This is wget.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.0 from wget.texi. INFO-DIR-SECTION Net Utilities INFO-DIR-SECTION World Wide Web START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY * Wget: (wget). The non-interactive network downloader. END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY This file documents the the GNU Wget utility for downloading network data. Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being "GNU General Public License" and "GNU Free Documentation License", with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".  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.  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.  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::  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/  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.  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.  File: wget.info, Node: Startup File, Next: Examples, Prev: Time-Stamping, Up: Top Startup File ************ Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent. You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup file--`.wgetrc'. Besides `.wgetrc' is the "main" initialization file, it is convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget reads and interprets the contents of `$HOME/.netrc', if it finds it. You can find `.netrc' format in your system manuals. Wget reads `.wgetrc' upon startup, recognizing a limited set of commands. * Menu: * Wgetrc Location:: Location of various wgetrc files. * Wgetrc Syntax:: Syntax of wgetrc. * Wgetrc Commands:: List of available commands. * Sample Wgetrc:: A wgetrc example.  File: wget.info, Node: Wgetrc Location, Next: Wgetrc Syntax, Prev: Startup File, Up: Startup File Wgetrc Location =============== When initializing, Wget will look for a "global" startup file, `/usr/local/etc/wgetrc' by default (or some prefix other than `/usr/local', if Wget was not installed there) and read commands from there, if it exists. Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable `WGETRC' is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no further attempts will be made. If `WGETRC' is not set, Wget will try to load `$HOME/.wgetrc'. The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones means that in case of collision user's wgetrc _overrides_ the system-wide wgetrc (in `/usr/local/etc/wgetrc' by default). Fascist admins, away!  File: wget.info, Node: Wgetrc Syntax, Next: Wgetrc Commands, Prev: Wgetrc Location, Up: Startup File Wgetrc Syntax ============= The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple: variable = value The "variable" will also be called "command". Valid "values" are different for different commands. The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus `DIr__PrefiX' is the same as `dirprefix'. Empty lines, lines beginning with `#' and lines containing white-space only are discarded. Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in global `wgetrc', you can do it with: reject =  File: wget.info, Node: Wgetrc Commands, Next: Sample Wgetrc, Prev: Wgetrc Syntax, Up: Startup File Wgetrc Commands =============== The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed after the `='. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using `on' and `off' or `1' and `0'. A fancier kind of Boolean allowed in some cases is the "lockable" Boolean, which may be set to `on', `off', `always', or `never'. If an option is set to `always' or `never', that value will be locked in for the duration of the wget invocation - commandline options will not override. Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. ADDRESS values can be hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. N can be any positive integer, or `inf' for infinity, where appropriate. STRING values can be any non-empty string. Most of these commands have commandline equivalents (*note Invoking::), though some of the more obscure or rarely used ones do not. accept/reject = STRING Same as `-A'/`-R' (*note Types of Files::). add_hostdir = on/off Enable/disable host-prefixed file names. `-nH' disables it. continue = on/off Enable/disable continuation of the retrieval - the same as `-c' (which enables it). background = on/off Enable/disable going to background - the same as `-b' (which enables it). backup_converted = on/off Enable/disable saving pre-converted files with the suffix `.orig' - the same as `-K' (which enables it). base = STRING Consider relative URLs in URL input files forced to be interpreted as HTML as being relative to STRING - the same as `-B'. bind_address = ADDRESS Bind to ADDRESS, like the `--bind-address' option. cache = on/off When set to off, disallow