, use
2166 @samp{--page-requisites} without any additional recursion. If you want
2167 to download things under one directory, use @samp{-np} to avoid
2168 downloading things from other directories. If you want to download all
2169 the files from one directory, use @samp{-l 1} to make sure the recursion
2170 depth never exceeds one. @xref{Following Links}, for more information
2173 Recursive retrieval should be used with care. Don't say you were not
2176 @node Following Links, Time-Stamping, Recursive Download, Top
2177 @chapter Following Links
2179 @cindex following links
2181 When retrieving recursively, one does not wish to retrieve loads of
2182 unnecessary data. Most of the time the users bear in mind exactly what
2183 they want to download, and want Wget to follow only specific links.
2185 For example, if you wish to download the music archive from
2186 @samp{fly.srk.fer.hr}, you will not want to download all the home pages
2187 that happen to be referenced by an obscure part of the archive.
2189 Wget possesses several mechanisms that allows you to fine-tune which
2190 links it will follow.
2193 * Spanning Hosts:: (Un)limiting retrieval based on host name.
2194 * Types of Files:: Getting only certain files.
2195 * Directory-Based Limits:: Getting only certain directories.
2196 * Relative Links:: Follow relative links only.
2197 * FTP Links:: Following FTP links.
2200 @node Spanning Hosts, Types of Files, Following Links, Following Links
2201 @section Spanning Hosts
2202 @cindex spanning hosts
2203 @cindex hosts, spanning
2205 Wget's recursive retrieval normally refuses to visit hosts different
2206 than the one you specified on the command line. This is a reasonable
2207 default; without it, every retrieval would have the potential to turn
2208 your Wget into a small version of google.
2210 However, visiting different hosts, or @dfn{host spanning,} is sometimes
2211 a useful option. Maybe the images are served from a different server.
2212 Maybe you're mirroring a site that consists of pages interlinked between
2213 three servers. Maybe the server has two equivalent names, and the @sc{html}
2214 pages refer to both interchangeably.
2217 @item Span to any host---@samp{-H}
2219 The @samp{-H} option turns on host spanning, thus allowing Wget's
2220 recursive run to visit any host referenced by a link. Unless sufficient
2221 recursion-limiting criteria are applied depth, these foreign hosts will
2222 typically link to yet more hosts, and so on until Wget ends up sucking
2223 up much more data than you have intended.
2225 @item Limit spanning to certain domains---@samp{-D}
2227 The @samp{-D} option allows you to specify the domains that will be
2228 followed, thus limiting the recursion only to the hosts that belong to
2229 these domains. Obviously, this makes sense only in conjunction with
2230 @samp{-H}. A typical example would be downloading the contents of
2231 @samp{www.server.com}, but allowing downloads from
2232 @samp{images.server.com}, etc.:
2235 wget -rH -Dserver.com http://www.server.com/
2238 You can specify more than one address by separating them with a comma,
2239 e.g. @samp{-Ddomain1.com,domain2.com}.
2241 @item Keep download off certain domains---@samp{--exclude-domains}
2243 If there are domains you want to exclude specifically, you can do it
2244 with @samp{--exclude-domains}, which accepts the same type of arguments
2245 of @samp{-D}, but will @emph{exclude} all the listed domains. For
2246 example, if you want to download all the hosts from @samp{foo.edu}
2247 domain, with the exception of @samp{sunsite.foo.edu}, you can do it like
2251 wget -rH -Dfoo.edu --exclude-domains sunsite.foo.edu \
2257 @node Types of Files, Directory-Based Limits, Spanning Hosts, Following Links
2258 @section Types of Files
2259 @cindex types of files
2261 When downloading material from the web, you will often want to restrict
2262 the retrieval to only certain file types. For example, if you are
2263 interested in downloading @sc{gif}s, you will not be overjoyed to get
2264 loads of PostScript documents, and vice versa.
2266 Wget offers two options to deal with this problem. Each option
2267 description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent command
2270 @cindex accept wildcards
2271 @cindex accept suffixes
2272 @cindex wildcards, accept
2273 @cindex suffixes, accept
2275 @item -A @var{acclist}
2276 @itemx --accept @var{acclist}
2277 @itemx accept = @var{acclist}
2278 The argument to @samp{--accept} option is a list of file suffixes or
2279 patterns that Wget will download during recursive retrieval. A suffix
2280 is the ending part of a file, and consists of ``normal'' letters,
2281 e.g. @samp{gif} or @samp{.jpg}. A matching pattern contains shell-like
2282 wildcards, e.g. @samp{books*} or @samp{zelazny*196[0-9]*}.
2284 So, specifying @samp{wget -A gif,jpg} will make Wget download only the
2285 files ending with @samp{gif} or @samp{jpg}, i.e. @sc{gif}s and
2286 @sc{jpeg}s. On the other hand, @samp{wget -A "zelazny*196[0-9]*"} will
2287 download only files beginning with @samp{zelazny} and containing numbers
2288 from 1960 to 1969 anywhere within. Look up the manual of your shell for
2289 a description of how pattern matching works.
2291 Of course, any number of suffixes and patterns can be combined into a
2292 comma-separated list, and given as an argument to @samp{-A}.
2294 @cindex reject wildcards
2295 @cindex reject suffixes
2296 @cindex wildcards, reject
2297 @cindex suffixes, reject
2298 @item -R @var{rejlist}
2299 @itemx --reject @var{rejlist}
2300 @itemx reject = @var{rejlist}
2301 The @samp{--reject} option works the same way as @samp{--accept}, only
2302 its logic is the reverse; Wget will download all files @emph{except} the
2303 ones matching the suffixes (or patterns) in the list.
2305 So, if you want to download a whole page except for the cumbersome
2306 @sc{mpeg}s and @sc{.au} files, you can use @samp{wget -R mpg,mpeg,au}.
2307 Analogously, to download all files except the ones beginning with
2308 @samp{bjork}, use @samp{wget -R "bjork*"}. The quotes are to prevent
2309 expansion by the shell.
2313 The @samp{-A} and @samp{-R} options may be combined to achieve even
2314 better fine-tuning of which files to retrieve. E.g. @samp{wget -A
2315 "*zelazny*" -R .ps} will download all the files having @samp{zelazny} as
2316 a part of their name, but @emph{not} the PostScript files.
2318 Note that these two options do not affect the downloading of @sc{html}
2319 files (as determined by a @samp{.htm} or @samp{.html} filename
2320 prefix). This behavior may not be desirable for all users, and may be
2321 changed for future versions of Wget.
2323 Note, too, that query strings (strings at the end of a URL beginning
2324 with a question mark (@samp{?}) are not included as part of the
2325 filename for accept/reject rules, even though these will actually
2326 contribute to the name chosen for the local file. It is expected that
2327 a future version of Wget will provide an option to allow matching
2328 against query strings.
2330 Finally, it's worth noting that the accept/reject lists are matched
2331 @emph{twice} against downloaded files: once against the URL's filename
2332 portion, to determine if the file should be downloaded in the first
2333 place; then, after it has been accepted and successfully downloaded,
2334 the local file's name is also checked against the accept/reject lists
2335 to see if it should be removed. The rationale was that, since
2336 @samp{.htm} and @samp{.html} files are always downloaded regardless of
2337 accept/reject rules, they should be removed @emph{after} being
2338 downloaded and scanned for links, if they did match the accept/reject
2339 lists. However, this can lead to unexpected results, since the local
2340 filenames can differ from the original URL filenames in the following
2341 ways, all of which can change whether an accept/reject rule matches:
2345 If the local file already exists and @samp{--no-directories} was
2346 specified, a numeric suffix will be appended to the original name.
