Working with Wget command to download a single file or to download files from a ftp with a username and password

Wget stands for World Wide Web and get.

Usually Wget is used to download a file from a http server (or https), and even ftp servers.
Wget can also be used to download an entire directory recursively.

In this post, I will show you 5 ways for using wget

1- Using Wget to download a single file

To download a single file, simply write wget followed by the url, for this example, I will download a test file from thinkbroadband.com

Below, you will see the file being downloaded

Saving to: 100MB.zip : This is the filename that is being saved on your server/computer
34%:  Percentage of the completion of the file being downloaded
36,639,898 : Number of bytes downloaded so far
5.90M/s : Current download speed
eta 13s : The remaining estimation time left to complete the download

Once the download is completed, you will see something that look like this:

In the last line, you will see:
2012-07-23 23:29:16 : the date the file was completely downloaded
(4.33 MB/s) : Average download speed for the entire download
100MB.zip : the filename of the downloaded file

2- Using Wget to resume a single file (-c option)

If you were downloading a file, and the download was interrupted whether you had to restart your computer, or internet disconnected or any other reason, you can use wget command with -c option to resume it:

Notice the ++++ in the download bar, this means that this portion of the file was already downloaded, the ======= is the new portion being downloaded.

3- Using Wget to download in the background (-b option)

If you want to download a file while doing other stuff in the command line, you can use the -b option, for example:

This will start the download in the background while giving back the shell command to you to allow you to write other commands.

To check the status of the download, simply enter the following command:

and you will see the download status, for example:

4- Using Wget to download from a FTP

For this example, I will download a file from the mozilla ft:p

5- Using Wget to recursively download a directory from a FTP with a username and password

To recursively download all the files from a ftp with a username and password, use the following wget command:

username = test
password = test
host = ftp.secureftp-test.com
port=21
directory to download = subdir1

Installing Wget (on CentOS 6.2)

If you get the following message while using wget:

This means that your Wget is not installed.

To install wget, run the below command:

Happy WGETting 🙂