How to install wget on RHEL/CentOS 6/7/8 using yum

Author: Vivek Gite Last updated: August 5, 2019 1 comment

I am trying to download a file using ‘wget http://url’ syntax, but I am getting an error:

How to use yum to install wget command

Open the Terminal application or login using ssh client and type the following yum command to install wget on CentOS/RHEL 7:
$ sudo yum install wget
Sample outputs:

Fig.01: Installing GNU/wget on CentOS/RHEL using yum command

A note about Fedora Linux users

Use the following dnf command to install wget on Fedora 24:
$ sudo dnf install wget

How to install wget on CentOS 7 or RHEL 6

$ sudo yum install wget

Installing wget on CentOS 8 or RHEL 8

Again use the same command:
$ sudo yum install wget
Sample outputs:

Red Hat Update Infrastructure 3 Client Configur 1.9 kB/s | 2.1 kB     00:01    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - AppStre 5.6 MB/s | 7.7 MB     00:01    
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - BaseOS   16 MB/s | 4.7 MB     00:00    
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package  Arch       Version               Repository                      Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 wget     x86_64     1.19.5-7.el8_0.1      rhel-8-appstream-rhui-rpms     734 k
 
Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package
 
Total download size: 734 k
Installed size: 2.8 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
wget-1.19.5-7.el8_0.1.x86_64.rpm                5.9 MB/s | 734 kB     00:00    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                           5.3 MB/s | 734 kB     00:00     
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1 
  Installing       : wget-1.19.5-7.el8_0.1.x86_64                           1/1 
  Running scriptlet: wget-1.19.5-7.el8_0.1.x86_64                           1/1 
  Verifying        : wget-1.19.5-7.el8_0.1.x86_64                           1/1 
 
Installed:
  wget-1.19.5-7.el8_0.1.x86_64                                                  
 
Complete!

How do I use wget command?

The syntax is:
wget url wget [options] http://url wget [options] ftp://url

Usage and examples

To download a file from the internet, enter:
$ wget https://www.cyberciti.biz/files/adduser.txt
Sample outputs:

--2016-11-22 08:45:26--  https://www.cyberciti.biz/files/adduser.txt
Resolving www.cyberciti.biz (www.cyberciti.biz)... 75.126.153.202
Connecting to www.cyberciti.biz (www.cyberciti.biz)|75.126.153.202|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1022 [text/plain]
Saving to: 'adduser.txt'
 
100%[======================================>] 1,022       --.-K/s   in 0s      
 
2016-11-22 08:45:27 (59.4 MB/s) - 'adduser.txt' saved [1022/1022]

To use the wget with proxy authentication, enter:
$ export https_proxy="https://server1.cyberciti.biz:3128/" $ wget --proxy-user "USERNameHere" --proxy-password "PASSWORDHere" http://url-here
To use wget with a username and password for FTP / HTTP file retrieval, use:
$ wget --user=NAME --password='PASSWORD' url
To download a large file in size in background, enter:
$ wget -bqc http://path-to-freebsd-mirros-url/freebsd-lastest.iso
You can resume broken download with wget using the following syntax:
$ wget -c http://url/large.file.tar.gz $ wget --continue https://url/file.iso
Anther usage is to archive a website using wget:
$ wget -nprk 'https://www.some-url-here/'

Creating ~/.wgetrc file

The $HOME/.wgetrc file act as an initialization file for GNU wget. You can store option in it. Here is my sample $HOME/.wgetrc file:

# sample file 
# Try ipv6 addresses first
prefer-family = IPv6
 
# Setup proxy
https_proxy = http://server1.cyberciti.biz:3128/
http_proxy = http://server1.cyberciti.biz:3128/
ftp_proxy = http://server1.cyberciti.biz:3128/
 
# Setup the credentials for both http/ftp
user=vivek
password=OhMyCoolPasswordHere

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