Wget через прокси windows

GNU Wget is a versatile command line utility that has become indispensable for many Linux users who rely on it for effortlessly fetching files from the internet. It is feature-rich, is easy to use, and supports common network protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP. In addition, Wget has built-in support to download entire websites or subsets of pages, making it an ideal tool for web scraping, mirroring, and archiving.

One of Wget’s most impressive features is its ability to work seamlessly with proxies. As a Linux user, you’ll often find yourself needing a proxy to mask your identity, bypass pesky regional restrictions, or enhance performance through load balancing. With Wget in your toolkit, integrating proxies is easy.

What Is Wget?

Wget, short for “World Wide Web” and “get”, is a free and open source program for interacting with files on the internet. It’s part of the GNU Project, a free software mass collaboration effort.

Wget comes equipped with handy features for technical users working with files online. These include batch downloads, resuming of interrupted downloads, recursive downloading, proxy support, download scheduling, bandwidth throttling, customizable user agent, and SSL/TLS support. It’s also non-interactive, making it perfect for scripts and cron jobs that run in the background.

Wget is popular among Linux and Unix users and also has versions available for Windows and macOS. Wget’s impressive range of features and cross-platform compatibility makes it the go-to tool for various web-based tasks, such as downloading large files, automating downloads, and creating website mirrors.

Using Proxies with Wget in Linux

A wide variety of proxies exist, including datacenter and residential IPs, each with its own advantages and use cases. Using proxies with Wget offers benefits, such as bypassing geo and network/ISP restrictions. It also allows you to maintain anonymity and privacy while browsing the web or downloading files.

When using the right proxy provider, proxies can also be used to cache frequently accessed resources, boosting performance. In addition, proxy providers can influence your network speeds, help you bypass rate limits by providing a wide pool of IP addresses, and even provide solutions that help you bypass captchas. This makes selecting the right proxy provider essential to ensuring that your proxy performs effectively, especially when using it with Wget.

Configuring Wget with a Proxy

To use Wget with a proxy, you need to configure the appropriate settings in your environment or within the Wget command itself. There are several different ways of doing this, and this tutorial will cover four of them: configuring proxy settings using environmental variables, setting proxies for all users by updating the /etc/wgetrc file, setting proxies for the current user by updating the ~/.wgetrc file, and setting the proxy for the current terminal instance using the -e flag. You’ll also learn how to use Wget with both authenticated and unauthenticated proxies.

You can find all the configurations discussed in this article in this GitHub gist.

Before you start using Wget with a proxy, you need the following:

• Debian-based systems
• Proxy server details: To use Wget with a proxy, you need the proxy server’s details. This includes the server’s IP address or hostname, port number, and if required, authentication information (ie username and password). You can obtain this information from your proxy provider or network administrator.

1. Configure Proxy Settings Using Environment Variables

The easiest way to set proxy configurations for Wget is by defining them at a system level using environment variables. This allows multiple programs to read the value and use it, so you only need to change it once. Setting the proxy as an environmental variable ensures that Wget uses it for all requests made from your computer.

To set up a proxy for Wget, add the following lines to your shell configuration file (ie .bashrc or .bash_profile) and replace the placeholders with your proxy server’s address and port (ie http://proxy.example.com:8080):

export http_proxy=http://proxy_address:proxy_port
export https_proxy=https://proxy_address:proxy_port

If the proxy requires authentication, instead of http://proxy_address:proxy_port, you should also add the username and password in the URL so that it looks like this:

export http_proxy=http://username:password@proxy_address:proxy_port
export https_proxy=username:password@proxy_address:proxy_port
export ftp_proxy=username:password@proxy_address:proxy_port

Remember to replace the variables for username, password, proxy_address, and proxy_port with the appropriate values (ie http_proxy=http://username:[email protected]:8080).

After adding these lines, restart your shell or run source .bashrc or source .bash_profile, depending on which file you used to apply the changes.

2. Set Proxies for All Users by Updating the /etc/wgetrc File

If you need to set a proxy for the entire system. For example, if you want to use a proxy only when downloading files with Wget to protect your identity, Wget provides an easy way to do this, and it can be done either for an individual system user or for all system users.

Setting the proxy for all system users is helpful in cases where there’s a shared company machine with different users relying on the same proxy to carry out the work. Wget allows you to configure the proxy once so that all users can access it.

To set a proxy for all users, you need to modify the config file located in /etc/wgetrc. The wgetrc file is an initialization file that stores default settings and options for Wget. This file allows you to customize its behavior without always specifying command line arguments.

