aria2

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From the project home page:

aria2 is a lightweight multi-protocol & multi-source command-line download utility. It supports HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, BitTorrent and Metalink. aria2 can be manipulated via built-in JSON-RPC and XML-RPC interfaces.

Installation

Install the aria2 package.

To use aria2 as a daemon, you can write a systemd user unit.

Note: The executable is called aria2c.

Configuration

aria2.conf

aria2 looks to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aria2/aria2.conf for a set of global configuration options by default. This behavior can be modified with the --conf-path switch:

  • Download aria2.example.rar using the options specified in the configuration file /file/aria2.rapidshare 
$ aria2c --conf-path=/file/aria2.rapidshare http://rapidshare.com/files/12345678/aria2.example.rar

If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aria2/aria2.conf exists and the options specified in /file/aria2.rapidshare are desired, the --no-conf switch must be appended to the command:

  • Do not use the default configuration file and download aria2.example.rar using the options specified in the configuration file /file/aria2.rapidshare 
$ aria2c --no-conf --conf-path=/file/aria2.rapidshare http://rapidshare.com/files/12345678/aria2.example.rar

If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aria2/aria2.conf does not yet exist and you wish to simplify the management of configuration options: 

$ touch $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aria2/aria2.conf

Example aria2.conf

continue
dir=${HOME}/Desktop
file-allocation=none
input-file=${HOME}/.aria2/input.conf
log-level=warn
max-connection-per-server=4
min-split-size=5M
on-download-complete=exit

This is essentially the same as if running the following: 

$ aria2c --dir=${HOME}/Desktop --file-allocation=none --input-file=${HOME}/.aria2/input.conf --on-download-complete=exit --log-level=warn FILE
Note: The example aria2.conf above may incorrectly use the $HOME variable. Some users have reported the curly brace syntax to explicitly create a separate ${HOME} subdirectory in the aria2 working directory. Such a directory may be difficult to traverse as bash will consider it to be the $HOME environment variable. For now, it is recommended to use absolute path names in aria2.conf.

Option details

continue
Continue downloading a partially downloaded file if a corresponding control file exists.
dir=${HOME}/Desktop
Store the downloaded file(s) in ~/Desktop.
file-allocation=none
Do not pre-allocate disk space before downloading begins. (Default: prealloc) 1
input-file=${HOME}/.aria2/input.conf
Download a list of line, or TAB separated URIs found in ~/.aria2/input.conf
log-level=warn
Set log level to output warnings and errors only. (Default: debug)
max-connection-per-server=4
Set a maximum of four (4) connections to each server per file. (Default: 1)
min-split-size=5M
Only split the file if the size is larger than 2*5MB = 10MB. (Default: 20M)
on-download-complete=exit
Run the exit command and exit the shell once the download session is complete.
Example input file #1
  • Download aria2-1.10.0.tar.bz2 from two separate sources to ~/Desktop before merging as aria2-1.10.0.tar.bz2 
http://aria2.net/files/stable/aria2-1.10.0/aria2-1.10.0.tar.bz2    http://sourceforge.net/projects/aria2/files/stable/aria2-1.10.0/aria2-1.10.0.tar.bz2
Example input file #2
  • Download aria2-1.9.5.tar.bz2 and save to /file/old as aria2.old.tar.bz2 &
  • Download aria2-1.10.0.tar.bz2 and save to ~/Desktop as aria2.new.tar.bz2 
http://aria2.net/files/stable/aria2-1.9.5/aria2-1.9.5.tar.bz2
  dir=/file/old
  out=aria2.old.tar.bz2
http://aria2.net/files/stable/aria2-1.10.0/aria2-1.10.0.tar.bz2
  out=aria2.new.tar.bz2

Additional notes

1 --file-allocation=falloc
Recommended for newer file systems such as ext4 (with extents support), btrfs or xfs as it allocates large files (GB) almost instantly. Do not use falloc with legacy file systems such as ext3 as prealloc consumes approximately the same amount of time as standard allocation would while locking the aria2 process from proceeding to download.
Tip: See aria2c --help=#all and aria2c(1) § OPTIONS for a complete list of configuration options.

Example aria2.rapidshare

http-user=USER_NAME
http-passwd=PASSWORD
allow-overwrite=true
dir=/file/Downloads
file-allocation=falloc
enable-http-pipelining=true
input-file=/file/input.rapidshare
log-level=error
max-connection-per-server=2
summary-interval=120

Option details

http-user=USER_NAME
Set HTTP username as USER_NAME for password-protected logins. This affects all URIs.
http-passwd=PASSWORD
Set HTTP password as PASSWORD for password-protected logins. This affects all URIs.
allow-overwrite=true
Restart download if a corresponding control file does not exist. (Default: false)
dir=/file/Downloads
Store the downloaded file(s) in /file/Downloads.
file-allocation=falloc
Call posix_fallocate(3) to allocate disk space before downloading begins. (Default: prealloc)
enable-http-pipelining=true
Enable HTTP/1.1 pipelining to overcome network latency and to reduce network load. (Default: false)
input-file=/file/input.rapidshare
Download a list of single line of TAB separated URIs found in /file/input.rapidshare
log-level=error
Set log level to output errors only. (Default: debug)
max-connection-per-server=2
Set a maximum of two (2) connections to each server per file. (Default: 1)
summary-interval=120
Output download progress summary every 120 seconds. (Default: 60) 3

Additional notes

  • Because aria2.rapidshare the contains a username and password, it is advisable to set permissions on the file to 600, or similar.
$ cd /file
$ chmod 600 /file/aria2.rapidshare
$ ls -l
total 128M
-rw------- 1 arch users  167 Aug 20 00:00 aria2.rapidshare
3 summary-interval=0
Supresses download progress summary output and may improve overall performance. Logs will continue to be output according to the value specified in the log-level option.
Tip: The example configuration file can also be applied to Hotfile, DepositFiles, et.al.
Note: Command-line options always take precedence over options listed in a configuration file.

