HTML files on your local disk, by adding `<base href="URL">' to
HTML, or using the `--base' command-line option.
+`-B URL'
+`--base=URL'
+ When used in conjunction with `-F', prepends URL to relative links
+ in the file specified by `-i'.
+
\1f
File: wget.info, Node: Download Options, Next: Directory Options, Prev: Logging and Input File Options, Up: Invoking
Download Options
================
+`--bind-address=ADDRESS'
+ When making client TCP/IP connections, `bind()' to ADDRESS on the
+ local machine. ADDRESS may be specified as a hostname or IP
+ address. This option can be useful if your machine is bound to
+ multiple IPs.
+
`-t NUMBER'
`--tries=NUMBER'
Set number of retries to NUMBER. Specify 0 or `inf' for infinite
`-nc'
`--no-clobber'
- Do not clobber existing files when saving to directory hierarchy
- within recursive retrieval of several files. This option is
- *extremely* useful when you wish to continue where you left off
- with retrieval of many files. If the files have the `.html' or
- (yuck) `.htm' suffix, they will be loaded from the local disk, and
- parsed as if they have been retrieved from the Web.
+ If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory,
+ wget's behavior depends on a few options, including `-nc'. In
+ certain cases, the local file will be "clobbered", or overwritten,
+ upon repeated download. In other cases it will be preserved.
+
+ When running wget without `-N', `-nc', or `-r', downloading the
+ same file in the same directory will result in the original copy
+ of `FILE' being preserved and the second copy being named
+ `FILE.1'. If that file is downloaded yet again, the third copy
+ will be named `FILE.2', and so on. When `-nc' is specified, this
+ behavior is suppressed, and wget will refuse to download newer
+ copies of `FILE'. Therefore, "no-clobber" is actually a misnomer
+ in this mode - it's not clobbering that's prevented (as the
+ numeric suffixes were already preventing clobbering), but rather
+ the multiple version saving that's prevented.
+
+ When running wget with `-r', but without `-N' or `-nc',
+ re-downloading a file will result in the new copy simply
+ overwriting the old. Adding `-nc' will prevent this behavior,
+ instead causing the original version to be preserved and any newer
+ copies on the server to be ignored.
+
+ When running wget with `-N', with or without `-r', the decision as
+ to whether or not to download a newer copy of a file depends on
+ the local and remote timestamp and size of the file (*Note
+ Time-Stamping::). `-nc' may not be specified at the same time as
+ `-N'.
+
+ Note that when `-nc' is specified, files with the suffixes `.html'
+ or (yuck) `.htm' will be loaded from the local disk and parsed as
+ if they had been retrieved from the Web.
`-c'
`--continue'
remote file to `ls-lR.Z.1'. The `-c' option is also applicable
for HTTP servers that support the `Range' header.
+ Note that if you use `-c' on a file that's already downloaded
+ completely, `FILE' will not be changed, nor will a second `FILE.1'
+ copy be created.
+
`--dot-style=STYLE'
Set the retrieval style to STYLE. Wget traces the retrieval of
each document by printing dots on the screen, each dot
to reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before the
retry.
+`--waitretry=SECONDS'
+ If you don't want Wget to wait between *every* retrieval, but only
+ between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option.
+ Wget will use "linear backoff", waiting 1 second after the first
+ failure on a given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second
+ failure on that file, up to the maximum number of SECONDS you
+ specify. Therefore, a value of 10 will actually make Wget wait up
+ to (1 + 2 + ... + 10) = 55 seconds per file.
+
+ Note that this option is turned on by default in the global
+ `wgetrc' file.
+
`-Y on/off'
`--proxy=on/off'
Turn proxy support on or off. The proxy is on by default if the
HTTP Options
============
+`-E'
+`--html-extension'
+ If a file of type `text/html' is downloaded and the URL does not
+ end with the regexp "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?", this option will cause
+ the suffix `.html' to be appended to the local filename. This is
+ useful, for instance, when you're mirroring a remote site that uses
+ `.asp' pages, but you want the mirrored pages to be viewable on
+ your stock Apache server. Another good use for this is when you're
+ downloading the output of CGIs. A URL like
+ `http://site.com/article.cgi?25' will be saved as
+ `article.cgi?25.html'.