To set the proxy, open the wgetrc file using your favorite text editor and add the following lines:

https_proxy = http://proxy.example.com:8080
http_proxy = http://proxy.example.com:8080
ftp_proxy = http://proxy.example.com:8080

For authenticated proxies, use the following syntax:

https_proxy = http://username:[email protected]:8080
http_proxy = http://username:[email protected]:8080
ftp_proxy = http://username:[email protected]:8080

Replace proxy.example.com:8080 and username:password with the address, port, and authorization credentials of your proxy server. Save the file and close the editor. From now on, all Wget requests made by any user on your system will use the specified proxy server.

3. Set Proxies for the Current User by Updating the ~/.wgetrc File

Wget also allows you to change the proxy configurations for just the current user. This can be helpful if you’re in a situation where the proxy details need authentication information specific to each user.

To set the proxy, you need to create/modify the ~/.wgetrc file. This is a user-specific wgetrc file located in your home directory (~/). It stores configurations that are only affected by the current user. The ~/.wgetrc file may not exist by default, especially on new Linux installations or user accounts because the file is typically created when a user needs to customize Wget settings specific to their account. If the file doesn’t exist, you can create it.

Once you have the ~/.wgetrc file, open it in your favorite text editor and add the following lines:

https_proxy = http://proxy.example.com:8080
http_proxy = http://proxy.example.com:8080
ftp_proxy = http://proxy.example.com:8080

Again, remember to replace proxy.example.com:8080 with your specific details. This method only affects Wget requests made by the current user. If you switch to a different user on the same machine, these settings do not apply.

4. Set Proxy for the Current Terminal Instance Using the -e Flag

If you don’t want to set the proxy at a system or Wget level, you can configure it directly when running the Wget command. This method allows you to use different proxy settings for individual Wget commands, giving you greater flexibility.

To specify the proxy configuration for a single Wget request, use the following syntax:

# http proxy
wget -e use_proxy=yes -e http_proxy=http://proxy_address:proxy_port URL
# https proxy
wget -e use_proxy=yes -e https_proxy=http://proxy_address:proxy_port URL

In this code, URL is the URL you want Wget to fetch (eg www.google.com).

For authenticated proxies, you can use the http://username:password@proxy_address:proxy_port syntax for specifying the proxy, as discussed in the previous section.

This method allows you to set a proxy for a single request without affecting other requests, terminal sessions, or users.

Using Wget

Thankfully, using Wget is simple. The general syntax for Wget is wget [options] [url], where you first specify optional arguments (ie [options]), such as the -e use_proxy=yes that you learned about earlier, followed by the [url] that you want to fetch. This could be a media file, such as a document or even a web page.

Because the first part is optional, you can fetch a web resource by specifying wget [url]. For instance, calling wget http://example.com/file.pdf fetches the file and downloads it to your local machine.

You can also download a file while specifying the name to use when saving it to disk. To do this, use the --output-document argument:

 wget --output-document=image.jpg https://httpbin.org/image/jpeg

Wget also allows you to batch your downloads and download from multiple URLs in one command. To do this, you need to create a file and paste your URLs, each on its own line. After doing this, you can run the following command:

wget ‐‐input list-of-file-urls.txt

Please note: If you’re using method 4 for specifying your proxy, you must append -e use_proxy=yes -e http_proxy=http://proxy_address:proxy_port to the previous commands to get them to work with a proxy. Options 1, 2, and 3 will work as is since the proxy is configured already.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned four different methods for using Wget with a proxy and the advantages of doing so. You can select the most appropriate method depending on your preferences to apply proxies system-wide, to all users, to a specific user, or to a single Wget request.

While using Wget with a proxy offers numerous benefits, choosing the right proxy services is essential for maximizing performance and reliability. Bright Data is a web data platform that assists companies in gathering massive amounts of structured data from the web. By using their proxy solutions, you can improve your Wget experience and reduce the number of failed requests, ensuring better information retrieval from the internet.

Whether you’re a start-up or an enterprise, Bright Data helps you scrape websites and collect data using their proxy solutions and custom tools, such as Web Scraper API and Web Unlocker. Explore Bright Data’s datacenter proxies, proxy server options, and pricing to find the perfect fit for your proxy network requirements.

No credit card required

Can you «download the internet»? Surely, that’s impossible, you simply won’t have enough storage. However, developers of free and open-source software always have a keen sense of humor. A simple example is the wget utility. Its name is the abbreviation of «www get,» where WWW stands for World Wide Web. Thus, the term can be understood as «download the Internet.»

In this material, however, we will focus not on the utility itself but on the ways to make it work through proxy. Usually, this is required for organizing multi-threaded connections and parsing operations.

Earlier, we have already talked about a similar utility — cURL (it is quite compatible with proxy granted that you have enough skills). Therefore, we will additionally compare both utilities and talk about their differences below.

