What is a Webserver?

Last updated: March 28, 2011

A web server is a program that serves content (web pages) using HTTP protocol.

The content can either be static or dynamic. Every webserver in the internet has a public IP address and one or more domain names resolving to that IP address. When you enter the URL http://www.example.com/index.html in your browser, a request will be sent from the browser to the server hosting "example.com" (the server is identified using the DNS resolution mechanism). The server then fetches the page named index.html, parses it (using the handler of the programming language in which the content is coded) and sends it to your browser and the browser will display the content.

Some common web servers are:

The term web server is also commonly used in reference to the computer on which the web server program is running.

Tags: server, http



How do I use wget?

Last updated: March 28, 2011

Wget is easy to use:

From the command line:

# wget http://www.example.com/somefile.tgz

Some basic options used with wget.

-V
--version
This displays the version of Wget.

-h
--help
This describes all of Wget's command-line options.

Logging and Input File Options

-o logfile
--output-file=logfile

This option log all messages to logfile. The messages are normally reported to standard error.

-a logfile
--append-output=logfile

This option appends the output to logfile instead of overwriting the old log file.
If logfile does not exist, a new file is created.

-d
--debug
This option turns on debug output, which means various information important to the developers of Wget if it does not work properly. Compiling with debug support is safe. Wget compiled with the debug support will not print any debug info unless requested with -d.

-q
--quiet
Turn off Wget's output.

-v
--verbose
Turn on verbose output, with all the available data. The default output is verbose.

-nv
--non-verbose
Non-verbose output---turn off verbose without being completely quiet (use -q for that), which means that error messages and basic information still get printed.

Tags: cli, http