2348 If @samp{--adjust-extension} was specified, the local filename might have
2349 @samp{.html} appended to it. If Wget is invoked with @samp{-E -A.php},
2350 a filename such as @samp{index.php} will match be accepted, but upon
2351 download will be named @samp{index.php.html}, which no longer matches,
2352 and so the file will be deleted.
2354 Query strings do not contribute to URL matching, but are included in
2355 local filenames, and so @emph{do} contribute to filename matching.
2359 This behavior, too, is considered less-than-desirable, and may change
2360 in a future version of Wget.
2362 @node Directory-Based Limits, Relative Links, Types of Files, Following Links
2363 @section Directory-Based Limits
2365 @cindex directory limits
2367 Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
2368 place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
2369 those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this---the
2370 home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
2371 directories may contain useless information, e.g. @file{/cgi-bin} or
2372 @file{/dev} directories.
2374 Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement. Each
2375 option description lists a short name, a long name, and the equivalent
2376 command in @file{.wgetrc}.
2378 @cindex directories, include
2379 @cindex include directories
2380 @cindex accept directories
2383 @itemx --include @var{list}
2384 @itemx include_directories = @var{list}
2385 @samp{-I} option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
2386 in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored. The
2387 directories are absolute paths.
2389 So, if you wish to download from @samp{http://host/people/bozo/}
2390 following only links to bozo's colleagues in the @file{/people}
2391 directory and the bogus scripts in @file{/cgi-bin}, you can specify:
2394 wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
2397 @cindex directories, exclude
2398 @cindex exclude directories
2399 @cindex reject directories
2401 @itemx --exclude @var{list}
2402 @itemx exclude_directories = @var{list}
2403 @samp{-X} option is exactly the reverse of @samp{-I}---this is a list of
2404 directories @emph{excluded} from the download. E.g. if you do not want
2405 Wget to download things from @file{/cgi-bin} directory, specify @samp{-X
2406 /cgi-bin} on the command line.
2408 The same as with @samp{-A}/@samp{-R}, these two options can be combined
2409 to get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if you
2410 want to load all the files from @file{/pub} hierarchy except for
2411 @file{/pub/worthless}, specify @samp{-I/pub -X/pub/worthless}.
2416 @itemx no_parent = on
2417 The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
2418 disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
2419 @dfn{above} than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to the
2420 parent directory/directories.
2422 The @samp{--no-parent} option (short @samp{-np}) is useful in this case.
2423 Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing hierarchy.
2424 Supposing you issue Wget with:
2427 wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
2430 You may rest assured that none of the references to
2431 @file{/~his-girls-homepage/} or @file{/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/} will be
2432 followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be downloaded.
2433 Essentially, @samp{--no-parent} is similar to
2434 @samp{-I/~luzer/my-archive}, only it handles redirections in a more
2435 intelligent fashion.
2437 @strong{Note} that, for HTTP (and HTTPS), the trailing slash is very
2438 important to @samp{--no-parent}. HTTP has no concept of a ``directory''---Wget
2439 relies on you to indicate what's a directory and what isn't. In
2440 @samp{http://foo/bar/}, Wget will consider @samp{bar} to be a
2441 directory, while in @samp{http://foo/bar} (no trailing slash),
2442 @samp{bar} will be considered a filename (so @samp{--no-parent} would be
2443 meaningless, as its parent is @samp{/}).
2446 @node Relative Links, FTP Links, Directory-Based Limits, Following Links
2447 @section Relative Links
2448 @cindex relative links
2450 When @samp{-L} is turned on, only the relative links are ever followed.
2451 Relative links are here defined those that do not refer to the web
2452 server root. For example, these links are relative:
2456 <a href="foo/bar.gif">
2457 <a href="../foo/bar.gif">
2460 These links are not relative:
2464 <a href="/foo/bar.gif">
2465 <a href="http://www.server.com/foo/bar.gif">
2468 Using this option guarantees that recursive retrieval will not span
2469 hosts, even without @samp{-H}. In simple cases it also allows downloads
2470 to ``just work'' without having to convert links.
2472 This option is probably not very useful and might be removed in a future
2475 @node FTP Links, , Relative Links, Following Links
2476 @section Following FTP Links
2477 @cindex following ftp links
2479 The rules for @sc{ftp} are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for
2480 them to be. @sc{ftp} links in @sc{html} documents are often included
2481 for purposes of reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them
2484 To have @sc{ftp} links followed from @sc{html} documents, you need to
2485 specify the @samp{--follow-ftp} option. Having done that, @sc{ftp}
2486 links will span hosts regardless of @samp{-H} setting. This is logical,
2487 as @sc{ftp} links rarely point to the same host where the @sc{http}
2488 server resides. For similar reasons, the @samp{-L} options has no
2489 effect on such downloads. On the other hand, domain acceptance
2490 (@samp{-D}) and suffix rules (@samp{-A} and @samp{-R}) apply normally.
2492 Also note that followed links to @sc{ftp} directories will not be
2493 retrieved recursively further.
2495 @node Time-Stamping, Startup File, Following Links, Top
2496 @chapter Time-Stamping
2497 @cindex time-stamping
2498 @cindex timestamping
2499 @cindex updating the archives
2500 @cindex incremental updating
2502 One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
2503 Internet is updating your archives.
2505 Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
2506 changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
2507 and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
2508 offer the option of incremental updating.
2510 Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
2511 search of @dfn{new} files. Only those new files will be downloaded in
2512 the place of the old ones.
2514 A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
2518 A file of that name does not already exist locally.
2521 A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified more
2522 recently than the local file.
2525 To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
2526 modification of both local and remote files. We call this information the
2527 @dfn{time-stamp} of a file.
2529 The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using @samp{--timestamping}
2530 (@samp{-N}) option, or through @code{timestamping = on} directive in
2531 @file{.wgetrc}. With this option, for each file it intends to download,
2532 Wget will check whether a local file of the same name exists. If it
2533 does, and the remote file is not newer, Wget will not download it.
2535 If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
2536 match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
2540 * Time-Stamping Usage::
2541 * HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2542 * FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
2545 @node Time-Stamping Usage, HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping, Time-Stamping
2546 @section Time-Stamping Usage
2547 @cindex time-stamping usage
2548 @cindex usage, time-stamping
2550 The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to download a
2551 file so that it keeps its date of modification.
2554 wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2557 A simple @code{ls -l} shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
2558 the state of the @code{Last-Modified} header, as returned by the server.
2559 As you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even
2560 without @samp{-N} (at least for @sc{http}).
2562 Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file has
2563 changed, and download it if it has.
2566 wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
2569 Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local file
2570 has the same timestamp as the server, or a newer one, the remote file
2571 will not be re-fetched. However, if the remote file is more recent,
2572 Wget will proceed to fetch it.
2574 The same goes for @sc{ftp}. For example:
2577 wget "ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*"
2580 (The quotes around that URL are to prevent the shell from trying to
2581 interpret the @samp{*}.)
2583 After download, a local directory listing will show that the timestamps
2584 match those on the remote server. Reissuing the command with @samp{-N}
2585 will make Wget re-fetch @emph{only} the files that have been modified
2586 since the last download.
2588 If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use a
2589 command like the following, weekly:
2592 wget --timestamping -r ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
2595 Note that time-stamping will only work for files for which the server
2596 gives a timestamp. For @sc{http}, this depends on getting a
2597 @code{Last-Modified} header. For @sc{ftp}, this depends on getting a
2598 directory listing with dates in a format that Wget can parse
2599 (@pxref{FTP Time-Stamping Internals}).