+
+ Note that filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded
+ every time you re-mirror a site, because wget can't tell that the
+ local `X.html' file corresponds to remote URL `X' (since it
+ doesn't yet know that the URL produces output of type `text/html'.
+ To prevent this re-downloading, you must use `-k' and `-K' so
+ that the original version of the file will be saved as `X.orig'
+ (*Note Recursive Retrieval Options::).
+
`--http-user=USER'
`--http-passwd=PASSWORD'
Specify the username USER and password PASSWORD on an HTTP server.
on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the `basic'
authentication scheme.
+`--referer=URL'
+ Include `Referer: URL' header in HTTP request. Useful for
+ retrieving documents with server-side processing that assume they
+ are always being retrieved by interactive web browsers and only
+ come out properly when Referer is set to one of the pages that
+ point to them.
+
`-s'
`--save-headers'
Save the headers sent by the HTTP server to the file, preceding the
this option is discouraged, unless you really know what you are
doing.
- *NOTE* that Netscape Communications Corp. has claimed that false
- transmissions of `Mozilla' as the `User-Agent' are a copyright
- infringement, which will be prosecuted. *DO NOT* misrepresent
- Wget as Mozilla.
-
\1f
File: wget.info, Node: FTP Options, Next: Recursive Retrieval Options, Prev: HTTP Options, Up: Invoking
===========
`--retr-symlinks'
- Retrieve symbolic links on FTP sites as if they were plain files,
- i.e. don't just create links locally.
+ Usually, when retrieving FTP directories recursively and a symbolic
+ link is encountered, the linked-to file is not downloaded.
+ Instead, a matching symbolic link is created on the local
+ filesystem. The pointed-to file will not be downloaded unless
+ this recursive retrieval would have encountered it separately and
+ downloaded it anyway.
+
+ When `--retr-symlinks' is specified, however, symbolic links are
+ traversed and the pointed-to files are retrieved. At this time,
+ this option does not cause wget to traverse symlinks to
+ directories and recurse through them, but in the future it should
+ be enhanced to do this.
+
+ Note that when retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was
+ specified on the commandline, rather than because it was recursed
+ to, this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always
+ traversed in this case.
`-g on/off'
`--glob=on/off'
`--delete-after'
This option tells Wget to delete every single file it downloads,
*after* having done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular
- pages through proxy, e.g.:
+ pages through a proxy, e.g.:
wget -r -nd --delete-after http://whatever.com/~popular/page/
- The `-r' option is to retrieve recursively, and `-nd' not to
+ The `-r' option is to retrieve recursively, and `-nd' to not
create directories.
+ Note that `--delete-after' deletes files on the local machine. It
+ does not issue the `DELE' command to remote FTP sites, for
+ instance. Also note that when `--delete-after' is specified,
+ `--convert-links' is ignored, so `.orig' files are simply not
+ created in the first place.
+
`-k'
`--convert-links'
Convert the non-relative links to relative ones locally. Only the
useful to access the full remote file list when running a mirror,
or for debugging purposes.
+`-p'
+`--page-requisites'
+ This option causes wget to download all the files that are
+ necessary to properly display a given HTML page. This includes
+ such things as inlined images, sounds, and referenced stylesheets.
+
+ Ordinarily, when downloading a single HTML page, any requisite
+ documents that may be needed to display it properly are not
+ downloaded. Using `-r' together with `-l' can help, but since
+ wget does not ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined
+ documents, one is generally left with "leaf documents" that are
+ missing their requisites.
