Stop a download after specified file size

RodWC · 08-04-2006, 09:50 PM

Hi all, I have satellite Internet service, which is still subject to the silly "Fair Access Policy." I have a roughly 350MB "bucket" which refills at a steady rate which is a little faster than good dial-up. So, I can download around 370MB all at once, then it slows down. I don't like to FAP myself, so I was just wondering if there is a program in Linux (Debian, specifically) to stop a download (700M ISO, for example) after a certain amount (~350M).

Thanks!

jonaskoelker · 08-07-2006, 11:43 AM

I think what you want can be done with wget.

Code:

$ wget --help | grep continue
  -c,  --continue  ... resume getting a partially-downloaded file
$ wget -q http://www.site.example/file.iso &
$ while [ $(ls -l file.iso | awk '{print $5}' -lt 350000000 ]; do true; done
$ kill -INT $!
$ sleep 3600 # until you have more bandwidth
$ wget -c -q http://www.site.example/file.iso &

You might want to put this inside a shell script, perhaps in a loop, and replace 350000000 with 350MB *plus* the file size before downloading. `$!' is the process ID of the process last put into the background. The rest have manual pages (see also man bash).

I'll happily explain if you need me to. If so, please tell me the exact sequence of commands you have already tried, your reasoning behind it, and what you don't understand. script(1) might come in handy for this.

RodWC · 08-18-2006, 08:33 PM

Thanks very much I will give this a try. I don't have the time at this point but will definitely try that out and get back to you here sometime.

Ehwaz · 08-19-2006, 06:45 AM

Maybe a bit obvious, but still...
Do you have enough disk space left? I downloaded an ISO once and it always stopped at 500MB, wouldn't budge any longer. When I suddenly looked at the free disk space, I noticed I only had 500MB left...