2601 @node HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, FTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping Usage, Time-Stamping
2602 @section HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
2603 @cindex http time-stamping
2605 Time-stamping in @sc{http} is implemented by checking of the
2606 @code{Last-Modified} header. If you wish to retrieve the file
2607 @file{foo.html} through @sc{http}, Wget will check whether
2608 @file{foo.html} exists locally. If it doesn't, @file{foo.html} will be
2609 retrieved unconditionally.
2611 If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
2612 time-stamp (similar to the way @code{ls -l} checks it), and then send a
2613 @code{HEAD} request to the remote server, demanding the information on
2616 The @code{Last-Modified} header is examined to find which file was
2617 modified more recently (which makes it ``newer''). If the remote file
2618 is newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give
2619 up.@footnote{As an additional check, Wget will look at the
2620 @code{Content-Length} header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the
2621 same, the remote file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp
2624 When @samp{--backup-converted} (@samp{-K}) is specified in conjunction
2625 with @samp{-N}, server file @samp{@var{X}} is compared to local file
2626 @samp{@var{X}.orig}, if extant, rather than being compared to local file
2627 @samp{@var{X}}, which will always differ if it's been converted by
2628 @samp{--convert-links} (@samp{-k}).
2630 Arguably, @sc{http} time-stamping should be implemented using the
2631 @code{If-Modified-Since} request.
2633 @node FTP Time-Stamping Internals, , HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Time-Stamping
2634 @section FTP Time-Stamping Internals
2635 @cindex ftp time-stamping
2637 In theory, @sc{ftp} time-stamping works much the same as @sc{http}, only
2638 @sc{ftp} has no headers---time-stamps must be ferreted out of directory
2641 If an @sc{ftp} download is recursive or uses globbing, Wget will use the
2642 @sc{ftp} @code{LIST} command to get a file listing for the directory
2643 containing the desired file(s). It will try to analyze the listing,
2644 treating it like Unix @code{ls -l} output, extracting the time-stamps.
2645 The rest is exactly the same as for @sc{http}. Note that when
2646 retrieving individual files from an @sc{ftp} server without using
2647 globbing or recursion, listing files will not be downloaded (and thus
2648 files will not be time-stamped) unless @samp{-N} is specified.
2650 Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
2651 sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
2652 non-Unix @sc{ftp} servers use the Unixoid listing format because most
2653 (all?) of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that @sc{rfc959}
2654 defines no standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps.
2655 We can only hope that a future standard will define this.
2657 Another non-standard solution includes the use of @code{MDTM} command
2658 that is supported by some @sc{ftp} servers (including the popular
2659 @code{wu-ftpd}), which returns the exact time of the specified file.
2660 Wget may support this command in the future.
2662 @node Startup File, Examples, Time-Stamping, Top
2663 @chapter Startup File
2664 @cindex startup file
2670 Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command
2671 line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent.
2672 You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup
2673 file---@file{.wgetrc}.
2675 Besides @file{.wgetrc} is the ``main'' initialization file, it is
2676 convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget
2677 reads and interprets the contents of @file{$HOME/.netrc}, if it finds
2678 it. You can find @file{.netrc} format in your system manuals.
2680 Wget reads @file{.wgetrc} upon startup, recognizing a limited set of
2684 * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files.
2685 * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc.
2686 * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands.
2687 * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.
2690 @node Wgetrc Location, Wgetrc Syntax, Startup File, Startup File
2691 @section Wgetrc Location
2692 @cindex wgetrc location
2693 @cindex location of wgetrc
2695 When initializing, Wget will look for a @dfn{global} startup file,
2696 @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default (or some prefix other than
2697 @file{/usr/local}, if Wget was not installed there) and read commands
2698 from there, if it exists.
2700 Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
2701 @code{WGETRC} is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
2702 further attempts will be made.
2704 If @code{WGETRC} is not set, Wget will try to load @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}.
2706 The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones
2707 means that in case of collision user's wgetrc @emph{overrides} the
2708 system-wide wgetrc (in @file{/usr/local/etc/wgetrc} by default).
2709 Fascist admins, away!
2711 @node Wgetrc Syntax, Wgetrc Commands, Wgetrc Location, Startup File
2712 @section Wgetrc Syntax
2713 @cindex wgetrc syntax
2714 @cindex syntax of wgetrc
2716 The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
2722 The @dfn{variable} will also be called @dfn{command}. Valid
2723 @dfn{values} are different for different commands.
2725 The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus
2726 @samp{DIr__PrefiX} is the same as @samp{dirprefix}. Empty lines, lines
2727 beginning with @samp{#} and lines containing white-space only are
2730 Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an
2731 empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in
2732 global @file{wgetrc}, you can do it with:
2738 @node Wgetrc Commands, Sample Wgetrc, Wgetrc Syntax, Startup File
2739 @section Wgetrc Commands
2740 @cindex wgetrc commands
2742 The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed
2743 after the @samp{=}. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using
2744 @samp{on} and @samp{off} or @samp{1} and @samp{0}.
2746 Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. @var{address} values can be
2747 hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. @var{n} can be any positive
2748 integer, or @samp{inf} for infinity, where appropriate. @var{string}
2749 values can be any non-empty string.
2751 Most of these commands have direct command-line equivalents. Also, any
2752 wgetrc command can be specified on the command line using the
2753 @samp{--execute} switch (@pxref{Basic Startup Options}.)
2756 @item accept/reject = @var{string}
2757 Same as @samp{-A}/@samp{-R} (@pxref{Types of Files}).
2759 @item add_hostdir = on/off
2760 Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. @samp{-nH} disables it.
2762 @item ask_password = on/off
2763 Prompt for a password for each connection established. Cannot be specified
2764 when @samp{--password} is being used, because they are mutually
2765 exclusive. Equivalent to @samp{--ask-password}.
2767 @item auth_no_challenge = on/off
2768 If this option is given, Wget will send Basic HTTP authentication
2769 information (plaintext username and password) for all requests. See
2770 @samp{--auth-no-challenge}.
2772 @item background = on/off
2773 Enable/disable going to background---the same as @samp{-b} (which
2776 @item backup_converted = on/off
2777 Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix
2778 @samp{.orig}---the same as @samp{-K} (which enables it).
2780 @c @item backups = @var{number}
2781 @c #### Document me!
2783 @item base = @var{string}
2784 Consider relative @sc{url}s in input files (specified via the
2785 @samp{input} command or the @samp{--input-file}/@samp{-i} option,
2786 together with @samp{force_html} or @samp{--force-html})
2787 as being relative to @var{string}---the same as @samp{--base=@var{string}}.
2789 @item bind_address = @var{address}
2790 Bind to @var{address}, like the @samp{--bind-address=@var{address}}.
2792 @item ca_certificate = @var{file}
2793 Set the certificate authority bundle file to @var{file}. The same
2794 as @samp{--ca-certificate=@var{file}}.
2796 @item ca_directory = @var{directory}
2797 Set the directory used for certificate authorities. The same as
2798 @samp{--ca-directory=@var{directory}}.
2800 @item cache = on/off
2801 When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the @samp{--no-cache}
2804 @item certificate = @var{file}
2805 Set the client certificate file name to @var{file}. The same as
2806 @samp{--certificate=@var{file}}.
2808 @item certificate_type = @var{string}
2809 Specify the type of the client certificate, legal values being
2810 @samp{PEM} (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
2811 @samp{--certificate-type=@var{string}}.
2813 @item check_certificate = on/off
2814 If this is set to off, the server certificate is not checked against
2815 the specified client authorities. The default is ``on''. The same as
2816 @samp{--check-certificate}.
