Wget: Is there a way to pass username and password from a file?

Question

Is there a way to pass the username and password from a file instead of the command line via --user and --password?

Background: I want to run wget via cron and don't want the username/password show up in process view

Answer 1

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the .netrc file. Create the file if it doesn't exists and set safe permissions:

touch ~/.netrc
chmod 600 ~/.netrc

Subsequently add the hostname, username and password with the machine login and password keywords:

echo 'machine example.com login casper password CasperPassword' >> ~/.netrc

If you then run wget https://example.com and the server responds with 401 Authorization Required, wget will retry using the username and password from the ~/.netrc file.

With curl it's needed to add the --netrc (or --netrc-optional or --netrc-file) parameter, because curl will not read the .netrc file without that.

When using this from cron, ensure that the correct HOME environment variable is set. Cron often defaults to HOME=/ (in that case you would have to create the file as /.netrc, yet a better solution would be to set an appropriate HOME at the script's start, like export HOME=/root).

The ~/.netrc file can be used for multiple hosts. More info about .netrc at inetutils manual and curl manual.

Answer 2

Use a .wgetrc file (GNU manual) in which you can set username and passwords for either or both ftp and http.

To use the same credentials for both specify

user=casper
password=CasperPassword

or individually

ftp_user=casperftp
ftp_password=casperftppass
http_user=casperhttp
http_password=casperhttppass

Answer 3

In many regards curl can be a better choice. Wget became a bit stale over time.

curl's -n switch can be used for this task: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html#-n