+
+ For instance, say document `1.html' contains an `<IMG>' tag
+ referencing `1.gif' and an `<A>' tag pointing to external document
+ `2.html'. Say that `2.html' is the same but that its image is
+ `2.gif' and it links to `3.html'. Say this continues up to some
+ arbitrarily high number.
+
+ If one executes the command:
+
+ wget -r -l 2 http://SITE/1.html
+
+ then `1.html', `1.gif', `2.html', `2.gif', and `3.html' will be
+ downloaded. As you can see, `3.html' is without its requisite
+ `3.gif' because wget is simply counting the number of hops (up to
+ 2) away from `1.html' in order to determine where to stop the
+ recursion. However, with this command:
+
+ wget -r -l 2 -p http://SITE/1.html
+
+ all the above files *and* `3.html''s requisite `3.gif' will be
+ downloaded. Similarly,
+
+ wget -r -l 1 -p http://SITE/1.html
+
+ will cause `1.html', `1.gif', `2.html', and `2.gif' to be
+ downloaded. One might think that:
+
+ wget -r -l 0 -p http://SITE/1.html
+
+ would download just `1.html' and `1.gif', but unfortunately this
+ is not the case, because `-l 0' is equivalent to `-l inf' - that
+ is, infinite recursion. To download a single HTML page (or a
+ handful of them, all specified on the commandline or in a `-i' URL
+ input file) and its requisites, simply leave off `-p' and `-l':
+
+ wget -p http://SITE/1.html
+
+ Note that wget will behave as if `-r' had been specified, but only
+ that single page and its requisites will be downloaded. Links
+ from that page to external documents will not be followed.
+ Actually, to download a single page and all its requisites (even
+ if they exist on separate websites), and make sure the lot
+ displays properly locally, this author likes to use a few options
+ in addition to `-p':
+
+ wget -E -H -k -K -nh -p http://SITE/DOCUMENT
+
+ To finish off this topic, it's worth knowing that wget's idea of an
+ external document link is any URL specified in an `<A>' tag, an
+ `<AREA>' tag, or a `<LINK>' tag other than `<LINK
+ REL="stylesheet">'.
+
\1f
File: wget.info, Node: Recursive Accept/Reject Options, Prev: Recursive Retrieval Options, Up: Invoking
`--ignore-tags=LIST'
This is the opposite of the `--follow-tags' option. To skip
certain HTML tags when recursively looking for documents to
- download, specify them in a comma-separated LIST. The author of
- this option likes to use the following command to download a
- single HTML page and all documents necessary to display it
- properly:
+ download, specify them in a comma-separated LIST.
+
+ In the past, the `-G' option was the best bet for downloading a
+ single page and its requisites, using a commandline like:
wget -Ga,area -H -k -K -nh -r http://SITE/DOCUMENT
+ However, the author of this option came across a page with tags
+ like `<LINK REL="home" HREF="/">' and came to the realization that
+ `-G' was not enough. One can't just tell wget to ignore `<LINK>',
+ because then stylesheets will not be downloaded. Now the best bet
+ for downloading a single page and its requisites is the dedicated
+ `--page-requisites' option.
+
`-H'
`--span-hosts'
Enable spanning across hosts when doing recursive retrieving
files; Wget must load all the HTMLs to know where to go at
all--recursive retrieval would make no sense otherwise.
-\1f
-File: wget.info, Node: Directory-Based Limits, Next: FTP Links, Prev: Types of Files, Up: Following Links
-
-Directory-Based Limits
-======================
-
- Regardless of other link-following facilities, it is often useful to
-place the restriction of what files to retrieve based on the directories
-those files are placed in. There can be many reasons for this--the
-home pages may be organized in a reasonable directory structure; or some
-directories may contain useless information, e.g. `/cgi-bin' or `/dev'
-directories.
-
- Wget offers three different options to deal with this requirement.
-Each option description lists a short name, a long name, and the
-equivalent command in `.wgetrc'.
-
-`-I LIST'
-`--include LIST'
-`include_directories = LIST'
- `-I' option accepts a comma-separated list of directories included
- in the retrieval. Any other directories will simply be ignored.