server-caching. See the `-C' option. convert links = on/off Convert non-relative links locally. The same as `-k'. cut_dirs = N Ignore N remote directory components. debug = on/off Debug mode, same as `-d'. delete_after = on/off Delete after download - the same as `--delete-after'. dir_prefix = STRING Top of directory tree - the same as `-P'. dirstruct = on/off Turning dirstruct on or off - the same as `-x' or `-nd', respectively. domains = STRING Same as `-D' (*note Domain Acceptance::). dot_bytes = N Specify the number of bytes "contained" in a dot, as seen throughout the retrieval (1024 by default). You can postfix the value with `k' or `m', representing kilobytes and megabytes, respectively. With dot settings you can tailor the dot retrieval to suit your needs, or you can use the predefined "styles" (*note Download Options::). dots_in_line = N Specify the number of dots that will be printed in each line throughout the retrieval (50 by default). dot_spacing = N Specify the number of dots in a single cluster (10 by default). dot_style = STRING Specify the dot retrieval "style", as with `--dot-style'. exclude_directories = STRING Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to exclude from download - the same as `-X' (*note Directory-Based Limits::). exclude_domains = STRING Same as `--exclude-domains' (*note Domain Acceptance::). follow_ftp = on/off Follow FTP links from HTML documents - the same as `-f'. follow_tags = STRING Only follow certain HTML tags when doing a recursive retrieval, just like `--follow-tags'. force_html = on/off If set to on, force the input filename to be regarded as an HTML document - the same as `-F'. ftp_proxy = STRING Use STRING as FTP proxy, instead of the one specified in environment. glob = on/off Turn globbing on/off - the same as `-g'. header = STRING Define an additional header, like `--header'. html_extension = on/off Add a `.html' extension to `text/html' files without it, like `-E'. http_passwd = STRING Set HTTP password. http_proxy = STRING Use STRING as HTTP proxy, instead of the one specified in environment. http_user = STRING Set HTTP user to STRING. ignore_length = on/off When set to on, ignore `Content-Length' header; the same as `--ignore-length'. ignore_tags = STRING Ignore certain HTML tags when doing a recursive retrieval, just like `-G' / `--ignore-tags'. include_directories = STRING Specify a comma-separated list of directories you wish to follow when downloading - the same as `-I'. input = STRING Read the URLs from STRING, like `-i'. kill_longer = on/off Consider data longer than specified in content-length header as invalid (and retry getting it). The default behaviour is to save as much data as there is, provided there is more than or equal to the value in `Content-Length'. logfile = STRING Set logfile - the same as `-o'. login = STRING Your user name on the remote machine, for FTP. Defaults to `anonymous'. mirror = on/off Turn mirroring on/off. The same as `-m'. netrc = on/off Turn reading netrc on or off. noclobber = on/off Same as `-nc'. no_parent = on/off Disallow retrieving outside the directory hierarchy, like `--no-parent' (*note Directory-Based Limits::). no_proxy = STRING Use STRING as the comma-separated list of domains to avoid in proxy loading, instead of the one specified in environment. output_document = STRING Set the output filename - the same as `-O'. page_requisites = on/off Download all ancillary documents necessary for a single HTML page to display properly - the same as `-p'. passive_ftp = on/off/always/never Set passive FTP - the same as `--passive-ftp'. Some scripts and `.pm' (Perl module) files download files using `wget --passive-ftp'. If your firewall does not allow this, you can set `passive_ftp = never' to override the commandline. passwd = STRING Set your FTP password to PASSWORD. Without this setting, the password defaults to `username@hostname.domainname'. proxy_user = STRING Set proxy authentication user name to STRING, like `--proxy-user'. proxy_passwd = STRING Set proxy authentication password to STRING, like `--proxy-passwd'. referer = STRING Set HTTP `Referer:' header just like `--referer'. (Note it was the folks who wrote the HTTP spec who got the spelling of "referrer" wrong.) quiet = on/off Quiet mode - the same as `-q'. quota = QUOTA Specify the download quota, which is useful to put in the global `wgetrc'. When download quota is specified, Wget will stop retrieving after the download sum has become greater than quota. The quota can be specified in bytes (default), kbytes `k' appended) or mbytes (`m' appended). Thus `quota = 5m' will set the quota to 5 mbytes. Note that the user's startup file overrides system settings. reclevel = N