The best command line download utility [ aria2 ]

Yes, this is a good idea to drop a post about. What is my personally favourite told to download files on any terminal/command line.
There is no doubt about it always go with aria2, ok there are very rare cases I need to use wget.

aria2 is the best too you can have, it can download everything, you name it (even magnet links faster than any client).
Anyway, we are not here about to talk about downloading any illegal copyrighted torrent files, I’m just saying it can, and does it fast.
I strongly recommend you reading its documentation before you say it’s useless.

Just an example let’s say you want to download a t0rr3nt file. Probably 99% you will end up with an error message, it’s all because you don’t know the command.
Ok here is the right one [the magnet link goes between those “”]:
aria2c –enable-dht=true “magnet:?xt=urn:btih:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”
This will work, but if you ever attempt such things, do not forget about encryption! Encrypt the whole payload using ARC4.

OK, I already crossed the line with the stuff above there are actually totally other reason why I am using it. Just few really common once:

  • HTTP/FTP/SFTP Options
  • HTTP Specific Options
  • FTP/SFTP Specific Options
  • Metalink Specific Options
  • RPC Options
  • URI, MAGNET, TORRENT_FILE, METALINK_FILE
  • Resuming Download
  • Event Hook
  • aria2 is the download utility I am using on command line.
    aria2 On Black Duck Open Hub

    for example, on my mac I have created aria2.conf file under /Users/yourusername/.aria2/aria2.conf and added the following line.
    file-allocation=trunc instead of file-allocation=none.

    You can add many useful things. Soon, I will add a list in my next post.

    Using trunc seemingly allocates disk space very quickly, but what it actually does is that it sets file length metadata in file system, and does not allocate disk space at all. This means that it does not help avoiding fragmentation.