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fetch(1)

NAME

     fetch -- retrieve a file by Uniform Resource Locator

SYNOPSIS

     fetch [-146AFMPRUadlmnpqrsv] [-B bytes] [-S bytes] [-T seconds] [-N file]
	   [-o file] [-w seconds] [-h host] [-c dir] [-f file] [URL ...]

DESCRIPTION

     The fetch utility provides a command-line interface to the fetch(3)
     library.  Its purpose is to retrieve the file(s) pointed to by the URL(s)
     on the command line.

     The following options are available:

     -1 	 Stop and return exit code 0 at the first successfully
		 retrieved file.

     -4 	 Forces fetch to use IPv4 addresses only.

     -6 	 Forces fetch to use IPv6 addresses only.

     -A 	 Do not automatically follow ``temporary'' (302) redirects.
		 Some broken Web sites will return a redirect instead of a
		 not-found error when the requested object does not exist.

     -a 	 Automatically retry the transfer upon soft failures.

     -B bytes	 Specify the read buffer size in bytes.  The default is 4096
		 bytes.  Attempts to set a buffer size lower than this will be
		 silently ignored.  The number of reads actually performed is
		 reported at verbosity level two or higher (see the -v flag).

     -c dir	 The file to retrieve is in directory dir on the remote host.
		 This option is deprecated and is provided for backward com-
		 patibility only.

     -d 	 Use a direct connection even if a proxy is configured.

     -F 	 In combination with the -r flag, forces a restart even if the
		 local and remote files have different modification times.
		 Implies -R.

     -f file	 The file to retrieve is named file on the remote host.  This
		 option is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibil-
		 ity only.

     -h host	 The file to retrieve is located on the host host.  This
		 option is deprecated and is provided for backward compatibil-
		 ity only.

     -l 	 If the target is a file-scheme URL, make a symbolic link to
		 the target rather than trying to copy it.

     -M

     -m 	 Mirror mode: if the file already exists locally and has the
		 same size and modification time as the remote file, it will

     -o file	 Set the output file name to file.  By default, a ``pathname''
		 is extracted from the specified URI, and its basename is used
		 as the name of the output file.  A file argument of `-' indi-
		 cates that results are to be directed to the standard output.
		 If the file argument is a directory, fetched file(s) will be
		 placed within the directory, with name(s) selected as in the
		 default behaviour.

     -P

     -p 	 Use passive FTP.  This is useful if you are behind a firewall
		 which blocks incoming connections.  Try this flag if fetch
		 seems to hang when retrieving FTP URLs.

     -q 	 Quiet mode.

     -R 	 The output files are precious, and should not be deleted
		 under any circumstances, even if the transfer failed or was
		 incomplete.

     -r 	 Restart a previously interrupted transfer.  Note that the -m
		 and -r flags are mutually exclusive.

     -S bytes	 Require the file size reported by the server to match the
		 specified value.  If it does not, a message is printed and
		 the file is not fetched.  If the server does not support
		 reporting file sizes, this option is ignored and the file is
		 fetched unconditionally.

     -s 	 Print the size in bytes of each requested file, without
		 fetching it.

     -T seconds  Set timeout value to seconds.	Overrides the environment
		 variables FTP_TIMEOUT for FTP transfers or HTTP_TIMEOUT for
		 HTTP transfers if set.

     -U 	 When using passive FTP, allocate the port for the data con-
		 nection from the low (default) port range.  See ip(4) for
		 details on how to specify which port range this corresponds
		 to.

     -v 	 Increase verbosity level.

     -w seconds  When the -a flag is specified, wait this many seconds between
		 successive retries.

     If fetch receives a SIGINFO signal (see the status argument for stty(1)),
     the current transfer rate statistics will be written to the standard
     error output, in the same format as the standard completion message.

DIAGNOSTICS

     The fetch command returns zero on success, or one on failure.  If multi-
     ple URLs are listed on the command line, fetch will attempt to retrieve
     them each of them in turn, and return zero only if they were all success-
     fully retrieved.

ENVIRONMENT

     proper operation of fetch; you are strongly encouraged to read fetch(3)
     as well.

SEE ALSO

     fetch(3)

HISTORY

     The fetch command appeared in FreeBSD 2.1.5.  This implementation first
     appeared in FreeBSD 4.1.

AUTHORS

     The original implementation of fetch was done by Jean-Marc Zucconi
     <jmz@FreeBSD.org>.  It was extensively re-worked for FreeBSD 2.2 by
     Garrett Wollman <wollman@FreeBSD.org>, and later completely rewritten to
     use the fetch(3) library by Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@FreeBSD.org>.

NOTES

     The -b and -t options are no longer supported and will generate warnings.
     They were workarounds for bugs in other OSes which this implementation
     does not trigger.

     One cannot both use the -h, -c and -f options and specify URLs on the
     command line.

FreeBSD 5.4			March 11, 2003			   FreeBSD 5.4

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