What Is Wget and How to Use It

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Wget — is a built-in command-line utility that is provided with practically all popular Linux distributions; it is developed for fast downloading of files and other content via various internet protocols.

If needed, the utility can be installed and used on other platforms, as the program has open-source code that can be compiled for different execution environments.

Wget boasts a very simple syntax and is therefore ideal for everyday use, including for beginners. The fact that wget is included in the basic environment of Linux distributions allows downloading other progarms and packages quite quickly and easily. Tasks can be included in the cron scheduler as well (scripts and commands are executed on a schedule). Plus, wget can be incorporated into any other scripts and console commands.

For example, wget can be used to fully download a target website, if the options for bypassing URL addresses (with recursion) are set correctly.

Wget supports working with HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS protocols (+ some other, less popular ones).

A more correct name is GNU Wget (official website and documentation).

Note that there is a parallel implementation of wget — wget2. It has a number of small innovations and features.

An example of using wget to download an archive:

• wget https://your.site/directory/archive.zip

Bulk files can be downloaded here by simply specifying all their names (links) separated by spaces:

• wget https://your.site/directory/archive1.zip https://your.site/directory/archive2.zip https://your.site/directory/archive3.zip

The utility will download files sequentially with progress displayed directly in the console.

The names of target files (list of URLs) can be saved in a separate document and «fed» to wget like this:

• wget —input-file=~/urls.txt

The same is about shortened options:

• wget -i ~/urls.txt

If access is protected by a login and password, wget can handle it as well (you need to replace user and password with actual ones):

• wget ftp://user:password@host/path

This is how you can create a local version of a specific website (it will be downloaded as HTML pages with all related content):

• wget —mirror -p —convert-links -P /home/user/site111 source-site.com

You can download only files of a certain type from a website:

• wget -r -A «*.png» domain.zone

Note! Wget cannot handle JavaScript, meaning it will only load and save custom HTML code. All dynamically loaded elements will be ignored.

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There are plenty of possible wget applications.

A complete list of all options and keys for the utility can be found in the program documentation as well as on the official website. In particular, you can:

• Limit download speed and set other quotas;
• Change the user-agent to your own value (for example, you can pretend to be a Chrome browser to the website);
• Resume download;
• Set offset when reading a file;
• Analyze creation/modification time, MIME type;
• Use constant and random delays between requests;
• Recursively traverse specified directories and subdirectories;
• Use compression at the wget proxy server level;
• Switch to the background mode;
• Employ proxies.

Naturally, we are mostly interested in the first point.

When parsing, wget can help with saving HTML content, which can later be dissected and analyzed by other tools and scripts. For more details, see materials on Python web scraping libraries and Golang Scraper.

Why Use a Proxy with Wget

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A proxy is an intermediary server. Its main task is to organize an alternative route for exchanging requests between a client and a server.

Proxies can use different connection schemes and technologies. For example, proxies can be anonymous or not, work based on different types of devices (server-based, mobile, residential), paid or free, with feedback mechanisms (backconnect proxies), static or dynamic addresses etc.

No matter what they are, their tasks remain roughly the same: redirection, location change, content modification (compression, cleaning etc.).

When parsing, wget use proxy is also needed in order to hide the real owner’s address and organize multiple parallel connections, for example, to speed up the data collection procedure (scraping, not to be confused with web crawling).

How to Install Wget

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In many Linux distributions, wget is a pre-installed utility. If the wget command returns an error, wget can be easily installed using the native package manager.

Debian-based distributions, including Ubuntu:

• sudo apt-get install wget

Fedora, CentOS and RHEL:

• yum install wget

ArchLinux and equivalents:

• pacman -Sy wget

In MacOS, wget can be installed either from the source (with “make” and “make install” commands) or using the Homebrew package manager. For beginners, the latter option will be the most convenient (note that cURL utility is used, which is pre-installed in MacOS by default):

• /bin/bash -c «$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)»
• brew install wget

In the latest versions of Windows (10 and 11), wget can be installed in the Linux subsystem (WSL), directly from compiled sources (for example, they can be found here) or using third-party package managers like Chocolatey. Installation command for Chocolatey:

• choco install wget

If you install wget in Windows at the binary file level, you will need to specify the program link in the PATH variable for the correct applet invocation in the command line. Otherwise, you will have to refer to the file directly each time as «.\directory\wget.exe», followed by the list of options and parameters.

Running Wget

Once the utility is installed, it can be launched either from the command line or accessed within shell scripts.

Typical launch:

• wget https://site.zone/directory/file.zip

Immediately after pressing “enter”, the utility will start downloading the file to the user’s home directory (or to another directory according to environment settings).

In the console, wget displays the current speed and overall download progress.

