How to Download Files from Terminal

Prerequisites

Before downloading files, make sure you have:

• SSH access to your VPS
• wget or curl installed (usually pre-installed)
• URL of the file you want to download

Method 1: Using wget (Most Common)

Connect to your VPS:

ssh hxroot@YOUR_SERVER_IP -p 22

Basic download:

wget https://example.com/file.zip

Save with different name:

wget -O newname.zip https://example.com/file.zip

Download to specific directory:

wget -P /tmp/ https://example.com/file.zip

wget Common Options

• -O filename - Save as different name
• -P directory - Save to specific directory
• -c - Continue/resume partial download
• -b - Download in background
• -q - Quiet mode (no output)
• --limit-rate=200k - Limit download speed
• --user=USER --password=PASS - For authenticated downloads
• --no-check-certificate - Skip SSL certificate check

wget Examples

Resume interrupted download:

wget -c https://example.com/largefile.zip

Download in background:

wget -b https://example.com/largefile.zip

Check log: tail -f wget-log

Limit speed to 500KB/s:

wget --limit-rate=500k https://example.com/file.zip

Download with username/password:

wget --user=myuser --password=mypass https://example.com/protected.zip

Download multiple files from list:

wget -i filelist.txt

Where filelist.txt contains one URL per line.

Mirror entire website:

wget -r -l 5 https://example.com

Method 2: Using curl

Basic download (save as original name):

curl -O https://example.com/file.zip

Save with different name:

curl -o myfile.zip https://example.com/file.zip

Follow redirects:

curl -L -o file.zip https://example.com/download/link

Silent download:

curl -s -O https://example.com/file.zip

Show progress:

curl -# -O https://example.com/largefile.zip

curl Common Options

• -O - Save with remote filename
• -o filename - Save with custom filename
• -L - Follow redirects
• -C - - Resume download
• --limit-rate 200K - Limit speed
• -u user:pass - Authentication
• -k - Skip SSL verification
• -s - Silent mode

Download from Google Drive

# For small files
wget --no-check-certificate "https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILE_ID" -O filename

For large files (using gdown):

pip install gdown
gdown https://drive.google.com/uc?id=FILE_ID

Download from GitHub Releases

wget https://github.com/user/repo/releases/download/v1.0/file.tar.gz

Download latest release:

wget https://github.com/user/repo/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Download Multiple Files in Parallel

Using xargs:

echo "https://file1.zip https://file2.zip" | xargs -n 1 -P 4 wget

Using curl parallel mode:

curl -O https://file1.zip -O https://file2.zip

Download Script with Error Handling

#!/bin/bash
URL="https://example.com/file.zip"
OUTPUT="/tmp/file.zip"
if wget -O "$OUTPUT" "$URL"; then
    echo "Download successful: $OUTPUT"
else
    echo "Download failed!"
    exit 1
fi

Check File Integrity After Download

Download checksum file:

wget https://example.com/file.zip.md5

Verify MD5:

md5sum file.zip

Compare with downloaded .md5 file.

Verify SHA256:

sha256sum file.zip

Install wget/curl if Missing

apt update
apt install wget curl -y

Download Speed Test

wget -O /dev/null http://speedtest.tele2.net/100MB.zip