Recursion level - the same as `-l'. recursive = on/off Recursive on/off - the same as `-r'. relative_only = on/off Follow only relative links - the same as `-L' (*note Relative Links::). remove_listing = on/off If set to on, remove FTP listings downloaded by Wget. Setting it to off is the same as `-nr'. retr_symlinks = on/off When set to on, retrieve symbolic links as if they were plain files; the same as `--retr-symlinks'. robots = on/off Use (or not) `/robots.txt' file (*note Robots::). Be sure to know what you are doing before changing the default (which is `on'). server_response = on/off Choose whether or not to print the HTTP and FTP server responses - the same as `-S'. simple_host_check = on/off Same as `-nh' (*note Host Checking::). span_hosts = on/off Same as `-H'. timeout = N Set timeout value - the same as `-T'. timestamping = on/off Turn timestamping on/off. The same as `-N' (*note Time-Stamping::). tries = N Set number of retries per URL - the same as `-t'. use_proxy = on/off Turn proxy support on/off. The same as `-Y'. verbose = on/off Turn verbose on/off - the same as `-v'/`-nv'. wait = N Wait N seconds between retrievals - the same as `-w'. waitretry = N Wait up to N seconds between retries of failed retrievals only - the same as `--waitretry'. Note that this is turned on by default in the global `wgetrc'.  File: wget.info, Node: Sample Wgetrc, Prev: Wgetrc Commands, Up: Startup File Sample Wgetrc ============= This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution. It is divided in two section--one for global usage (suitable for global startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for `$HOME/.wgetrc'). Be careful about the things you change. Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have any effect, you must remove the `#' character at the beginning of its line.  File: wget.info, Node: Examples, Next: Various, Prev: Startup File, Up: Top Examples ******** The examples are classified into three sections, because of clarity. The first section is a tutorial for beginners. The second section explains some of the more complex program features. The third section contains advice for mirror administrators, as well as even more complex features (that some would call perverted). * Menu: * Simple Usage:: Simple, basic usage of the program. * Advanced Usage:: Advanced techniques of usage. * Guru Usage:: Mirroring and the hairy stuff.  File: wget.info, Node: Simple Usage, Next: Advanced Usage, Prev: Examples, Up: Examples Simple Usage ============ * Say you want to download a URL. Just type: wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ The response will be something like: --13:30:45-- http://fly.srk.fer.hr:80/en/ => `index.html' Connecting to fly.srk.fer.hr:80... connected! HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 4,694 [text/html] 0K -> .... [100%] 13:30:46 (23.75 KB/s) - `index.html' saved [4694/4694] * But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy? The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved, more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to insure that the whole file will arrive safely: wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg * Now let's leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress to log file `log'. It is tiring to type `--tries', so we shall use `-t'. wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg & The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the background. To unlimit the number of retries, use `-t inf'. * The usage of FTP is as simple. Wget will take care of login and password. $ wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg --10:08:47-- ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr:21/welcome.msg => `welcome.msg' Connecting to gnjilux.srk.fer.hr:21... connected! Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in! ==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD not needed. ==> PORT ... done. ==> RETR welcome.msg ... done. Length: 1,340 (unauthoritative) 0K -> . [100%] 10:08:48 (1.28 MB/s) - `welcome.msg' saved [1340] * If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing, parse it and convert it to HTML. Try: wget ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/ lynx index.html  File: wget.info, Node: Advanced Usage, Next: Guru Usage, Prev: Simple Usage, Up: Examples Advanced Usage ============== * You would like to read the list of URLs from a file? Not a problem with that: wget -i file If you specify `-' as file name, the URLs will be read from standard input. * Create a mirror image of GNU WWW site (with the same directory structure the original has) with only one try per document, saving the log of the activities to `gnulog': wget -r -t1 http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/ -o gnulog * Retrieve the first layer of yahoo links: wget -r -l1 http://www.yahoo.com/ * Retrieve the index.html of `www.lycos.com', showing the original server headers: wget -S http://www.lycos.com/ * Save the server headers with the file: wget -s http://www.lycos.com/ more index.html * Retrieve the first two levels of `wuarchive.wustl.edu', saving them to /tmp. wget -P/tmp -l2 ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ * You want to download all the GIFs from an HTTP directory. `wget http://host/dir/*.gif' doesn't work, since HTTP retrieval does not support globbing. In that case, use: wget -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gif http://host/dir/ It is a bit of a kludge, but it works. `-r -l1' means to retrieve recursively (*note Recursive Retrieval::), with maximum depth of 1. `--no-parent' means that references to the parent directory are ignored (*note Directory-Based Limits::), and `-A.gif' means to download only the GIF files. `-A "*.gif"' would have worked too. * Suppose you were in the middle of downloading, when Wget was interrupted. Now you do not want to clobber the files already present. It would be: wget -nc -r http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/ * If you want to encode your own username and password to HTTP or FTP, use the appropriate URL syntax (*note URL Format::). wget ftp://hniksic:mypassword@jagor.srce.hr/.emacs * If you do not like the default retrieval visualization (1K dots with 10 dots per cluster and 50 dots per line), you can customize it through dot settings (*note Wgetrc Commands::). For example, many people like the "binary" style of retrieval, with 8K dots and 512K lines: wget --dot-style=binary ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/README You can experiment with other styles, like: wget --dot-style=mega ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/xemacs-20.4/xemacs-20.4.tar.gz wget --dot-style=micro http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ To make these settings permanent, put them in your `.wgetrc', as described before (*note Sample Wgetrc::).  File: wget.info, Node: Guru Usage, Prev: Advanced Usage, Up: Examples Guru Usage ========== * If you wish Wget to keep a mirror of a page (or FTP subdirectories), use `--mirror' (`-m'), which is the shorthand for `-r -N'. You can put Wget in the crontab file asking it to recheck a site each Sunday: crontab 0 0 * * 0 wget --mirror ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/ -o /home/me/weeklog * You may wish to do the same with someone's home page. But you do not want to download all those images--you're only interested in HTML. wget --mirror -A.html http://www.w3.org/ * But what about mirroring the hosts networkologically close to you? It seems so awfully slow because of all that DNS resolving. Just use `-D' (*note Domain Acceptance::). wget -rN -Dsrce.hr http://www.srce.hr/ Now Wget will correctly find out that `regoc.srce.hr' is the same as `www.srce.hr', but will not even take into consideration the link to `www.mit.edu'. * You have a presentation and would like the dumb absolute links to be converted to relative? Use `-k': wget -k -r URL * You would like the output documents to go to standard output instead of to files? OK, but Wget will automatically shut up (turn on `--quiet') to prevent mixing of Wget output and the retrieved documents. wget -O - http://jagor.srce.hr/ http://www.srce.hr/ You can also combine the two options and make weird pipelines to retrieve the documents from remote hotlists: wget -O - http://cool.list.com/ | wget --force-html -i -  File: wget.info, Node: Various, Next: Appendices, Prev: Examples, Up: Top Various ******* This chapter contains all the stuff that could not fit anywhere else. * Menu: * Proxies:: Support for proxy servers * Distribution:: Getting the latest version. * Mailing List:: Wget mailing list for announcements and discussion. * Reporting Bugs:: How and where to report bugs. * Portability:: The systems Wget works on. * Signals:: Signal-handling performed by Wget.  