Example aria2.bittorrent

bt-seed-unverified
max-overall-upload-limit=1M
max-upload-limit=128K
seed-ratio=5.0
seed-time=240

Option details

bt-seed-unverified=false
Do not check the hash of the file(s) before seeding. (Default: true)
max-overall-upload-limit=1M
Set maximum overall upload speed to 1MB/sec. (Default: 0)
max-upload-limit=128K
Set maximum upload speed per torrent to 128K/sec. (Default: 0)
seed-ratio=5.0
Seed completed torrents until share ratio reaches 5.0. (Default: 1.0)
seed-time=240
Seed completed torrents for 240 minutes.
Note: If both seed-ratio and seed-time are specified, seeding ends when at least one of the conditions is satisfied.

Example aria2.daemon

This configuration can be used to start Aria2 as a service. It can be used in conjunction with several of the frontends listed below. Note that rpc-user and rpc-pass are deprecated, but most frontends have not been ported to the new authentication yet. Do not forget to change user, password and Download directory. 

continue
daemon=true
dir=/home/aria2/Downloads
file-allocation=falloc
log-level=warn
max-connection-per-server=4
max-concurrent-downloads=3
max-overall-download-limit=0
min-split-size=5M
enable-http-pipelining=true

enable-rpc=true
rpc-listen-all=true
rpc-user=rpcuser
rpc-passwd=rpcpass

Frontends

Note: Settings implemented in frontends do not affect aria2's own configuration, and it is uncertain whether the different UIs reuse aria2 configuration if a custom one has been made. Users should ensure their desired parameters are effectively implemented within selected tools and that they are stored persistently (uGet for example has its own aria2's command line which sticks across reboots).

Web UIs

Note: These frontends need aria2c to be started with --enable-rpc in order to work. They are meant to run on your local computer, not on a remote server that downloads using aria
  • YaaW — Yet Another Aria2 Web Frontend in pure HTML/CSS/Javascript.
https://github.com/binux/yaaw || yaaw-gitAUR
  • Webui — Html frontend for aria2.
https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 || webui-aria2AUR
  • aria2rpc — Command line tool for connecting to a remote instance of aria2c. If aria2c is installed it can be found under /usr/share/doc/aria2/xmlrpc/aria2rpc.
https://github.com/tatsuhiro-t/aria2/blob/master/doc/xmlrpc/aria2rpc || aria2

Other UIs

Note: These frontends do not need aria2c to be started with --enable-rpc to function.
  • aria2fe — A GUI for the CLI-based aria2 download utility.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/aria2fe/ || aria2feAUR
  • Persepolis — Graphical front-end for aria2 download manager with lots of features. Supports HTTP and FTP.
https://github.com/persepolisdm/ || persepolis, persepolis-gitAUR
  • uGet — Feature-rich GTK/CLI download manager which can use aria2 as a back-end by enabling a built-in plugin.
https://ugetdm.com || uget

Tips and tricks

Download the packages without installing them

Just use the command below: 

# pacman -Sp packages | aria2c -i -

pacman -Sp lists the URLs of the packages on stdout, instead of downloading them, then | pipes it to the next command. Finally, the -i in aria2c -i - switch to aria2c means that the URLs for files to be downloaded should be read from the file specified, but if - is passed, then read the URLs from stdin.

pacman XferCommand

See pacman/Tips and tricks#aria2.

Changing the User Agent

Some sites may filter the requests based on your User Agent, since Aria2 is not a well known downloader, it may be good to use a most known downloader or browser as the Aria's User Agent. Just use the -U option like this: 

$ aria2c -UWget http://some-url-to-download/file.xyz

You can use whatever you want, like -UMozilla/5.0 and so on.

Using Aria2 with makepkg

You can use Aria2 instead of curl to download source files, just change the DLAGENTS variable as follows: 

/etc/makepkg.conf
[...]
DLAGENTS=('ftp::/usr/bin/aria2c -UWget -s4 %u -o %o'
          'http::/usr/bin/aria2c -UWget -s4 %u -o %o'
          'https::/usr/bin/aria2c -UWget -s4 %u -o %o'
          'rsync::/usr/bin/rsync --no-motd -z %u %o'
          'scp::/usr/bin/scp -C %u %o')
[...]
Note: Use the -UWget option to change the user agent to Wget. It may prevent problems when downloading from sites that filters the requests based on the user agent to provide different responses on what the users uses to access the URL. Since Aria2 is a lesser known downloader it may be recognized by the site as a browser instead of a downloader, so changing the user agent to Wget may fix it in most cases

Using Aria2 as a Daemon

To use Aria2 as a daemon, you should write a systemd user unit. For example: 

~/.config/systemd/user/aria2cd.service
[Unit]
Description=Aria2 Daemon

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/bin/aria2c --conf-path=/path/to/conf

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

#Example aria2.daemon shows an example configuration file.

Seed a torrent with Aria2

To seed an already downloaded torrent, use the --check-integrity option: 

$ aria2c --check-integrity=true --seed-ratio=0.0 --dir="/path/to/iso" "/path/to/torrent/archlinux-2020.03.01-x86_64.iso.torrent"

Specifying --seed-ratio=0.0 will seed the file forever.

See also