5 ms·

Aria2 – Next-generation download utility

108 points by gulbrandr 13y ago

IgorPartola 13y ago
I used Aria2 in the past to download ISO's of Linux and FreeBSD. There is definitely an advantage to using multiple sources at once. On an unrelated note, it would be cool if large HTTP downloads provided a header indicating a BitTorrent source as well. That way intelligent clients could switch to BitTorrent or use both in parallel.
- icebraining 13y ago
  There actually is such an header, based on the Metalink format, and aria2 supports it! Unfortunately, while many support Metalink files, almost no other download manager supports Metalink/HTTP headers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#Example_Metalink.2FHTTP_header_fields http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#Example_Metalink.2FHTT...
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    That's pretty cool. Might be an excuse for me to mess around with Firefox and see if they'll accept a patch from me over the upcoming holidays.
rjzzleep 13y ago
if you use firefox it can become your default download manager with FlashGot. I remember having problems in Mac, but it works like a charm in linux
roryokane 13y ago
If you download a lot of files from free file hosting sites like Rapidshare or MEGA, check out JDownloader (http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en). Its interface is somewhat ugly, but it makes downloading many files from such sites way easier. It can monitor the clipboard for copied links, and it automatically pops up a window for you to enter a CAPTCHA when it’s necessary. I think for some sites it can even solve the CAPTCHA for you.
- w-ll 13y ago
  Also they have great support for downloading Youtube videos.
  - oxalo 13y ago
    For stuff between and not including 480p and 1080p. Google changed something with how it streams 1080p and JDownloader no longer catches it.
    - KwanEsq 13y ago
      They separated out the video streams and audio streams, so now the only 1080p link you can get is video only (and it uses a different ID to the old 1080p videos, so support needs to be explicitly added for calculating the link).
      - agrahul 13y ago
        I ended up writing a wrapper around youtube-dl and ffmpeg to download the MPEG-DASH video and audio streams and mux it because of this. It was a spur-of-the-moment hack, so don't expect error handling. https://github.com/rahulg/dotfiles/blob/master/tools/dashtube-dl https://github.com/rahulg/dotfiles/blob/master/tools/dashtub...
  - baldfat 13y ago
    I like youtube-dl better :) http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/
rohu1990 13y ago
Aria with apt-fast .. its heaven for package management in ubuntu
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  Have a blog post?
  - staticshock 13y ago
    http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-with-apt.html http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-wi...
Scene_Cast2 13y ago
Quick question that I couldn't figure out from reading documentation. Can this download a file from bittorrent and http simultaneously? A number of Linux ISOs are downloadable from http mirrors as well as a torrent.
- skrause 13y ago
  If a torrent uses web seeds, aria2 can use them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Web_seeding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Web_seeding
- dsl 13y ago
  Yup. Just include the torrent file and then one or more HTTP URLs. It will use the torrent metadata to validate HTTP chunks too.
dingdingdang 13y ago
But can we please have multi-segmented downloads without having to use 2nd party wrapper?
- nwh 13y ago
  aria2c -x5 Easy.
- icebraining 13y ago
  What do you mean by multi-segmented downloads? I thought it already did so.
gauravarwalr 13y ago
The ability to do downloads from multiple sources (mirrors) and torrent are the killer features for me. Will use it more often, instead of wget. :)
Mindless2112 13y ago
There's an Android binary, but is there a GUI for Android?
baldfat 13y ago
I use aria2 as the backend for Arch Linux's pacman for package management.
- kbar13 13y ago
  aria2 integration makes one of the fastest package management tools out there... faster.
adrenalinup 13y ago
Wow, you can also specify the algorithm for choosing the piece to download when multi-segmented downloads is chosen. --stream-piece-selector=inorder Very useful to start watching a video file before its fully downloaded. It must be the most advanced downloader. http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html#cmdoption--stream-piece-selector http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html#cmdo... I hacked axel to do the same but my patch was not perfect. https://github.com/adrenalinup/axel-incremental-downloading https://github.com/adrenalinup/axel-incremental-downloading Didn't knew that aria2 provided this out-of-the-box.
fiveturns 13y ago
I've been using Aria2 for a while now. You can run it as a daemon: aria2c --enable-rpc=true --rpc-listen-all=true --daemon --dir=/mnt/downloads --continue=true --max-concurrent-downloads=1 --max-connection-per-server=16 --max-tries=0 --split=16 --stream-piece-selector=geom --enable-http-pipelining=true You can find documentation for the various options here: http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 is a decent web client. I use this to post downloads to my server at home.
jakozaur 13y ago
I had to switch to aria2c for fetching larger from AWS S3 (50-150 MB). Otherwise a small peecent of downloads were slow (in EC2), b/c most other fetchers have really poor retry logic.