2818 @item connect_timeout = @var{n}
2819 Set the connect timeout---the same as @samp{--connect-timeout}.
2821 @item content_disposition = on/off
2822 Turn on recognition of the (non-standard) @samp{Content-Disposition}
2823 HTTP header---if set to @samp{on}, the same as @samp{--content-disposition}.
2825 @item trust_server_names = on/off
2826 If set to on, use the last component of a redirection URL for the local
2829 @item continue = on/off
2830 If set to on, force continuation of preexistent partially retrieved
2831 files. See @samp{-c} before setting it.
2833 @item convert_links = on/off
2834 Convert non-relative links locally. The same as @samp{-k}.
2836 @item cookies = on/off
2837 When set to off, disallow cookies. See the @samp{--cookies} option.
2839 @item cut_dirs = @var{n}
2840 Ignore @var{n} remote directory components. Equivalent to
2841 @samp{--cut-dirs=@var{n}}.
2843 @item debug = on/off
2844 Debug mode, same as @samp{-d}.
2846 @item default_page = @var{string}
2847 Default page name---the same as @samp{--default-page=@var{string}}.
2849 @item delete_after = on/off
2850 Delete after download---the same as @samp{--delete-after}.
2852 @item dir_prefix = @var{string}
2853 Top of directory tree---the same as @samp{-P @var{string}}.
2855 @item dirstruct = on/off
2856 Turning dirstruct on or off---the same as @samp{-x} or @samp{-nd},
2859 @item dns_cache = on/off
2860 Turn DNS caching on/off. Since DNS caching is on by default, this
2861 option is normally used to turn it off and is equivalent to
2862 @samp{--no-dns-cache}.
2864 @item dns_timeout = @var{n}
2865 Set the DNS timeout---the same as @samp{--dns-timeout}.
2867 @item domains = @var{string}
2868 Same as @samp{-D} (@pxref{Spanning Hosts}).
2870 @item dot_bytes = @var{n}
2871 Specify the number of bytes ``contained'' in a dot, as seen throughout
2872 the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with
2873 @samp{k} or @samp{m}, representing kilobytes and megabytes,
2874 respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to
2875 suit your needs, or you can use the predefined @dfn{styles}
2876 (@pxref{Download Options}).
2878 @item dot_spacing = @var{n}
2879 Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default).
2881 @item dots_in_line = @var{n}
2882 Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout
2883 the retrieval (50 by default).
2885 @item egd_file = @var{file}
2886 Use @var{string} as the EGD socket file name. The same as
2887 @samp{--egd-file=@var{file}}.
2889 @item exclude_directories = @var{string}
2890 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from
2891 download---the same as @samp{-X @var{string}} (@pxref{Directory-Based
2894 @item exclude_domains = @var{string}
2895 Same as @samp{--exclude-domains=@var{string}} (@pxref{Spanning
2898 @item follow_ftp = on/off
2899 Follow @sc{ftp} links from @sc{html} documents---the same as
2900 @samp{--follow-ftp}.
2902 @item follow_tags = @var{string}
2903 Only follow certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval,
2904 just like @samp{--follow-tags=@var{string}}.
2906 @item force_html = on/off
2907 If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an @sc{html}
2908 document---the same as @samp{-F}.
2910 @item ftp_password = @var{string}
2911 Set your @sc{ftp} password to @var{string}. Without this setting, the
2912 password defaults to @samp{-wget@@}, which is a useful default for
2913 anonymous @sc{ftp} access.
2915 This command used to be named @code{passwd} prior to Wget 1.10.
2917 @item ftp_proxy = @var{string}
2918 Use @var{string} as @sc{ftp} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2921 @item ftp_user = @var{string}
2922 Set @sc{ftp} user to @var{string}.
2924 This command used to be named @code{login} prior to Wget 1.10.
2927 Turn globbing on/off---the same as @samp{--glob} and @samp{--no-glob}.
2929 @item header = @var{string}
2930 Define a header for HTTP downloads, like using
2931 @samp{--header=@var{string}}.
2933 @item adjust_extension = on/off
2934 Add a @samp{.html} extension to @samp{text/html} or
2935 @samp{application/xhtml+xml} files that lack one, or a @samp{.css}
2936 extension to @samp{text/css} files that lack one, like
2937 @samp{-E}. Previously named @samp{html_extension} (still acceptable,
2940 @item http_keep_alive = on/off
2941 Turn the keep-alive feature on or off (defaults to on). Turning it
2942 off is equivalent to @samp{--no-http-keep-alive}.
2944 @item http_password = @var{string}
2945 Set @sc{http} password, equivalent to
2946 @samp{--http-password=@var{string}}.
2948 @item http_proxy = @var{string}
2949 Use @var{string} as @sc{http} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2952 @item http_user = @var{string}
2953 Set @sc{http} user to @var{string}, equivalent to
2954 @samp{--http-user=@var{string}}.
2956 @item https_proxy = @var{string}
2957 Use @var{string} as @sc{https} proxy, instead of the one specified in
2960 @item ignore_case = on/off
2961 When set to on, match files and directories case insensitively; the
2962 same as @samp{--ignore-case}.
2964 @item ignore_length = on/off
2965 When set to on, ignore @code{Content-Length} header; the same as
2966 @samp{--ignore-length}.
2968 @item ignore_tags = @var{string}
2969 Ignore certain @sc{html} tags when doing a recursive retrieval, like
2970 @samp{--ignore-tags=@var{string}}.
2972 @item include_directories = @var{string}
2973 Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when
2974 downloading---the same as @samp{-I @var{string}}.
2977 When set to on, enable internationalized URI (IRI) support; the same as
2980 @item inet4_only = on/off
2981 Force connecting to IPv4 addresses, off by default. You can put this
2982 in the global init file to disable Wget's attempts to resolve and
2983 connect to IPv6 hosts. Available only if Wget was compiled with IPv6
2984 support. The same as @samp{--inet4-only} or @samp{-4}.
2986 @item inet6_only = on/off
2987 Force connecting to IPv6 addresses, off by default. Available only if
2988 Wget was compiled with IPv6 support. The same as @samp{--inet6-only}
2991 @item input = @var{file}
2992 Read the @sc{url}s from @var{string}, like @samp{-i @var{file}}.
2994 @item keep_session_cookies = on/off
2995 When specified, causes @samp{save_cookies = on} to also save session
2996 cookies. See @samp{--keep-session-cookies}.
2998 @item limit_rate = @var{rate}
2999 Limit the download speed to no more than @var{rate} bytes per second.
3000 The same as @samp{--limit-rate=@var{rate}}.
3002 @item load_cookies = @var{file}
3003 Load cookies from @var{file}. See @samp{--load-cookies @var{file}}.
3005 @item local_encoding = @var{encoding}
3006 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default system encoding. See
3007 @samp{--local-encoding}.
3009 @item logfile = @var{file}
3010 Set logfile to @var{file}, the same as @samp{-o @var{file}}.
3012 @item max_redirect = @var{number}
3013 Specifies the maximum number of redirections to follow for a resource.
3014 See @samp{--max-redirect=@var{number}}.
3016 @item mirror = on/off
3017 Turn mirroring on/off. The same as @samp{-m}.
3019 @item netrc = on/off
3020 Turn reading netrc on or off.
3022 @item no_clobber = on/off
3025 @item no_parent = on/off
3026 Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like
3027 @samp{--no-parent} (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}).
3029 @item no_proxy = @var{string}
3030 Use @var{string} as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in
3031 proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment.
3033 @item output_document = @var{file}
3034 Set the output filename---the same as @samp{-O @var{file}}.
3036 @item page_requisites = on/off
3037 Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single @sc{html} page to
3038 display properly---the same as @samp{-p}.
