
Aria2 – Next-generation download utility - gulbrandr
http://aria2.sourceforge.net/
======
IgorPartola
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
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.2FHTT...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#Example_Metalink.2FHTTP_header_fields)

~~~
IgorPartola
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.

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roryokane
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
Also they have great support for downloading Youtube videos.

~~~
oxalo
For stuff between and not including 480p and 1080p. Google changed something
with how it streams 1080p and JDownloader no longer catches it.

~~~
KwanEsq
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
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/dashtub...](https://github.com/rahulg/dotfiles/blob/master/tools/dashtube-
dl)

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rohu1990
Aria with apt-fast .. its heaven for package management in ubuntu

~~~
IgorPartola
Have a blog post?

~~~
staticshock
[http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-
wi...](http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-with-
apt.html)

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gauravarwalr
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. :)

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

~~~
kbar13
aria2 integration makes one of the fastest package management tools out
there... faster.

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fiveturns
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.

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adrenalinup
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#cmdo...](http://aria2.sourceforge.net/manual/en/html/aria2c.html#cmdoption
--stream-piece-selector)

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.

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Scene_Cast2
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
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)

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

~~~
icebraining
What do you mean by multi-segmented downloads? I thought it already did so.

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jakozaur
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.

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Mindless2112
There's an Android binary, but is there a GUI for Android?

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rjzzleep
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

