[PLUG] wget timeout value
Carla Schroder
carla at bratgrrl.com
Fri Oct 17 22:00:02 UTC 2003
On Friday 17 October 2003 7:58 pm, Brian Quade wrote:
> I have been using wget to download files and was reading the man page to
> see how I could optimize it more. The -T option sets the timeout value
> which is 900 seconds (15 minutes) by default. The documentation says,
> "Please do not lower the timeout value unless you know what you are
> doing". So I am wondering what could happen if I set it to 10 or
> something? Does anyone know? Would it crash the server or lock up my
> system or something? Would it just be too much of a load on the server
> reconnecting too often? I'm really curious but I feel like I shouldn't
> do it because, "I don't know what I am doing".
>
>
I have a faint, rusty memory that making the timeout value too low could cause
some problems navigating ipchains, or going through proxies. I've forgotten
everything about ipchains, so who knows. As far as just sitting down and
typing something like 'wget www.masses.o.mp3s.com', and wandering away while
it goes to work, I can't imagine what awful things could happen by changing
the timeout value to something that suits you better. I think none, unless
you use it in some automated functions, and it gives up too soon if there is
connection flakiness.
I suppose too long a timeout could get annoying if you have some kind of bot
or script that retrieves pages at regular intervals, and it waits too long to
give up on a bad connection.
Don't you love helpful man pages? :P
--
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Carla Schroder
www.tuxcomputing.com
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