3040 @item passive_ftp = on/off
3041 Change setting of passive @sc{ftp}, equivalent to the
3042 @samp{--passive-ftp} option.
3044 @itemx password = @var{string}
3045 Specify password @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
3046 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_password} and
3047 @samp{http_password} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
3049 @item post_data = @var{string}
3050 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send @var{string} in
3051 the request body. The same as @samp{--post-data=@var{string}}.
3053 @item post_file = @var{file}
3054 Use POST as the method for all HTTP requests and send the contents of
3055 @var{file} in the request body. The same as
3056 @samp{--post-file=@var{file}}.
3058 @item prefer_family = none/IPv4/IPv6
3059 When given a choice of several addresses, connect to the addresses
3060 with specified address family first. The address order returned by
3061 DNS is used without change by default. The same as @samp{--prefer-family},
3062 which see for a detailed discussion of why this is useful.
3064 @item private_key = @var{file}
3065 Set the private key file to @var{file}. The same as
3066 @samp{--private-key=@var{file}}.
3068 @item private_key_type = @var{string}
3069 Specify the type of the private key, legal values being @samp{PEM}
3070 (the default) and @samp{DER} (aka ASN1). The same as
3071 @samp{--private-type=@var{string}}.
3073 @item progress = @var{string}
3074 Set the type of the progress indicator. Legal types are @samp{dot}
3075 and @samp{bar}. Equivalent to @samp{--progress=@var{string}}.
3077 @item protocol_directories = on/off
3078 When set, use the protocol name as a directory component of local file
3079 names. The same as @samp{--protocol-directories}.
3081 @item proxy_password = @var{string}
3082 Set proxy authentication password to @var{string}, like
3083 @samp{--proxy-password=@var{string}}.
3085 @item proxy_user = @var{string}
3086 Set proxy authentication user name to @var{string}, like
3087 @samp{--proxy-user=@var{string}}.
3089 @item quiet = on/off
3090 Quiet mode---the same as @samp{-q}.
3092 @item quota = @var{quota}
3093 Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global
3094 @file{wgetrc}. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop
3095 retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The
3096 quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes @samp{k} appended) or
3097 mbytes (@samp{m} appended). Thus @samp{quota = 5m} will set the quota
3098 to 5 megabytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system
3101 @item random_file = @var{file}
3102 Use @var{file} as a source of randomness on systems lacking
3105 @item random_wait = on/off
3106 Turn random between-request wait times on or off. The same as
3107 @samp{--random-wait}.
3109 @item read_timeout = @var{n}
3110 Set the read (and write) timeout---the same as
3111 @samp{--read-timeout=@var{n}}.
3113 @item reclevel = @var{n}
3114 Recursion level (depth)---the same as @samp{-l @var{n}}.
3116 @item recursive = on/off
3117 Recursive on/off---the same as @samp{-r}.
3119 @item referer = @var{string}
3120 Set HTTP @samp{Referer:} header just like
3121 @samp{--referer=@var{string}}. (Note that it was the folks who wrote
3122 the @sc{http} spec who got the spelling of ``referrer'' wrong.)
3124 @item relative_only = on/off
3125 Follow only relative links---the same as @samp{-L} (@pxref{Relative
3128 @item remote_encoding = @var{encoding}
3129 Force Wget to use @var{encoding} as the default remote server encoding.
3130 See @samp{--remote-encoding}.
3132 @item remove_listing = on/off
3133 If set to on, remove @sc{ftp} listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it
3134 to off is the same as @samp{--no-remove-listing}.
3136 @item restrict_file_names = unix/windows
3137 Restrict the file names generated by Wget from URLs. See
3138 @samp{--restrict-file-names} for a more detailed description.
3140 @item retr_symlinks = on/off
3141 When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the
3142 same as @samp{--retr-symlinks}.
3144 @item retry_connrefused = on/off
3145 When set to on, consider ``connection refused'' a transient
3146 error---the same as @samp{--retry-connrefused}.
3148 @item robots = on/off
3149 Specify whether the norobots convention is respected by Wget, ``on'' by
3150 default. This switch controls both the @file{/robots.txt} and the
3151 @samp{nofollow} aspect of the spec. @xref{Robot Exclusion}, for more
3152 details about this. Be sure you know what you are doing before turning
3155 @item save_cookies = @var{file}
3156 Save cookies to @var{file}. The same as @samp{--save-cookies
3159 @item save_headers = on/off
3160 Same as @samp{--save-headers}.
3162 @item secure_protocol = @var{string}
3163 Choose the secure protocol to be used. Legal values are @samp{auto}
3164 (the default), @samp{SSLv2}, @samp{SSLv3}, and @samp{TLSv1}. The same
3165 as @samp{--secure-protocol=@var{string}}.
3167 @item server_response = on/off
3168 Choose whether or not to print the @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} server
3169 responses---the same as @samp{-S}.
3171 @item span_hosts = on/off
3174 @item spider = on/off
3175 Same as @samp{--spider}.
3177 @item strict_comments = on/off
3178 Same as @samp{--strict-comments}.
3180 @item timeout = @var{n}
3181 Set all applicable timeout values to @var{n}, the same as @samp{-T
3184 @item timestamping = on/off
3185 Turn timestamping on/off. The same as @samp{-N} (@pxref{Time-Stamping}).
3187 @item use_server_timestamps = on/off
3188 If set to @samp{off}, Wget won't set the local file's timestamp by the
3189 one on the server (same as @samp{--no-use-server-timestamps}).
3191 @item tries = @var{n}
3192 Set number of retries per @sc{url}---the same as @samp{-t @var{n}}.
3194 @item use_proxy = on/off
3195 When set to off, don't use proxy even when proxy-related environment
3196 variables are set. In that case it is the same as using
3199 @item user = @var{string}
3200 Specify username @var{string} for both @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} file retrieval.
3201 This command can be overridden using the @samp{ftp_user} and
3202 @samp{http_user} command for @sc{ftp} and @sc{http} respectively.
3204 @item user_agent = @var{string}
3205 User agent identification sent to the HTTP Server---the same as
3206 @samp{--user-agent=@var{string}}.
3208 @item verbose = on/off
3209 Turn verbose on/off---the same as @samp{-v}/@samp{-nv}.
3211 @item wait = @var{n}
3212 Wait @var{n} seconds between retrievals---the same as @samp{-w
3215 @item wait_retry = @var{n}
3216 Wait up to @var{n} seconds between retries of failed retrievals
3217 only---the same as @samp{--waitretry=@var{n}}. Note that this is
3218 turned on by default in the global @file{wgetrc}.
3221 @node Sample Wgetrc, , Wgetrc Commands, Startup File
3222 @section Sample Wgetrc
3223 @cindex sample wgetrc
3225 This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution.
3226 It is divided in two section---one for global usage (suitable for global
3227 startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for
3228 @file{$HOME/.wgetrc}). Be careful about the things you change.
3230 Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have
3231 any effect, you must remove the @samp{#} character at the beginning of
3235 @include sample.wgetrc.munged_for_texi_inclusion
3238 @node Examples, Various, Startup File, Top
3242 @c man begin EXAMPLES
3243 The examples are divided into three sections loosely based on their
3247 * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program.
3248 * Advanced Usage:: Advanced tips.
3249 * Very Advanced Usage:: The hairy stuff.
3252 @node Simple Usage, Advanced Usage, Examples, Examples
3253 @section Simple Usage
3257 Say you want to download a @sc{url}. Just type:
3260 wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
3264 But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy?
3265 The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved,
3266 more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it
3267 either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries
3268 (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to
3269 insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
3272 wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
3276 Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress
3277 to log file @file{log}. It is tiring to type @samp{--tries}, so we
3278 shall use @samp{-t}.
