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
retrying.
`-O FILE'
`--output-document=FILE'
The documents will not be written to the appropriate files, but
all will be concatenated together and written to FILE. If FILE
already exists, it will be overwritten. If the FILE is `-', the
documents will be written to standard output. Including this
option automatically sets the number of tries to 1.
`-nc'
`--no-clobber'
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'
Continue getting a partially-downloaded file. This is useful when
you want to finish up a download started by a previous instance of
Wget, or by another program. For instance:
wget -c ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/ls-lR.Z
If there is a file named `ls-lR.Z' in the current directory, Wget
will assume that it is the first portion of the remote file, and
will ask the server to continue the retrieval from an offset equal
to the length of the local file.
Note that you don't need to specify this option if you just want
the current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file should
the connection be lost midway through. This is the default
behavior. `-c' only affects resumption of downloads started
_prior_ to this invocation of Wget, and whose local files are
still sitting around.
Without `-c', the previous example would just download the remote
file to `ls-lR.Z.1', leaving the truncated `ls-lR.Z' file alone.
Beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use `-c' on a non-empty file, and
it turns out that the server does not support continued
downloading, Wget will refuse to start the download from scratch,
which would effectively ruin existing contents. If you really
want the download to start from scratch, remove the file.
Also beginning with Wget 1.7, if you use `-c' on a file which is of
equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to download
the file and print an explanatory message. The same happens when
the file is smaller on the server than locally (presumably because
it was changed on the server since your last download
attempt)--because "continuing" is not meaningful, no download
occurs.
On the other side of the coin, while using `-c', any file that's
bigger on the server than locally will be considered an incomplete
download and only `(length(remote) - length(local))' bytes will be
downloaded and tacked onto the end of the local file. This
behavior can be desirable in certain cases--for instance, you can
use `wget -c' to download just the new portion that's been
appended to a data collection or log file.
However, if the file is bigger on the server because it's been
_changed_, as opposed to just _appended_ to, you'll end up with a
garbled file. Wget has no way of verifying that the local file is
really a valid prefix of the remote file. You need to be
especially careful of this when using `-c' in conjunction with
`-r', since every file will be considered as an "incomplete
download" candidate.
Another instance where you'll get a garbled file if you try to use
`-c' is if you have a lame HTTP proxy that inserts a "transfer
interrupted" string into the local file. In the future a
"rollback" option may be added to deal with this case.
Note that `-c' only works with FTP servers and with HTTP servers
that support the `Range' header.
`--progress=TYPE'
Select the type of the progress indicator you wish to use. Legal
indicators are "dot" and "bar".
The "dot" indicator is used by default. It traces the retrieval by
printing dots on the screen, each dot representing a fixed amount
of downloaded data.
When using the dotted retrieval, you may also set the "style" by
specifying the type as `dot:STYLE'. Different styles assign
different meaning to one dot. With the `default' style each dot
represents 1K, there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a
line. The `binary' style has a more "computer"-like
orientation--8K dots, 16-dots clusters and 48 dots per line (which
makes for 384K lines). The `mega' style is suitable for
downloading very large files--each dot represents 64K retrieved,
there are eight dots in a cluster, and 48 dots on each line (so
each line contains 3M).
Specifying `--progress=bar' will draw a nice ASCII progress bar
graphics (a.k.a "thermometer" display) to indicate retrieval. If
the output is not a TTY, this option will be ignored, and Wget
will revert to the dot indicator. If you want to force the bar
indicator, use `--progress=bar:force'.
`-N'
`--timestamping'
Turn on time-stamping. Note:Time-Stamping, for details.
`-S'
`--server-response'
Print the headers sent by HTTP servers and responses sent by FTP
servers.
`--spider'
When invoked with this option, Wget will behave as a Web "spider",
which means that it will not download the pages, just check that
they are there. You can use it to check your bookmarks, e.g. with:
wget --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
This feature needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
functionality of real WWW spiders.
`-T seconds'
`--timeout=SECONDS'
Set the read timeout to SECONDS seconds. Whenever a network read
is issued, the file descriptor is checked for a timeout, which
could otherwise leave a pending connection (uninterrupted read).
The default timeout is 900 seconds (fifteen minutes). Setting
timeout to 0 will disable checking for timeouts.
Please do not lower the default timeout value with this option
unless you know what you are doing.
`-w SECONDS'
`--wait=SECONDS'
Wait the specified number of seconds between the retrievals. Use
of this option is recommended, as it lightens the server load by
making the requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the
time can be specified in minutes using the `m' suffix, in hours
using `h' suffix, or in days using `d' suffix.
Specifying a large value for this option is useful if the network
or the destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough
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.
`--random-wait'
Some web sites may perform log analysis to identify retrieval
programs such as Wget by looking for statistically significant
similarities in the time between requests. This option causes the
time between requests to vary between 0 and 2 * WAIT seconds,
where WAIT was specified using the `-w' or `--wait' options, in
order to mask Wget's presence from such analysis.
A recent article in a publication devoted to development on a
popular consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis
on the fly. Its author suggested blocking at the class C address
level to ensure automated retrieval programs were blocked despite
changing DHCP-supplied addresses.
The `--random-wait' option was inspired by this ill-advised
recommendation to block many unrelated users from a web site due
to the actions of one.
`-Y on/off'
`--proxy=on/off'
Turn proxy support on or off. The proxy is on by default if the
appropriate environmental variable is defined.
`-Q QUOTA'
`--quota=QUOTA'
Specify download quota for automatic retrievals. The value can be
specified in bytes (default), kilobytes (with `k' suffix), or
megabytes (with `m' suffix).
Note that quota will never affect downloading a single file. So
if you specify `wget -Q10k ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ls-lR.gz',
all of the `ls-lR.gz' will be downloaded. The same goes even when
several URLs are specified on the command-line. However, quota is
respected when retrieving either recursively, or from an input
file. Thus you may safely type `wget -Q2m -i sites'--download
will be aborted when the quota is exceeded.
Setting quota to 0 or to `inf' unlimits the download quota.