108 points by gulbrandr 13y ago

I used Aria2 in the past to download ISO's of Linux and FreeBSD. There is definitely an advantage to using multiple sources at once. On an unrelated note, it would be cool if large HTTP downloads provided a header indicating a BitTorrent source as well. That way intelligent clients could switch to BitTorrent or use both in parallel.

icebraining 13y ago
There actually is such an header, based on the Metalink format, and aria2 supports it! Unfortunately, while many support Metalink files, almost no other download manager supports Metalink/HTTP headers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#Example_Metalink.2FHTTP_header_fields http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#Example_Metalink.2FHTT...
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  That's pretty cool. Might be an excuse for me to mess around with Firefox and see if they'll accept a patch from me over the upcoming holidays.

rjzzleep 13y ago

if you use firefox it can become your default download manager with FlashGot. I remember having problems in Mac, but it works like a charm in linux

roryokane 13y ago

If you download a lot of files from free file hosting sites like Rapidshare or MEGA, check out JDownloader (http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en). Its interface is somewhat ugly, but it makes downloading many files from such sites way easier. It can monitor the clipboard for copied links, and it automatically pops up a window for you to enter a CAPTCHA when it’s necessary. I think for some sites it can even solve the CAPTCHA for you.

w-ll 13y ago
Also they have great support for downloading Youtube videos.
- oxalo 13y ago
  For stuff between and not including 480p and 1080p. Google changed something with how it streams 1080p and JDownloader no longer catches it.
  - KwanEsq 13y ago
    They separated out the video streams and audio streams, so now the only 1080p link you can get is video only (and it uses a different ID to the old 1080p videos, so support needs to be explicitly added for calculating the link).
    - agrahul 13y ago
      I ended up writing a wrapper around youtube-dl and ffmpeg to download the MPEG-DASH video and audio streams and mux it because of this. It was a spur-of-the-moment hack, so don't expect error handling. https://github.com/rahulg/dotfiles/blob/master/tools/dashtube-dl https://github.com/rahulg/dotfiles/blob/master/tools/dashtub...
- baldfat 13y ago
  I like youtube-dl better :) http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

rohu1990 13y ago

Aria with apt-fast .. its heaven for package management in ubuntu

IgorPartola 13y ago
Have a blog post?
- staticshock 13y ago
  http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-with-apt.html http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-wi...

Scene_Cast2 13y ago

Quick question that I couldn't figure out from reading documentation. Can this download a file from bittorrent and http simultaneously? A number of Linux ISOs are downloadable from http mirrors as well as a torrent.

skrause 13y ago
If a torrent uses web seeds, aria2 can use them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Web_seeding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Web_seeding
dsl 13y ago
Yup. Just include the torrent file and then one or more HTTP URLs. It will use the torrent metadata to validate HTTP chunks too.

dingdingdang 13y ago

But can we please have multi-segmented downloads without having to use 2nd party wrapper?

nwh 13y ago
aria2c -x5 Easy.
icebraining 13y ago
What do you mean by multi-segmented downloads? I thought it already did so.

gauravarwalr 13y ago

The ability to do downloads from multiple sources (mirrors) and torrent are the killer features for me. Will use it more often, instead of wget. :)

Mindless2112 13y ago

There's an Android binary, but is there a GUI for Android?

baldfat 13y ago

I use aria2 as the backend for Arch Linux's pacman for package management.

kbar13 13y ago
aria2 integration makes one of the fastest package management tools out there... faster.

adrenalinup 13y ago

Wow, you can also specify the algorithm for choosing the piece to download when multi-segmented downloads is chosen. --stream-piece-selector=inorder Very useful to start watching a video file before its fully downloaded. It must be the most advanced downloader. http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html#cmdoption--stream-piece-selector http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html#cmdo... I hacked axel to do the same but my patch was not perfect. https://github.com/adrenalinup/axel-incremental-downloading https://github.com/adrenalinup/axel-incremental-downloading Didn't knew that aria2 provided this out-of-the-box.

fiveturns 13y ago

I've been using Aria2 for a while now. You can run it as a daemon: aria2c --enable-rpc=true --rpc-listen-all=true --daemon --dir=/mnt/downloads --continue=true --max-concurrent-downloads=1 --max-connection-per-server=16 --max-tries=0 --split=16 --stream-piece-selector=geom --enable-http-pipelining=true You can find documentation for the various options here: http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 is a decent web client. I use this to post downloads to my server at home.

jakozaur 13y ago

I had to switch to aria2c for fetching larger from AWS S3 (50-150 MB). Otherwise a small peecent of downloads were slow (in EC2), b/c most other fetchers have really poor retry logic.