3281 wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
3284 The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the
3285 background. To unlimit the number of retries, use @samp{-t inf}.
3288 The usage of @sc{ftp} is as simple. Wget will take care of login and
3292 wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
3296 If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing,
3297 parse it and convert it to @sc{html}. Try:
3300 wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
3305 @node Advanced Usage, Very Advanced Usage, Simple Usage, Examples
3306 @section Advanced Usage
3310 You have a file that contains the URLs you want to download? Use the
3317 If you specify @samp{-} as file name, the @sc{url}s will be read from
3321 Create a five levels deep mirror image of the GNU web site, with the
3322 same directory structure the original has, with only one try per
3323 document, saving the log of the activities to @file{gnulog}:
3326 wget -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3330 The same as the above, but convert the links in the downloaded files to
3331 point to local files, so you can view the documents off-line:
3334 wget --convert-links -r http://www.gnu.org/ -o gnulog
3338 Retrieve only one @sc{html} page, but make sure that all the elements needed
3339 for the page to be displayed, such as inline images and external style
3340 sheets, are also downloaded. Also make sure the downloaded page
3341 references the downloaded links.
3344 wget -p --convert-links http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3347 The @sc{html} page will be saved to @file{www.server.com/dir/page.html}, and
3348 the images, stylesheets, etc., somewhere under @file{www.server.com/},
3349 depending on where they were on the remote server.
3352 The same as the above, but without the @file{www.server.com/} directory.
3353 In fact, I don't want to have all those random server directories
3354 anyway---just save @emph{all} those files under a @file{download/}
3355 subdirectory of the current directory.
3358 wget -p --convert-links -nH -nd -Pdownload \
3359 http://www.server.com/dir/page.html
3363 Retrieve the index.html of @samp{www.lycos.com}, showing the original
3367 wget -S http://www.lycos.com/
3371 Save the server headers with the file, perhaps for post-processing.
3374 wget --save-headers http://www.lycos.com/
3379 Retrieve the first two levels of @samp{wuarchive.wustl.edu}, saving them
3383 wget -r -l2 -P/tmp ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
3387 You want to download all the @sc{gif}s from a directory on an @sc{http}
3388 server. You tried @samp{wget http://www.server.com/dir/*.gif}, but that
3389 didn't work because @sc{http} retrieval does not support globbing. In
3393 wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://www.server.com/dir/
3396 More verbose, but the effect is the same. @samp{-r -l1} means to
3397 retrieve recursively (@pxref{Recursive Download}), with maximum depth
3398 of 1. @samp{--no-parent} means that references to the parent directory
3399 are ignored (@pxref{Directory-Based Limits}), and @samp{-A.gif} means to
3400 download only the @sc{gif} files. @samp{-A "*.gif"} would have worked
3404 Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was
3405 interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present.
3409 wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.org/
3413 If you want to encode your own username and password to @sc{http} or
3414 @sc{ftp}, use the appropriate @sc{url} syntax (@pxref{URL Format}).
3417 wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@@unix.server.com/.emacs
3420 Note, however, that this usage is not advisable on multi-user systems
3421 because it reveals your password to anyone who looks at the output of
3424 @cindex redirecting output
3426 You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of
3430 wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/
3433 You can also combine the two options and make pipelines to retrieve the
3434 documents from remote hotlists:
3437 wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -
3441 @node Very Advanced Usage, , Advanced Usage, Examples
3442 @section Very Advanced Usage
3447 If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or @sc{ftp}
3448 subdirectories), use @samp{--mirror} (@samp{-m}), which is the shorthand
3449 for @samp{-r -l inf -N}. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it
3450 to recheck a site each Sunday:
3454 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3458 In addition to the above, you want the links to be converted for local
3459 viewing. But, after having read this manual, you know that link
3460 conversion doesn't play well with timestamping, so you also want Wget to
3461 back up the original @sc{html} files before the conversion. Wget invocation
3462 would look like this:
3465 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3466 http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3470 But you've also noticed that local viewing doesn't work all that well
3471 when @sc{html} files are saved under extensions other than @samp{.html},
3472 perhaps because they were served as @file{index.cgi}. So you'd like
3473 Wget to rename all the files served with content-type @samp{text/html}
3474 or @samp{application/xhtml+xml} to @file{@var{name}.html}.
3477 wget --mirror --convert-links --backup-converted \
3478 --html-extension -o /home/me/weeklog \
3482 Or, with less typing:
3485 wget -m -k -K -E http://www.gnu.org/ -o /home/me/weeklog
3490 @node Various, Appendices, Examples, Top
3494 This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else.
3497 * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers.
3498 * Distribution:: Getting the latest version.
3499 * Web Site:: GNU Wget's presence on the World Wide Web.
3500 * Mailing Lists:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion.
3501 * Internet Relay Chat:: Wget's presence on IRC.
3502 * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs.
3503 * Portability:: The systems Wget works on.
3504 * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.
3507 @node Proxies, Distribution, Various, Various
3511 @dfn{Proxies} are special-purpose @sc{http} servers designed to transfer
3512 data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies
3513 is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is
3514 achieved by channeling all @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} requests through the
3515 proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is
3516 requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for
3517 proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their
3518 internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain
3519 information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data
3520 using an authorized proxy.
3522 Wget supports proxies for both @sc{http} and @sc{ftp} retrievals. The
3523 standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using
3524 the following environment variables:
3529 If set, the @code{http_proxy} and @code{https_proxy} variables should
3530 contain the @sc{url}s of the proxies for @sc{http} and @sc{https}
3531 connections respectively.
3534 This variable should contain the @sc{url} of the proxy for @sc{ftp}
3535 connections. It is quite common that @code{http_proxy} and
3536 @code{ftp_proxy} are set to the same @sc{url}.
3539 This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions
3540 proxy should @emph{not} be used for. For instance, if the value of
3541 @code{no_proxy} is @samp{.mit.edu}, proxy will not be used to retrieve
3545 In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings
3546 may be specified from within Wget itself.
3550 @itemx proxy = on/off
3551 This option and the corresponding command may be used to suppress the
3552 use of proxy, even if the appropriate environment variables are set.
3554 @item http_proxy = @var{URL}
3555 @itemx https_proxy = @var{URL}
3556 @itemx ftp_proxy = @var{URL}
3557 @itemx no_proxy = @var{string}
3558 These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings
3559 specified by the environment.
3562 Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The
3563 authorization consists of @dfn{username} and @dfn{password}, which must
3564 be sent by Wget. As with @sc{http} authorization, several
3565 authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the
3566 @code{Basic} authentication scheme is currently implemented.
3568 You may specify your username and password either through the proxy
3569 @sc{url} or through the command-line options. Assuming that the
3570 company's proxy is located at @samp{proxy.company.com} at port 8001, a
3571 proxy @sc{url} location containing authorization data might look like
3575 http://hniksic:mypassword@@proxy.company.com:8001/
3578 Alternatively, you may use the @samp{proxy-user} and
3579 @samp{proxy-password} options, and the equivalent @file{.wgetrc}
3580 settings @code{proxy_user} and @code{proxy_password} to set the proxy
3581 username and password.
3583 @node Distribution, Web Site, Proxies, Various
3584 @section Distribution
3585 @cindex latest version
3587 Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the
3588 master GNU archive site ftp.gnu.org, and its mirrors. For example,
3589 Wget @value{VERSION} can be found at
3590 @url{ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-@value{VERSION}.tar.gz}
3592 @node Web Site, Mailing Lists, Distribution, Various
3596 The official web site for GNU Wget is at
3597 @url{http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/}. However, most useful
3598 information resides at ``The Wget Wgiki'',
3599 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/}.
