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FETCH(1)		  BSD General Commands Manual		      FETCH(1)

NAME
     fetch -- retrieve a file by Uniform Resource Locator

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

DESCRIPTION
     The fetch utility provides	a command-line interface to the	fetch(3) li-
     brary.  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 re-
		 trieved 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 op-
		 tion is deprecated and	is provided for	backward compatibility
		 only.

     -i	file	 If-Modified-Since mode: the remote file will only be re-
		 trieved if it is newer	than file on the local host.  (HTTP
		 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
		 not be	fetched.  Note that the	-m and -r flags	are mutually
		 exclusive.

     -N	file	 Use file instead of ~/.netrc to look up login names and pass-
		 words for FTP sites.  See ftp(1) for a	description of the
		 file format.  This feature is experimental.

     -n		 Do not	preserve the modification time of the transferred
		 file.

     -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 un-
		 der any circumstances,	even if	the transfer failed or was in-
		 complete.

     -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 re-
		 porting 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 de-
		 tails 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 er-
     ror output, in the	same format as the standard completion message.

ENVIRONMENT
     FTP_TIMEOUT   Maximum time, in seconds, to	wait before aborting an	FTP
		   connection.

     HTTP_TIMEOUT  Maximum time, in seconds, to	wait before aborting an	HTTP
		   connection.

     See fetch(3) for a	description of additional environment variables, in-
     cluding FETCH_BIND_ADDRESS, FTP_LOGIN, FTP_PASSIVE_MODE, FTP_PASSWORD,
     FTP_PROXY,	ftp_proxy, HTTP_AUTH, HTTP_PROXY, http_proxy, HTTP_PROXY_AUTH,
     HTTP_REFERER, HTTP_USER_AGENT, NETRC, NO_PROXY and	no_proxy.

EXIT STATUS
     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
     each one of them in turn, and will	return zero only if they were all suc-
     cessfully retrieved.

     If	the -i argument	is used	and the	remote file is not newer than the
     specified file then the command will still	return success,	although no
     file is transferred.

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.

BSD			       December	14, 2008			   BSD

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | EXIT STATUS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS | NOTES

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