[EnVoy]

what command should I use for retreiving a remote file that is a web link?

the address would be something like http://www.someplace.com/somefile.iso

I am logged into my machine using ssh, and I want to tell it to go get this file...

TIA

[Turias]

Most machines use wget, but I believe that OS X only has curl. Try `curl http://www.someplace.com/somefile.iso > somefile.iso'

[EnVoy]

I get this error:

xxxx:~/Desktop] xxxx% curl -v http://xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxx/xxxxx/xxxxxx.iso
* Closing live connection (#0)
curl: (7) Connection refused
xxxx:~/Desktop] xxxx%


Does this mean the remote server is refusing curl requests or something?

[JNI]

Originally posted by EnVoy:
I get this error:

xxxx:~/Desktop] xxxx% curl -v http://xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxx/xxxxx/xxxxxx.iso
* Closing live connection (#0)
curl: (7) Connection refused
xxxx:~/Desktop] xxxx%


Does this mean the remote server is refusing curl requests or something?

curl just initiates an HTTP request (or FTP or whatever the URL specifies.) An HTTP request is really just a TCP/IP message, so the site shouldn't care if the request came from curl or any other tool. Think of curl as just like a browser that sends a request and then displays the result in some way. (curl just directs the result to either standard out or a file as opposed to rendering it in a GUI browser)

Some sites do require more than just a raw HTTP request. E.g. some sites look at the 'user-agent' sent with the request. That is why some sites only work with IE and others don't. One thing I've found is that sometimes you have to add the -A option to curl specifying something like 'Mozilla/4.0' to get the site to send the response. Also some times you need to supply cookies to the server before it will accept the request (again, that can be done on the curl command line, but is a bit more difficult to construct.)

The error you show seems like there is some kind of authentication requirement missing. Does the site require cookies, or maybe a name/password? You would have to add those to the curl command line. I don't know exactly how you would determine what the site is requiring.

[EnVoy]

No password/user needed, just a straight http link.

Interesting thing is I ran the exact same command, letter for letter, on my Linux machine and the download initiated fine.

[JNI]

Originally posted by EnVoy:
No password/user needed, just a straight http link.

Interesting thing is I ran the exact same command, letter for letter, on my Linux machine and the download initiated fine.

Well, that doesn't make any real sense then. curl works fine for me in OS X - I use it all the time to grab web pages and stuff, either directly from the command line, in cron jobs or from within wrapper applications.

I don't know what your problem could be. Maybe some firewall setting on your OS X machine? Or some kind of network timeouts only affecting your OS X machine. Or something installed badly on your system. (have you been playing with fink or something?)

Can you curl from any other site, or is it only that particular one? You should be able to grab anything at a valid URL, like the home page from www.apple.com or whatever.

[EnVoy]

OK figured it out. My bad When I was able to sit down infront of the machine I saw that Little Snitch was blocking the curl outbound. Works fine now, thanks for the help.