File: wget.info, Node: Proxies, Next: Distribution, Prev: Various, Up: Various Proxies ======= "Proxies" are special-purpose HTTP servers designed to transfer data from remote servers to local clients. One typical use of proxies is lightening network load for users behind a slow connection. This is achieved by channeling all HTTP and FTP requests through the proxy which caches the transferred data. When a cached resource is requested again, proxy will return the data from cache. Another use for proxies is for companies that separate (for security reasons) their internal networks from the rest of Internet. In order to obtain information from the Web, their users connect and retrieve remote data using an authorized proxy. Wget supports proxies for both HTTP and FTP retrievals. The standard way to specify proxy location, which Wget recognizes, is using the following environment variables: `http_proxy' This variable should contain the URL of the proxy for HTTP connections. `ftp_proxy' This variable should contain the URL of the proxy for HTTP connections. It is quite common that HTTP_PROXY and FTP_PROXY are set to the same URL. `no_proxy' This variable should contain a comma-separated list of domain extensions proxy should _not_ be used for. For instance, if the value of `no_proxy' is `.mit.edu', proxy will not be used to retrieve documents from MIT. In addition to the environment variables, proxy location and settings may be specified from within Wget itself. `-Y on/off' `--proxy=on/off' `proxy = on/off' This option may be used to turn the proxy support on or off. Proxy support is on by default, provided that the appropriate environment variables are set. `http_proxy = URL' `ftp_proxy = URL' `no_proxy = STRING' These startup file variables allow you to override the proxy settings specified by the environment. Some proxy servers require authorization to enable you to use them. The authorization consists of "username" and "password", which must be sent by Wget. As with HTTP authorization, several authentication schemes exist. For proxy authorization only the `Basic' authentication scheme is currently implemented. You may specify your username and password either through the proxy URL or through the command-line options. Assuming that the company's proxy is located at `proxy.srce.hr' at port 8001, a proxy URL location containing authorization data might look like this: http://hniksic:mypassword@proxy.company.com:8001/ Alternatively, you may use the `proxy-user' and `proxy-password' options, and the equivalent `.wgetrc' settings `proxy_user' and `proxy_passwd' to set the proxy username and password.  File: wget.info, Node: Distribution, Next: Mailing List, Prev: Proxies, Up: Various Distribution ============ Like all GNU utilities, the latest version of Wget can be found at the master GNU archive site prep.ai.mit.edu, and its mirrors. For example, Wget 1.5.3+dev can be found at  File: wget.info, Node: Mailing List, Next: Reporting Bugs, Prev: Distribution, Up: Various Mailing List ============ Wget has its own mailing list at , thanks to Karsten Thygesen. The mailing list is for discussion of Wget features and web, reporting Wget bugs (those that you think may be of interest to the public) and mailing announcements. You are welcome to subscribe. The more people on the list, the better! To subscribe, send mail to . the magic word `subscribe' in the subject line. Unsubscribe by mailing to . The mailing list is archived at .  File: wget.info, Node: Reporting Bugs, Next: Portability, Prev: Mailing List, Up: Various Reporting Bugs ============== You are welcome to send bug reports about GNU Wget to . The bugs that you think are of the interest to the public (i.e. more people should be informed about them) can be Cc-ed to the mailing list at . Before actually submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few simple guidelines. 1. Please try to ascertain that the behaviour you see really is a bug. If Wget crashes, it's a bug. If Wget does not behave as documented, it's a bug. If things work strange, but you are not sure about the way they are supposed to work, it might well be a bug. 2. Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as possible. E.g. if Wget crashes on `wget -rLl0 -t5 -Y0 http://yoyodyne.com -o /tmp/log', you should try to see if it will crash with a simpler set of options. Also, while I will probably be interested to know the contents of your `.wgetrc' file, just dumping it into the debug message is probably a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see if the bug repeats with `.wgetrc' moved out of the way. Only if it turns out that `.wgetrc' settings affect the bug, should you mail me the relevant parts of the file. 3. Please start Wget with `-d' option and send the log (or the relevant parts of it). If Wget was compiled without debug support, recompile it. It is _much_ easier to trace bugs with debug support on. 4. If Wget has crashed, try to run it in a debugger, e.g. `gdb `which wget` core' and type `where' to get the backtrace. 