wget utility

wget utility is the best option to download files from internet. wget can pretty much handle all complex download situations including large file downloads, recursive downloads, non-interactive downloads, multiple file downloads etc.

1. Download Single File with wget

The following example downloads a single file from internet and stores in the current directory.

$wget http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2

2. Download and Store With a Different File name Using wget -O

$wget -O taglist.zip

http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=7701

3. Continue the Incomplete Download Using wget -c

Restart a download which got stopped in the middle using wget -c option as shown below.

$wget -c http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2

4. Download in the Background Using wget -b

For a huge download, put the download in background using wget option -b as shown below.

$wget -b http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2

5. Download Multiple Files / URLs Using Wget -i

First, store all the download files or URLs in a text file as:

$cat > download-file-list.txt

URL1

URL2

URL3

URL4

Next, give the download-file-list.txt as argument to wget using -i option as shown below.

$wget -i download-file-list.txt

6. Download a Full Website Using wget –mirror

Following is the command line which you want to execute when you want to download a full website and made available for local viewing.

$wget --mirror -p --convert-links -P ./LOCAL-DIR WEBSITE-URL

7. Reject Certain File Types while Downloading Using wget –reject

You have found a website which is useful, but don’t want to download the images you can specify the following.

$wget --reject=gif WEBSITE-TO-BE-DOWNLOADED

8. Quit Downloading When it Exceeds Certain Size Using wget -Q

When you want to stop download when it crosses 5 MB you can use the following wget command line.

$wget -Q5m -i FILE-WHICH-HAS-URLS

9. Download Only Certain File Types Using wget -r -A

You can use this under following situations:

• Download all images from a website
• Download all videos from a website
• Download all PDF files from a website
  

$wget -r -A.pdf http://url-to-webpage-with-pdfs/

10. FTP Download With wget

You can use wget to perform FTP download as shown below.
Anonymous FTP download using Wget

$wget ftp-url