You can change the filename during download:

• wget -O new-name.zip https://site.zone/directory/source-file.zip

If you need to call up help for the set of options, type:

• wget -h

Setting Up Wget to Work Through Proxy

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The simplest way to specify a wget proxy is through special options in the command line:

• If the proxy does not require authentication:

wget -e use_proxy=on -e http_proxy=proxy.address.or.IP.address:port https://target.site/directory/file.zip

• If authentication with a username and password is required:

wget -e use_proxy=on -e http_proxy=132.217.171.127:1234 —proxy-user=USERNAME —proxy-password=PASSWORD https://target.site/directory/file.zip

In some cases, instead of the option «use_proxy=on», the combination «use_proxy=yes» may be used.

If it is inconvenient for you to specify options in the console every time, you can add the proxy wget at the configuration file level. This can be done either in the general configuration directory (/etc/wgetrc) or in the local user config (~.wgetrc, if there is no such file, it can be created manually). Just replace the options with the following (if the user config is created from scratch, just add the options to an empty file):

use_proxy=on

http_proxy=155.217.170.121:12345

https_proxy=155.217.170.121:12345

Naturally, instead of 155.217.170.121:12345, you should specify the actual IP address and port number.

If authentication with a username and password is required, you can use the following construction:

use_proxy = on

http_proxy = http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@155.217.170.121:12345

Now you can run wget without additional keywords; the utility will keep working through proxy.

Rotating Proxy for Wget

Wget does not have built-in tools for proxy rotation. Therefore, if you want to run each new wget with proxy, you need to write a bash script or use the «-e» option.

Example:

wget -e use_proxy=on -e http_proxy=104.254.41.36:1234 —proxy-user=USERNAME-one —proxy-password=PASSWORD-one https://site-one.zone/directory/file-one.zip

wget -e use_proxy=on -e http_proxy=26.104.52.225:2234 —proxy-user=USERNAME-two —proxy-password=PASSWORD-two https://site-two.zone/directory/file-two.zip

wget -e use_proxy=on -e http_proxy=70.174.89.3:44444 —proxy-user=USERNAME-three —proxy-password=PASSWORD-three https://site-three.zone/directory/file-three.zip

And here’s how a bash script variant of forced proxy rotation might look, randomly selected from a list stored in the file proxies.txt (let’s assume there are 10 lines):

for i in {1..10}

do

proxy=$(shuf -n 1 proxies.txt)

wget -e use_proxy=on -e http_proxy=$proxy —proxy-user=USERNAME —proxy-password=PASSWORD https://target-site.zone/subdirectory/some-file

done

If you’re not familiar with scripting, there’s another elegant solution – using backconnect proxies. Let’s take Froxy proxy as an example:

1. A port is configured in the personal account (location and conditions for rotating outgoing IP addresses are defined with each new request, for example);
2. Proxy port data is copied (this will be a regular proxy for wget).
3. The requests are then executed similar to using regular individual proxies (wget -e use_proxy=on -e http_proxy=255.89.155.178:1234 —proxy-user=USERNAME —proxy-password=PASSWORD https://target.site/directory/file.zip).
4. IP address rotation is carried out on the proxy provider’s side. The input port remains the same (there is no need to add or update anything in wget).

cURL vs Wget

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Both cURL and wget are open-source utilities used for downloading files and other content via HTTP and FTP protocols. They both handle HTTP POST and GET requests, cookies, can work with secure versions of websites (HTTPS) and can be incorporated into bash scripts.

However, they also have distinctions.

Let’s start with cURL.

• This is not just a utility but also a software library that can be used at the code level;
• Unlike wget, cURL supports a vast number of additional protocols (here is a detailed comparison table).
• cURL can work through SOCKS proxies (wget supports HTTP only);
• It offers more capabilities for site authentication and SSL connection support;
• In addition to POST and GET, it also supports some other methods (e.g., PUT).

On the other hand, wget also has something to offer:

• Recursive downloading of directory contents is possible;
• Creating copies of websites is available;
• Interrupted downloads can be resumed (no need to re-download large files);
• It has a smaller set of options, making wget easier to manage and configure.

Take your time to find out how to integrate cURL with proxies.

Conclusion and Recommendations

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Wget is a simple yet powerful utility for downloading files and HTML pages. It can be adapted for parsing tasks and can be accessed in the console or through bash scripts. Its downsides include the inability to use it as a library and the lack of built-in proxy rotation.

You can find quality residential and mobile proxies with automatic rotation in our service. Froxy offers over 8 million IP addresses, a convenient interface and targeting up to the city level (with solid coverage in all countries worldwide). Price depends on traffic only. There’s a special trial package available for testing the utility features.