5. Find where the bug is, fix it and send me the patches. :-)  File: wget.info, Node: Portability, Next: Signals, Prev: Reporting Bugs, Up: Various Portability =========== Since Wget uses GNU Autoconf for building and configuring, and avoids using "special" ultra-mega-cool features of any particular Unix, it should compile (and work) on all common Unix flavors. Various Wget versions have been compiled and tested under many kinds of Unix systems, including Solaris, Linux, SunOS, OSF (aka Digital Unix), Ultrix, *BSD, IRIX, and others; refer to the file `MACHINES' in the distribution directory for a comprehensive list. If you compile it on an architecture not listed there, please let me know so I can update it. Wget should also compile on the other Unix systems, not listed in `MACHINES'. If it doesn't, please let me know. Thanks to kind contributors, this version of Wget compiles and works on Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms. It has been compiled successfully using MS Visual C++ 4.0, Watcom, and Borland C compilers, with Winsock as networking software. Naturally, it is crippled of some features available on Unix, but it should work as a substitute for people stuck with Windows. Note that the Windows port is *neither tested nor maintained* by me--all questions and problems should be reported to Wget mailing list at where the maintainers will look at them.  File: wget.info, Node: Signals, Prev: Portability, Up: Various Signals ======= Since the purpose of Wget is background work, it catches the hangup signal (`SIGHUP') and ignores it. If the output was on standard output, it will be redirected to a file named `wget-log'. Otherwise, `SIGHUP' is ignored. This is convenient when you wish to redirect the output of Wget after having started it. $ wget http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/gnus.tar.gz & $ kill -HUP %% # Redirect the output to wget-log Other than that, Wget will not try to interfere with signals in any way. `C-c', `kill -TERM' and `kill -KILL' should kill it alike.  File: wget.info, Node: Appendices, Next: Copying, Prev: Various, Up: Top Appendices ********** This chapter contains some references I consider useful. * Menu: * Robots:: Wget as a WWW robot. * Security Considerations:: Security with Wget. * Contributors:: People who helped.  File: wget.info, Node: Robots, Next: Security Considerations, Prev: Appendices, Up: Appendices Robots ====== It is extremely easy to make Wget wander aimlessly around a web site, sucking all the available data in progress. `wget -r SITE', and you're set. Great? Not for the server admin. While Wget is retrieving static pages, there's not much of a problem. But for Wget, there is no real difference between the smallest static page and the hardest, most demanding CGI or dynamic page. For instance, a site I know has a section handled by an, uh, bitchin' CGI script that converts all the Info files to HTML. The script can and does bring the machine to its knees without providing anything useful to the downloader. For such and similar cases various robot exclusion schemes have been devised as a means for the server administrators and document authors to protect chosen portions of their sites from the wandering of robots. The more popular mechanism is the "Robots Exclusion Standard" written by Martijn Koster et al. in 1994. It is specified by placing a file named `/robots.txt' in the server root, which the robots are supposed to download and parse. Wget supports this specification. Norobots support is turned on only when retrieving recursively, and _never_ for the first page. Thus, you may issue: wget -r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ First the index of fly.srk.fer.hr will be downloaded. If Wget finds anything worth downloading on the same host, only _then_ will it load the robots, and decide whether or not to load the links after all. `/robots.txt' is loaded only once per host. Note that the exlusion standard discussed here has undergone some revisions. However, but Wget supports only the first version of RES, the one written by Martijn Koster in 1994, available at . A later version exists in the form of an internet draft titled "A Method for Web Robots Control", which expired on June 4, 1997. I am not aware if it ever made to an RFC. The text of the draft is available at . Wget does not yet support the new directives specified by this draft, but we plan to add them. This manual no longer includes the text of the old standard. The second, less known mechanism, enables the author of an individual document to specify whether they want the links from the file to be followed by a robot. This is achieved using the `META' tag, like this: This is explained in some detail at . Unfortunately, Wget does not support this method of robot exclusion yet, but it will be implemented in the next release.  