Today I need to download a lot of large files.It is estimated to be finished for a couple of hours.I can do that directly with my MacBook Air, but that means I need to keep it on for a long time.That is unacceptable since I need to bring my MacBook away.

Luckily, I have a Raspberry Pi that always running 24/7 at home.I can just ssh it and run wget in background, but it’s not efficient enough.I mean, I’m friendly with command line, but I want something fast.What I want is a download manager that I can access with web browser, just like transmission.But, transmission can only accept torrent files.I need it to accept more protocols, like HTTP and FTP.

GUI Aria2 adalah open source dan download manager dengan command prompt yang sangat populer. Aria2 mendukung protokol torrent secara default dan dapat mendownload file besar dengan mudah. Namun, beberapa orang mungkin tidak kompatibel dengan versi baris perintah karena perintah unduhan dapat membingungkan. Aria2 is a lightweight multi-protocol and multi-source command-line download manager. The application can: supports FTP, HTTP, HTTPS and BitTorrent. I like Transmission app but it lacks an important feature for me, which is Magnet Links. So, I searched the web looking for an alternative and found Aria2, which can: automatically download.torrent files from URLs, process Magnet links, and directly download normal files from http or ftp! Here is a brief tutorial on how to install aria2 and its web gui in addition to a simple file manager.

So then I found aria2.

aria2 is a lightweight multi-protocol and multi-source command-line download manager.It supports HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink!But it doesn’t have official web interface.

When I read more on their website, they recommend webui-aria2 as a frontend.This web UI can manipulate aria2 via built-in JSON-RPC interface!

All right, enough with the story, let’s go straight to the solution.

Solution

First, you need to login to your Raspberry pi via ssh.Then change your working directory to home.

Install some dependencies.We need to use git, tmux, python3, and aria2.

Download webui-aria2 to the current working directory.We can simply clone it with git. Nfs most wanted 2005 download game.

Aria2 Download Manager Integration

Start aria2 as tmux session.This will run aria2 in background and listen to RPC protocol.By default the RPC will listen 6800 port.Let’s leave it to that.

Start webui-aria2 as tmux session, too.We simply use python3 built-in HTTP server.This also will run the http server in background.We use port 8600 for HTTP server.

Bypass cpanel license check. That’s it, now open your Raspberry pi IP address with port 8600 from your browser.You can find out your Raspberry Pi ip address with ifconfig.

Run at startup

The solution above is enough assuming you never turn off your Raspberry pi.But it’s mostly not the case.You’re going to need to restart it once in a while.Or maybe there will be a sudden power failure.You never know.

To run the services in background, we need to create a shell script.Let’s call the script run-aria2.sh.You can edit it with nano, vim, or any text editor.

The content is similar with previous section.Here is the command I write on it.

Next thing is to make it executable with chmod.

In Raspbian OS, you can start a script immediately after finished booting by writing it in /etc/rc.local.So we need to execute previous shell script there.Open the file with your favorite text editor.

Make sure put the following line before exit 0.

If you’re worry that you write it wrong, here is my rc.local content looks like.

Now restart your Raspberry pi to check if it works.

After your Raspberry pi done restarting, it should be running in background.That’s it, enjoy your download manager!

Thanks for reading, I’ll write more articles like this in the future.

I used to download the large files with wget because I can simplyresume the download tasks with -c option. This option will checkthe size of the output file, and download the rest of the file from the server.I can even restart the download task with a different URI. This featureis not available in many sophisticated download managers.

Recently, I came across Aria2, which is a command line download managerwhich supports lots of protocols, including HTTP, FTP, BitTorrents, and etc.Similar to wget, I can resume the download tasks without problems! Andthere are several features which are not available in wget:

Multiple tasks and scheduling
Split the download task and download the file in parallel
Web UI
.. and etc

In this post, I would like to give a brief introduction to Aria2.

Installation

Before we can start our discussion, we have to install Aria2 first.

To install Aria2 on Ubuntu (or Debian), run the following command:

Besides, check the file permission of your .netrc file. It should be600, i.e. only the owner can read or write the file. You can change thefile permission with following command:

Download Files with Aria2

Aria2 is similar to wget command line tool. We can simply downloadthe files with aria2c command:

For example, to download the Debian 7.8 minimal CD image:

We can specify the output file name with -o option:

To resume a download task, we can specify the -c option:

If we wish to download a file parallelly, we can try the -x option:

Run Aria2 as a Daemon

If we wish to use Aria2 as a download manager, we should run Aria2 as adaemon.

To start the Aria2 daemon:

By default, Aria2 will perform 5 tasks at the same time, to change thenumber of concurrent download tasks, we can specify the -j option:

For example, to download the files sequentially:

After starting the Aria2 daemon, click here for the Aria2 Web UI. You canadd/remove the download tasks in the Aria2 Web UI.

Control Daemon with aria2rpc

Aria2 provides a command line tool, aria2rpc, to control the daemon.However, it is not installed by default.

To obtain aria2rpc, run the following command:

After these steps, move aria2rpc to your $PATH, so that wecan run aria2rpc directly.

Now, we can add a download task with:

After adding a download task, an ID will be printed. We can remove a taskwith:

Aria2 Download Manager Windows

You may find more usages with:

Aria 2 Download Manager