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If you need to download a file via the command line of Linux (eg. If you are logged in via SSH and need to download something). Please follow the steps below in order to download using the command line.
STEP 1
We use the wget command in order to download a file.
Most Linux distributions already have the wget command installed, if not we need to install it.
To check if wget is installed enter the following command. which wget after entering it press enter and then you should see something like this if it’s installed /usr/bin/wget
STEP 2
If wget is installed skip this step and proceed to Step 3
How to install wget (Different distributions use different methods to install)
DEBIAN/UBUNTU
COMMAND: apt-get install wget
FEDORA / CENTOS
COMMAND: yum install wget
STEP 3
Now we proceed to the actual download
Downloading a single page
COMMAND: wget http://www.sitename.co.za/test.pdf
Downloading a entire site we use the recursive option
COMMAND: wget -r http://www.sitename.co.za
Downloading only certain file types from the site you wish to download using the -A option
COMMAND: wget -r -A pdf,jpg http://www.sitename.co.za
Downloading only external links, usually wget does not do this, here we can use -H option.
COMMAND: wget -r -H -A pdf,jpg http://www.sitename.co.za
By default wget will follow 5 levels when using -r option, we can change this behaviour with the -l option.
COMMAND: wget -r -l 4
