When downloading large files such as Linux ISO files or backup files, I usually use the default browser download application or use wget. Unfortunately, in some case, I prefer to do download using torrent because it may faster than using wget. On Windows system, I usually use Bitorrent or uTorrent and on Linux-GUI based, Transmission is my default choice.
Well, how if using openSUSE minimal or other Linux-based Console/non GUI? For this, I usually use aria2.
Aria 2 : Parallelizing Multi-Protocol Utility for Downloading Files
aria2 is a utility for downloading files. It has completely new design concept from its predecessor, Aria, and is written from scratch. aria2 has a segmented downloading engine in its core. It can download one file from multiple URLs or multiple connections from one URL. This results in very high speed downloading, much faster than ordinary browsers. This engine in was implemented in a single-thread model. The architecture is clean and easy to extend. aria2 currently supports HTTP, FTP, and BitTorrent.
Actually, Aria2 is a GUI-based applications and also provide tools for CLI. One of the advantages using aria2 is it’s support for torrent file and FTP besides HTTP download by default.
How to install aria2?
- If using GUI based desktop, go to http://software.opensuse.org/package/aria2 and install using One-Click-Install feature (can only be done via openSUSE or SLES). Do not forget to adjust the type and version of openSUSE/SLES to match the version of the running system
- If using openSUSE 13.1 CLI, execute the following command :
[code language=”bash”]
zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/13.1/standard/ aria2
zypper ref
zypper in aria2
[/code] - or for SLES 11 :
[code language=”bash”]
zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/holgerob/SLE_11 aria2
zypper ref
zypper in aria2
[/code] - Once installed, aria2 can be run through the console with the command: aria2c name-of-file, ex :
[code language=”bash”]
aria2c http://kambing.ui.ac.id/iso/opensuse/13.1/iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-x86_64.iso
[/code][code language=”bash”]
aria2c http://kambing.ui.ac.id/iso/opensuse/13.1/iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-x86_64.iso.torrent
[/code]
Aria2 will automatically check the size of the file and start the download process. Here is an example of the process log:
$ aria2c http://kambing.ui.ac.id/iso/opensuse/13.1/iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso.torrent
2014-02-05 12:15:28.103709 WARN – You may encounter the certificate verification error with HTTPS server. See –ca-certificate and –check-certificate option.
2014-02-05 12:15:28.426243 NOTICE – Download complete: /srv/www/htdocs/iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso.torrent
2014-02-05 12:15:28.467413 NOTICE – IPv4 DHT: listening to port 6994
*** Download Progress Summary as of Wed Feb 5 12:16:28 2014 ***
================================================================================
[#2 SIZE:0B/4,236.0MiB(0%) CN:0 SEED:0 SPD:0Bs]
FILE: /srv/www/htdocs/iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso
——————————————————————————–
[#2 SIZE:0B/4,236.0MiB(0%) CN:0 SEED:0 SPD:0Bs] [FileAlloc:#2 4,206.7MiB/4,236.0
2014-02-05 12:17:27.274574 NOTICE – IPv4 BitTorrent: listening to port 6905
2014-02-05 12:17:27.274708 NOTICE – IPv6 BitTorrent: listening to port 6905
*** Download Progress Summary as of Wed Feb 5 12:17:30 2014 ***
================================================================================
[#2 SIZE:0B/4,236.0MiB(0%) CN:44 SEED:0 SPD:0Bs]
FILE: /srv/www/htdocs/iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso
——————————————————————————–
*** Download Progress Summary as of Wed Feb 5 12:18:30 2014 ***
================================================================================
[#2 SIZE:18.5MiB/4,236.0MiB(0%) CN:44 SEED:30 SPD:399.4KiBs ETA:3h12s]
FILE: /srv/www/htdocs/iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso/openSUSE-13.1-DVD-i586.iso