3601 @node Mailing Lists, Internet Relay Chat, Web Site, Various
3602 @section Mailing Lists
3603 @cindex mailing list
3606 @unnumberedsubsec Primary List
3608 The primary mailinglist for discussion, bug-reports, or questions
3609 about GNU Wget is at @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}. To subscribe, send an
3610 email to @email{bug-wget-join@@gnu.org}, or visit
3611 @url{http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-wget}.
3613 You do not need to subscribe to send a message to the list; however,
3614 please note that unsubscribed messages are moderated, and may take a
3615 while before they hit the list---@strong{usually around a day}. If
3616 you want your message to show up immediately, please subscribe to the
3617 list before posting. Archives for the list may be found at
3618 @url{http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/bug-wget/}.
3620 An NNTP/Usenettish gateway is also available via
3621 @uref{http://gmane.org/about.php,Gmane}. You can see the Gmane
3623 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general}. Note that the
3624 Gmane archives conveniently include messages from both the current
3625 list, and the previous one. Messages also show up in the Gmane
3626 archives sooner than they do at @url{lists.gnu.org}.
3628 @unnumberedsubsec Bug Notices List
3630 Additionally, there is the @email{wget-notify@@addictivecode.org} mailing
3631 list. This is a non-discussion list that receives bug report
3632 notifications from the bug-tracker. To subscribe to this list,
3633 send an email to @email{wget-notify-join@@addictivecode.org},
3634 or visit @url{http://addictivecode.org/mailman/listinfo/wget-notify}.
3636 @unnumberedsubsec Obsolete Lists
3638 Previously, the mailing list @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} was used as the
3639 main discussion list, and another list,
3640 @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} was used for submitting and
3641 discussing patches to GNU Wget.
3643 Messages from @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3646 @url{http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/} and at
3648 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.general} (which also
3649 continues to archive the current list, @email{bug-wget@@gnu.org}).
3652 Messages from @email{wget-patches@@sunsite.dk} are archived at
3655 @url{http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wget.patches}.
3658 @node Internet Relay Chat, Reporting Bugs, Mailing Lists, Various
3659 @section Internet Relay Chat
3660 @cindex Internet Relay Chat
3664 In addition to the mailinglists, we also have a support channel set up
3665 via IRC at @code{irc.freenode.org}, @code{#wget}. Come check it out!
3667 @node Reporting Bugs, Portability, Internet Relay Chat, Various
3668 @section Reporting Bugs
3670 @cindex reporting bugs
3674 You are welcome to submit bug reports via the GNU Wget bug tracker (see
3675 @url{http://wget.addictivecode.org/BugTracker}).
3677 Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few
3682 Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really is a bug. If
3683 Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented,
3684 it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way
3685 they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug, but you might want to
3686 double-check the documentation and the mailing lists (@pxref{Mailing
3690 Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if
3691 Wget crashes while downloading @samp{wget -rl0 -kKE -t5 --no-proxy
3692 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log}, you should try to see if the crash is
3693 repeatable, and if will occur with a simpler set of options. You might
3694 even try to start the download at the page where the crash occurred to
3695 see if that page somehow triggered the crash.
3697 Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your
3698 @file{.wgetrc} file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably
3699 a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats
3700 with @file{.wgetrc} moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that
3701 @file{.wgetrc} settings affect the bug, mail me the relevant parts of
3705 Please start Wget with @samp{-d} option and send us the resulting
3706 output (or relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without
3707 debug support, recompile it---it is @emph{much} easier to trace bugs
3708 with debug support on.
3710 Note: please make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
3711 from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
3712 @code{-d} won't go out of its way to collect sensitive information,
3713 but the log @emph{will} contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget's
3714 communication with the server, which may include passwords and pieces
3715 of downloaded data. Since the bug address is publically archived, you
3716 may assume that all bug reports are visible to the public.
3719 If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. @code{gdb `which
3720 wget` core} and type @code{where} to get the backtrace. This may not
3721 work if the system administrator has disabled core files, but it is
3726 @node Portability, Signals, Reporting Bugs, Various
3727 @section Portability
3729 @cindex operating systems
3731 Like all GNU software, Wget works on the GNU system. However, since it
3732 uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and mostly avoids using
3733 ``special'' features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and
3734 work) on all common Unix flavors.
3736 Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds of
3737 Unix systems, including GNU/Linux, Solaris, SunOS 4.x, Mac OS X, OSF
3738 (aka Digital Unix or Tru64), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, AIX, and others. Some
3739 of those systems are no longer in widespread use and may not be able to
3740 support recent versions of Wget. If Wget fails to compile on your
3741 system, we would like to know about it.
3743 Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works
3744 on 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms. It has been compiled
3745 successfully using MS Visual C++ 6.0, Watcom, Borland C, and GCC
3746 compilers. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on
3747 Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with
3748 Windows. Note that Windows-specific portions of Wget are not
3749 guaranteed to be supported in the future, although this has been the
3750 case in practice for many years now. All questions and problems in
3751 Windows usage should be reported to Wget mailing list at
3752 @email{wget@@sunsite.dk} where the volunteers who maintain the
3753 Windows-related features might look at them.
3755 Support for building on MS-DOS via DJGPP has been contributed by Gisle
3756 Vanem; a port to VMS is maintained by Steven Schweda, and is available
3757 at @url{http://antinode.org/}.
3759 @node Signals, , Portability, Various
3761 @cindex signal handling
3764 Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup
3765 signal (@code{SIGHUP}) and ignores it. If the output was on standard
3766 output, it will be redirected to a file named @file{wget-log}.
3767 Otherwise, @code{SIGHUP} is ignored. This is convenient when you wish
3768 to redirect the output of Wget after having started it.
3771 $ wget http://www.gnus.org/dist/gnus.tar.gz &
3774 SIGHUP received, redirecting output to `wget-log'.
3777 Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way.
3778 @kbd{C-c}, @code{kill -TERM} and @code{kill -KILL} should kill it alike.
3780 @node Appendices, Copying this manual, Various, Top
3783 This chapter contains some references I consider useful.
3786 * Robot Exclusion:: Wget's support for RES.
3787 * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget.
3788 * Contributors:: People who helped.
3791 @node Robot Exclusion, Security Considerations, Appendices, Appendices
3792 @section Robot Exclusion
3793 @cindex robot exclusion
3795 @cindex server maintenance
3797 It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site,
3798 sucking all the available data in progress. @samp{wget -r @var{site}},
3799 and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin.
3801 As long as Wget is only retrieving static pages, and doing it at a
3802 reasonable rate (see the @samp{--wait} option), there's not much of a
3803 problem. The trouble is that Wget can't tell the difference between the
3804 smallest static page and the most demanding CGI. A site I know has a
3805 section handled by a CGI Perl script that converts Info files to @sc{html} on
3806 the fly. The script is slow, but works well enough for human users
3807 viewing an occasional Info file. However, when someone's recursive Wget
3808 download stumbles upon the index page that links to all the Info files
3809 through the script, the system is brought to its knees without providing
3810 anything useful to the user (This task of converting Info files could be
3811 done locally and access to Info documentation for all installed GNU
3812 software on a system is available from the @code{info} command).
3814 To avoid this kind of accident, as well as to preserve privacy for
3815 documents that need to be protected from well-behaved robots, the
3816 concept of @dfn{robot exclusion} was invented. The idea is that
3817 the server administrators and document authors can specify which
3818 portions of the site they wish to protect from robots and those
3819 they will permit access.