File: wget.info, Node: Security Considerations, Next: Contributors, Prev: Robots, Up: Appendices Security Considerations ======================= When using Wget, you must be aware that it sends unencrypted passwords through the network, which may present a security problem. Here are the main issues, and some solutions. 1. The passwords on the command line are visible using `ps'. If this is a problem, avoid putting passwords from the command line--e.g. you can use `.netrc' for this. 2. Using the insecure "basic" authentication scheme, unencrypted passwords are transmitted through the network routers and gateways. 3. The FTP passwords are also in no way encrypted. There is no good solution for this at the moment. 4. Although the "normal" output of Wget tries to hide the passwords, debugging logs show them, in all forms. This problem is avoided by being careful when you send debug logs (yes, even when you send them to me).  File: wget.info, Node: Contributors, Prev: Security Considerations, Up: Appendices Contributors ============ GNU Wget was written by Hrvoje Niksic . However, its development could never have gone as far as it has, were it not for the help of many people, either with bug reports, feature proposals, patches, or letters saying "Thanks!". Special thanks goes to the following people (no particular order): * Karsten Thygesen--donated system resources such as the mailing list, web space, and FTP space, along with a lot of time to make these actually work. * Shawn McHorse--bug reports and patches. * Kaveh R. Ghazi--on-the-fly `ansi2knr'-ization. Lots of portability fixes. * Gordon Matzigkeit--`.netrc' support. * Zlatko Calusic, Tomislav Vujec and Drazen Kacar--feature suggestions and "philosophical" discussions. * Darko Budor--initial port to Windows. * Antonio Rosella--help and suggestions, plus the Italian translation. * Tomislav Petrovic, Mario Mikocevic--many bug reports and suggestions. * Francois Pinard--many thorough bug reports and discussions. * Karl Eichwalder--lots of help with internationalization and other things. * Junio Hamano--donated support for Opie and HTTP `Digest' authentication. * Brian Gough--a generous donation. The following people have provided patches, bug/build reports, useful suggestions, beta testing services, fan mail and all the other things that make maintenance so much fun: Tim Adam, Adrian Aichner, Martin Baehr, Dieter Baron, Roger Beeman and the Gurus at Cisco, Dan Berger, Mark Boyns, John Burden, Wanderlei Cavassin, Gilles Cedoc, Tim Charron, Noel Cragg, Kristijan Conkas, John Daily, Andrew Davison, Andrew Deryabin, Ulrich Drepper, Marc Duponcheel, Damir Dzeko, Aleksandar Erkalovic, Andy Eskilsson, Masashi Fujita, Howard Gayle, Marcel Gerrits, Hans Grobler, Mathieu Guillaume, Dan Harkless, Heiko Herold, Karl Heuer, HIROSE Masaaki, Gregor Hoffleit, Erik Magnus Hulthen, Richard Huveneers, Simon Josefsson, Mario Juric, Const Kaplinsky, Goran Kezunovic, Robert Kleine, Fila Kolodny, Alexander Kourakos, Martin Kraemer, Simos KSenitellis, Hrvoje Lacko, Daniel S. Lewart, Dave Love, Alexander V. Lukyanov, Jordan Mendelson, Lin Zhe Min, Simon Munton, Charlie Negyesi, R. K. Owen, Andrew Pollock, Steve Pothier, Jan Prikryl, Marin Purgar, Keith Refson, Tyler Riddle, Tobias Ringstrom, Juan Jose Rodrigues, Edward J. Sabol, Heinz Salzmann, Robert Schmidt, Andreas Schwab, Toomas Soome, Tage Stabell-Kulo, Sven Sternberger, Markus Strasser, Szakacsits Szabolcs, Mike Thomas, Russell Vincent, Charles G Waldman, Douglas E. Wegscheid, Jasmin Zainul, Bojan Zdrnja, Kristijan Zimmer. Apologies to all who I accidentally left out, and many thanks to all the subscribers of the Wget mailing list.  File: wget.info, Node: Copying, Next: Concept Index, Prev: Appendices, Up: Top Copying ******* Wget is "free software", where "free" refers to liberty, not price. The exact legal distribution terms follow below, but in short, it means that you have the right (freedom) to run and change and copy Wget, and even--if you want--charge money for any of those things. The sole restriction is that you have to grant your recipients the same rights. This method of licensing software is also known as "open-source", because it requires that the recipients always receive a program's source code along with the program. More specifically: This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. In addition to this, this manual is free in the same sense: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being "GNU General Public License" and "GNU Free Documentation License", with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". The full texts of the GNU General Public License and of the GNU Free Documentation License are available below. * Menu: * GNU General Public License:: * GNU Free Documentation License::