- The directories are absolute paths.
-
- So, if you wish to download from `http://host/people/bozo/'
- following only links to bozo's colleagues in the `/people'
- directory and the bogus scripts in `/cgi-bin', you can specify:
-
- wget -I /people,/cgi-bin http://host/people/bozo/
-
-`-X LIST'
-`--exclude LIST'
-`exclude_directories = LIST'
- `-X' option is exactly the reverse of `-I'--this is a list of
- directories *excluded* from the download. E.g. if you do not want
- Wget to download things from `/cgi-bin' directory, specify `-X
- /cgi-bin' on the command line.
-
- The same as with `-A'/`-R', these two options can be combined to
- get a better fine-tuning of downloading subdirectories. E.g. if
- you want to load all the files from `/pub' hierarchy except for
- `/pub/worthless', specify `-I/pub -X/pub/worthless'.
-
-`-np'
-`--no-parent'
-`no_parent = on'
- The simplest, and often very useful way of limiting directories is
- disallowing retrieval of the links that refer to the hierarchy
- "above" than the beginning directory, i.e. disallowing ascent to
- the parent directory/directories.
-
- The `--no-parent' option (short `-np') is useful in this case.
- Using it guarantees that you will never leave the existing
- hierarchy. Supposing you issue Wget with:
-
- wget -r --no-parent http://somehost/~luzer/my-archive/
-
- You may rest assured that none of the references to
- `/~his-girls-homepage/' or `/~luzer/all-my-mpegs/' will be
- followed. Only the archive you are interested in will be
- downloaded. Essentially, `--no-parent' is similar to
- `-I/~luzer/my-archive', only it handles redirections in a more
- intelligent fashion.
-
-\1f
-File: wget.info, Node: FTP Links, Prev: Directory-Based Limits, Up: Following Links
-
-Following FTP Links
-===================
-
- The rules for FTP are somewhat specific, as it is necessary for them
-to be. FTP links in HTML documents are often included for purposes of
-reference, and it is often inconvenient to download them by default.
-
- To have FTP links followed from HTML documents, you need to specify
-the `--follow-ftp' option. Having done that, FTP links will span hosts
-regardless of `-H' setting. This is logical, as FTP links rarely point
-to the same host where the HTTP server resides. For similar reasons,
-the `-L' options has no effect on such downloads. On the other hand,
-domain acceptance (`-D') and suffix rules (`-A' and `-R') apply
-normally.
-
- Also note that followed links to FTP directories will not be
-retrieved recursively further.
-
-\1f
-File: wget.info, Node: Time-Stamping, Next: Startup File, Prev: Following Links, Up: Top
-
-Time-Stamping
-*************
-
- One of the most important aspects of mirroring information from the
-Internet is updating your archives.
-
- Downloading the whole archive again and again, just to replace a few
-changed files is expensive, both in terms of wasted bandwidth and money,
-and the time to do the update. This is why all the mirroring tools
-offer the option of incremental updating.
-
- Such an updating mechanism means that the remote server is scanned in
-search of "new" files. Only those new files will be downloaded in the
-place of the old ones.
-
- A file is considered new if one of these two conditions are met:
-
- 1. A file of that name does not already exist locally.
-
- 2. A file of that name does exist, but the remote file was modified
- more recently than the local file.
-
- To implement this, the program needs to be aware of the time of last
-modification of both remote and local files. Such information are
-called the "time-stamps".
-
- The time-stamping in GNU Wget is turned on using `--timestamping'
-(`-N') option, or through `timestamping = on' directive in `.wgetrc'.
-With this option, for each file it intends to download, Wget will check
-whether a local file of the same name exists. If it does, and the
-remote file is older, Wget will not download it.
-
- If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
-match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the time-stamps
-say.
