Once you know how to change default settings of Wget through command line arguments, you may wish to make some of those settings permanent. You can do that in a convenient way by creating the Wget startup file---`.wgetrc'.
Besides `.wgetrc' is the "main" initialization file, it is convenient to have a special facility for storing passwords. Thus Wget reads and interprets the contents of `$HOME/.netrc', if it finds it. You can find `.netrc' format in your system manuals.
Wget reads `.wgetrc' upon startup, recognizing a limited set of commands.
When initializing, Wget will look for a global startup file, `/usr/local/etc/wgetrc' by default (or some prefix other than `/usr/local', if Wget was not installed there) and read commands from there, if it exists.
Then it will look for the user's file. If the environmental variable
WGETRC is set, Wget will try to load that file. Failing that, no
further attempts will be made.
If WGETRC is not set, Wget will try to load `$HOME/.wgetrc'.
The fact that user's settings are loaded after the system-wide ones means that in case of collision user's wgetrc overrides the system-wide wgetrc (in `/usr/local/etc/wgetrc' by default). Fascist admins, away!
The syntax of a wgetrc command is simple:
variable = value
The variable will also be called command. Valid values are different for different commands.
The commands are case-insensitive and underscore-insensitive. Thus `DIr__PrefiX' is the same as `dirprefix'. Empty lines, lines beginning with `#' and lines containing white-space only are discarded.
Commands that expect a comma-separated list will clear the list on an empty command. So, if you wish to reset the rejection list specified in global `wgetrc', you can do it with:
reject =
The complete set of commands is listed below. Legal values are listed after the `='. Simple Boolean values can be set or unset using `on' and `off' or `1' and `0'. A fancier kind of Boolean allowed in some cases is the lockable Boolean, which may be set to `on', `off', `always', or `never'. If an option is set to `always' or `never', that value will be locked in for the duration of the Wget invocation--commandline options will not override.
Some commands take pseudo-arbitrary values. address values can be hostnames or dotted-quad IP addresses. n can be any positive integer, or `inf' for infinity, where appropriate. string values can be any non-empty string.
Most of these commands have commandline equivalents (see section Invoking), though some of the more obscure or rarely used ones do not.
Content-Length header; the same as
`--ignore-length'.
Content-Length.
This is the sample initialization file, as given in the distribution. It is divided in two section--one for global usage (suitable for global startup file), and one for local usage (suitable for `$HOME/.wgetrc'). Be careful about the things you change.
Note that almost all the lines are commented out. For a command to have any effect, you must remove the `#' character at the beginning of its line.
### ### Sample Wget initialization file .wgetrc ### ## You can use this file to change the default behaviour of wget or to ## avoid having to type many many command-line options. This file does ## not contain a comprehensive list of commands -- look at the manual ## to find out what you can put into this file. ## ## Wget initialization file can reside in /usr/local/etc/wgetrc ## (global, for all users) or $HOME/.wgetrc (for a single user). ## ## To use the settings in this file, you will have to uncomment them, ## as well as change them, in most cases, as the values on the ## commented-out lines are the default values (e.g. "off"). ## ## Global settings (useful for setting up in /usr/local/etc/wgetrc). ## Think well before you change them, since they may reduce wget's ## functionality, and make it behave contrary to the documentation: ## # You can set retrieve quota for beginners by specifying a value # optionally followed by 'K' (kilobytes) or 'M' (megabytes). The # default quota is unlimited. #quota = inf # You can lower (or raise) the default number of retries when # downloading a file (default is 20). #tries = 20 # Lowering the maximum depth of the recursive retrieval is handy to # prevent newbies from going too "deep" when they unwittingly start # the recursive retrieval. The default is 5. #reclevel = 5 # Many sites are behind firewalls that do not allow initiation of # connections from the outside. On these sites you have to use the # `passive' feature of FTP. If you are behind such a firewall, you # can turn this on to make Wget use passive FTP by default. #passive_ftp = off # The "wait" command below makes Wget wait between every connection. # If, instead, you want Wget to wait only between retries of failed # downloads, set waitretry to maximum number of seconds to wait (Wget # will use "linear backoff", waiting 1 second after the first failure # on a file, 2 seconds after the second failure, etc. up to this max). waitretry = 10 ## ## Local settings (for a user to set in his $HOME/.wgetrc). It is ## *highly* undesirable to put these settings in the global file, since ## they are potentially dangerous to "normal" users. ## ## Even when setting up your own ~/.wgetrc, you should know what you ## are doing before doing so. ## # Set this to on to use timestamping by default: #timestamping = off # It is a good idea to make Wget send your email address in a `From:' # header with your request (so that server administrators can contact # you in case of errors). Wget does *not* send `From:' by default. #header = From: Your Name <username@site.domain> # You can set up other headers, like Accept-Language. Accept-Language # is *not* sent by default. #header = Accept-Language: en # You can set the default proxies for Wget to use for http and ftp. # They will override the value in the environment. #http_proxy = http://proxy.yoyodyne.com:18023/ #ftp_proxy = http://proxy.yoyodyne.com:18023/ # If you do not want to use proxy at all, set this to off. #use_proxy = on # You can customize the retrieval outlook. Valid options are default, # binary, mega and micro. #dot_style = default # Setting this to off makes Wget not download /robots.txt. Be sure to # know *exactly* what /robots.txt is and how it is used before changing # the default! #robots = on # It can be useful to make Wget wait between connections. Set this to # the number of seconds you want Wget to wait. #wait = 0 # You can force creating directory structure, even if a single is being # retrieved, by setting this to on. #dirstruct = off # You can turn on recursive retrieving by default (don't do this if # you are not sure you know what it means) by setting this to on. #recursive = off # To always back up file X as X.orig before converting its links (due # to -k / --convert-links / convert_links = on having been specified), # set this variable to on: #backup_converted = off # To have Wget follow FTP links from HTML files by default, set this # to on: #follow_ftp = off
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.