[CLUE-Tech] Looking for GUI download manager

[George Gammel]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jed S. Baer"
To: <clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us>
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: [CLUE-Tech] Looking for GUI download manager


> On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 00:33:27 -0400
> Angelo Bertolli  wrote:
>
> >
> > Oops, ,nevermind, your subject line says GUI.  But wget has a nice look
> > on the command line... it's sort of graphical with a progress bar that
> > goes across.
>
> Actually, wget is perfect for what George is looking to do. Should be a
> simple matter to install it from an RPM (just make sure you get an RPM for
> your version of Mandrake). Setting up a daily, or M-F, or whatever
> schedule chron job to run wget on that schedule should also be quite
> simple.

Well, it seems I got lucky and found that wget is already installed.  I was
playing around with it and found that something like : " wget -O myfile
myurl" should work, where I put in the desired save filename for myfile and
the URL for myurl.  I tried it out on several of the items I need to
download and it worked swell.  I don't think I could use the command option
to put all the URL's in a text file.  It looks like all the results would be
saved to one output file.  The list of downloads has several different
formats (some text, some HTTP, some Perl Script, and one zipped XL file).
If they were all in one file, it would be very hard to process this data
later on.

Now, the next task seems to be to construct some kind of batch or script
file that groups all the wget commands together.  I could also put in some
directory houskeeping (such as make new directory before I begin and rename
the directory after all downloads are done).    Another issue I would like
address involves finding a way to determine the current date.  One URL has
the current date as part of the URL.  Obviously, I need to determine the
date, do some string manipulations to form the right URL address, then
include that result in one of the wget commands.  I could also use the date
info to rename the folder when I'm done.  I have had some experience with
Visual Basic, and what I need to do would be easy using VB.  But, obviously,
that idea is out on a Linux system.  I would probably need to use something
like awk or perl, but I know very little about either.  Any ideas?

The last hurdle will be to automate this by using cron to run the script
file at a the proper time.  I think I should wait until I have the script
file constructed and working before I tackle that issue.  Thanks for your
help.

George Gammel