Download files using Wget - Linux command line tool

The Wget is a Linux command line utility to retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. It is a non-interactive command line tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc.

The Wget can handle all most complex download situations including large file downloads, recursive downloads, non-interactive downloads, multiple file downloads etc.

During server management sessions, often I want to use this linux tool. So now I just like to review few download method examples using Wget in different scenarios.

1) Download file to current folder with same name

wget your-download-file-link

2) Download file to current folder with different name using Wget -O

wget -O new-file-name your-download-file-link

3) Download in the Background Using Wget -b

For a huge download, we can make the download as a background action.

wget -b your-download-file-link

4) Download Multiple items Using Wget -i

First we are going to make a text file that contain all URLs for download items using cat command.

cat > new.txt

This awaits input from user, so type the urls and then use CTRL+D to save and exit.

cat > new.txt
url1
url2
url3

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

$ wget -i new.txt

5) Specify Download Speed Using Wget --limit-rate

In some situations, we want to limit the Download speed. So we just want to use --limit-rate option and its value with wget command.

wget --limit-rate=200k your-download-file-link

6) Increase Total Number of Retry Attempts Using Wget --tries

If the size of the file to be downloaded is larger, there is a chance of failures in the download. But default wget retries 20 times to make the download successful.

If needed, we can increase retry attempts using --tries option as shown below.

wget --tries=75 your-download-file-link

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This article was published on June 18, 2015

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