-
-* Menu:
-
-* Time-Stamping Usage::
-* HTTP Time-Stamping Internals::
-* FTP Time-Stamping Internals::
-
-\1f
-File: wget.info, Node: Time-Stamping Usage, Next: HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Prev: Time-Stamping, Up: Time-Stamping
-
-Time-Stamping Usage
-===================
-
- The usage of time-stamping is simple. Say you would like to
-download a file so that it keeps its date of modification.
-
- wget -S http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
-
- A simple `ls -l' shows that the time stamp on the local file equals
-the state of the `Last-Modified' header, as returned by the server. As
-you can see, the time-stamping info is preserved locally, even without
-`-N'.
-
- Several days later, you would like Wget to check if the remote file
-has changed, and download it if it has.
-
- wget -N http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/
-
- Wget will ask the server for the last-modified date. If the local
-file is newer, the remote file will not be re-fetched. However, if the
-remote file is more recent, Wget will proceed fetching it normally.
-
- The same goes for FTP. For example:
-
- wget ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/*
-
- `ls' will show that the timestamps are set according to the state on
-the remote server. Reissuing the command with `-N' will make Wget
-re-fetch *only* the files that have been modified.
-
- In both HTTP and FTP retrieval Wget will time-stamp the local file
-correctly (with or without `-N') if it gets the stamps, i.e. gets the
-directory listing for FTP or the `Last-Modified' header for HTTP.
-
- If you wished to mirror the GNU archive every week, you would use the
-following command every week:
-
- wget --timestamping -r ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/
-
-\1f
-File: wget.info, Node: HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Next: FTP Time-Stamping Internals, Prev: Time-Stamping Usage, Up: Time-Stamping
-
-HTTP Time-Stamping Internals
-============================
-
- Time-stamping in HTTP is implemented by checking of the
-`Last-Modified' header. If you wish to retrieve the file `foo.html'
-through HTTP, Wget will check whether `foo.html' exists locally. If it
-doesn't, `foo.html' will be retrieved unconditionally.
-
- If the file does exist locally, Wget will first check its local
-time-stamp (similar to the way `ls -l' checks it), and then send a
-`HEAD' request to the remote server, demanding the information on the
-remote file.
-
- The `Last-Modified' header is examined to find which file was
-modified more recently (which makes it "newer"). If the remote file is
-newer, it will be downloaded; if it is older, Wget will give up.(1)
-
- When `--backup-converted' (`-K') is specified in conjunction with
-`-N', server file `X' is compared to local file `X.orig', if extant,
-rather than being compared to local file `X', which will always differ
-if it's been converted by `--convert-links' (`-k').
-
- Arguably, HTTP time-stamping should be implemented using the
-`If-Modified-Since' request.
-
- ---------- Footnotes ----------
-
- (1) As an additional check, Wget will look at the `Content-Length'
-header, and compare the sizes; if they are not the same, the remote
-file will be downloaded no matter what the time-stamp says.
-
-\1f
-File: wget.info, Node: FTP Time-Stamping Internals, Prev: HTTP Time-Stamping Internals, Up: Time-Stamping
-
-FTP Time-Stamping Internals
-===========================
-
- In theory, FTP time-stamping works much the same as HTTP, only FTP
-has no headers--time-stamps must be received from the directory
-listings.
-
- For each directory files must be retrieved from, Wget will use the
-`LIST' command to get the listing. It will try to analyze the listing,
-assuming that it is a Unix `ls -l' listing, and extract the
-time-stamps. The rest is exactly the same as for HTTP.
-
- Assumption that every directory listing is a Unix-style listing may
-sound extremely constraining, but in practice it is not, as many
-non-Unix FTP servers use the Unixoid listing format because most (all?)
-of the clients understand it. Bear in mind that RFC959 defines no
-standard way to get a file list, let alone the time-stamps. We can
-only hope that a future standard will define this.
-
- Another non-standard solution includes the use of `MDTM' command
-that is supported by some FTP servers (including the popular
-`wu-ftpd'), which returns the exact time of the specified file. Wget
-may support this command in the future.
-
projects / wget / blobdiff