GNU wget is a brilliant tool for downloading. Whether it’s from the web, FTP or elsewhere, wget is a very powerful and useful tool.
Unfortunately, internet connections are often far from completely stable and if you’re downloading something and that download subsequently fails, it can be quite frustrating (especially if it’s a big file).
In the vast majority of cases though, there’s no need to go about deleting the file and restarting the download from scratch. Wget includes a -c switch that you can use to continue a failed download from where you left off.
Say we’re downloading a big file:
$ wget bigfile
And bang - our connection goes dead (you can simulate this by quitting with Ctrl-C if you like). Once we’re back up and running and making sure you’re in the same directory you were during the original download:
$ wget -c bigfile
Provided where you’re downloading from supports it, you should get going from exactly where you left off.
It’s a nice quick tip, but it can be a real time (and sanity) saver when you’ve got a dodgy connection!
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kevin wrote:
I used to use that for some video downloads, but the vids kept on getting corrupted if the dl resumes. ie, there would be considerable gaps in the vids, i suspect at the locations where the resume was triggered. Not sure if it’s an isolated problem (just for me), but it was happening every single time, which drove me to use another download manager for big files…
anyone else encountered this?
or maybe there’s a way to go back x kb when resuming?
# Posted on 10-Sep-07 at 4:31 pm
babakin sergey wrote:
I think better to use:
$ wget -t0 -c bigfile
-t0 - unlimited number of retries
-c - resume getting partially downloaded file
If server not available for some time downloading will be resumed as soon as it become available.
P.S. sorry for my English
# Posted on 11-Sep-07 at 12:39 am
c0dehunter wrote:
Thanks so much for this.
# Posted on 22-Jun-08 at 7:20 pm