3821 The most popular mechanism, and the @i{de facto} standard supported by
3822 all the major robots, is the ``Robots Exclusion Standard'' (RES) written
3823 by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It specifies the format of a text
3824 file containing directives that instruct the robots which URL paths to
3825 avoid. To be found by the robots, the specifications must be placed in
3826 @file{/robots.txt} in the server root, which the robots are expected to
3829 Although Wget is not a web robot in the strictest sense of the word, it
3830 can download large parts of the site without the user's intervention to
3831 download an individual page. Because of that, Wget honors RES when
3832 downloading recursively. For instance, when you issue:
3835 wget -r http://www.server.com/
3838 First the index of @samp{www.server.com} will be downloaded. If Wget
3839 finds that it wants to download more documents from that server, it will
3840 request @samp{http://www.server.com/robots.txt} and, if found, use it
3841 for further downloads. @file{robots.txt} is loaded only once per each
3844 Until version 1.8, Wget supported the first version of the standard,
3845 written by Martijn Koster in 1994 and available at
3846 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html}. As of version 1.8,
3847 Wget has supported the additional directives specified in the internet
3848 draft @samp{<draft-koster-robots-00.txt>} titled ``A Method for Web
3849 Robots Control''. The draft, which has as far as I know never made to
3850 an @sc{rfc}, is available at
3851 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt}.
3853 This manual no longer includes the text of the Robot Exclusion Standard.
3855 The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual
3856 document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be
3857 followed by a robot. This is achieved using the @code{META} tag, like
3861 <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
3864 This is explained in some detail at
3865 @url{http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html}. Wget supports this
3866 method of robot exclusion in addition to the usual @file{/robots.txt}
3869 If you know what you are doing and really really wish to turn off the
3870 robot exclusion, set the @code{robots} variable to @samp{off} in your
3871 @file{.wgetrc}. You can achieve the same effect from the command line
3872 using the @code{-e} switch, e.g. @samp{wget -e robots=off @var{url}...}.
3874 @node Security Considerations, Contributors, Robot Exclusion, Appendices
3875 @section Security Considerations
3878 When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords
3879 through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the
3880 main issues, and some solutions.
3884 The passwords on the command line are visible using @code{ps}. The best
3885 way around it is to use @code{wget -i -} and feed the @sc{url}s to
3886 Wget's standard input, each on a separate line, terminated by @kbd{C-d}.
3887 Another workaround is to use @file{.netrc} to store passwords; however,
3888 storing unencrypted passwords is also considered a security risk.
3891 Using the insecure @dfn{basic} authentication scheme, unencrypted
3892 passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways.
3895 The @sc{ftp} passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good
3896 solution for this at the moment.
3899 Although the ``normal'' output of Wget tries to hide the passwords,
3900 debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by
3901 being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to
3905 @node Contributors, , Security Considerations, Appendices
3906 @section Contributors
3907 @cindex contributors
3910 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Nik@v{s}i@'{c} @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3913 GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic @email{hniksic@@xemacs.org},
3915 and it is currently maintained by Micah Cowan @email{micah@@cowan.name}.
3917 However, the development of Wget could never have gone as far as it has, were
3918 it not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature proposals,
3919 patches, or letters saying ``Thanks!''.
3921 Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order):
3924 @item Dan Harkless---contributed a lot of code and documentation of
3925 extremely high quality, as well as the @code{--page-requisites} and
3926 related options. He was the principal maintainer for some time and
3929 @item Ian Abbott---contributed bug fixes, Windows-related fixes, and
3930 provided a prototype implementation of the breadth-first recursive
3931 download. Co-maintained Wget during the 1.8 release cycle.
3934 The dotsrc.org crew, in particular Karsten Thygesen---donated system
3935 resources such as the mailing list, web space, @sc{ftp} space, and
3936 version control repositories, along with a lot of time to make these
3937 actually work. Christian Reiniger was of invaluable help with setting
3941 Heiko Herold---provided high-quality Windows builds and contributed
3942 bug and build reports for many years.
3945 Shawn McHorse---bug reports and patches.
3948 Kaveh R. Ghazi---on-the-fly @code{ansi2knr}-ization. Lots of
3952 Gordon Matzigkeit---@file{.netrc} support.
3956 Zlatko @v{C}alu@v{s}i@'{c}, Tomislav Vujec and Dra@v{z}en
3957 Ka@v{c}ar---feature suggestions and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3960 Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar---feature suggestions
3961 and ``philosophical'' discussions.
3965 Darko Budor---initial port to Windows.
3968 Antonio Rosella---help and suggestions, plus the initial Italian
3973 Tomislav Petrovi@'{c}, Mario Miko@v{c}evi@'{c}---many bug reports and
3977 Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic---many bug reports and suggestions.
3982 Fran@,{c}ois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3985 Francois Pinard---many thorough bug reports and discussions.
3989 Karl Eichwalder---lots of help with internationalization, Makefile
3990 layout and many other things.
3993 Junio Hamano---donated support for Opie and @sc{http} @code{Digest}
3997 Mauro Tortonesi---improved IPv6 support, adding support for dual
3998 family systems. Refactored and enhanced FTP IPv6 code. Maintained GNU
3999 Wget from 2004--2007.
4002 Christopher G.@: Lewis---maintenance of the Windows version of GNU WGet.
4005 Gisle Vanem---many helpful patches and improvements, especially for
4006 Windows and MS-DOS support.
4009 Ralf Wildenhues---contributed patches to convert Wget to use Automake as
4010 part of its build process, and various bugfixes.
4013 Steven Schubiger---Many helpful patches, bugfixes and improvements.
4014 Notably, conversion of Wget to use the Gnulib quotes and quoteargs
4015 modules, and the addition of password prompts at the console, via the
4016 Gnulib getpasswd-gnu module.
4019 Ted Mielczarek---donated support for CSS.
4022 Saint Xavier---Support for IRIs (RFC 3987).
4025 People who provided donations for development---including Brian Gough.
4028 The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful
4029 suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things
4030 that make maintenance so much fun:
4050 Kristijan @v{C}onka@v{s},
4059 Bertrand Demiddelaer,
4060 Alexander Dergachev,
4073 Aleksandar Erkalovi@'{c},
4076 Aleksandar Erkalovic,
4100 Madhusudan Hosaagrahara,
4104 Erik Magnus Hulthen,
4123 Goran Kezunovi@'{c},
4137 $\Sigma\acute{\iota}\mu o\varsigma\;
4138 \Xi\varepsilon\nu\iota\tau\acute{\epsilon}\lambda\lambda\eta\varsigma$
4139 (Simos KSenitellis),
4148 Nicol@'{a}s Lichtmeier,
4154 Alexander V.@: Lukyanov,
4163 Matthew J.@: Mellon,
4199 @c Texinfo doesn't grok @'{@i}, so we have to use TeX itself.
4201 Juan Jos\'{e} Rodr\'{\i}guez,
4204 Juan Jose Rodriguez,
4206 Maciej W.@: Rozycki,
4213 Steven M.@: Schweda,
4224 Szakacsits Szabolcs,
4239 Douglas E.@: Wegscheid,
4241 Joshua David Williams,
4255 Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the
4256 subscribers of the Wget mailing list.
4258 @node Copying this manual, Concept Index, Appendices, Top
4259 @appendix Copying this manual
4262 * GNU Free Documentation License:: Licnse for copying this manual.
4265 @node GNU Free Documentation License, , Copying this manual, Copying this manual
4266 @appendixsec GNU Free Documentation License
4267 @cindex FDL, GNU Free Documentation License
4272 @node Concept Index, , Copying this manual, Top
4273 @unnumbered Concept Index