How to retry downloads automatically using wget

Network instability, server timeouts, or transient errors can disrupt downloads. Instead of manually restarting, wget can retry failed downloads automatically, improving reliability and reducing human intervention.

By setting retry counts and intervals, you ensure that temporary issues are overcome with minimal effort. If the server recovers or the connection stabilizes, wget resumes seamlessly without losing progress or data.

This resilience is helpful for overnight jobs, large data pulls, or fragile network conditions. Automatic retries turn wget into a robust, hands-off solution for consistent file retrieval.

1. Specify the number of retries with the --tries option.

   $ wget --tries=10 https://www.example.com/unreliable-file.zip

   wget will attempt up to 10 times before giving up.

2. Use --waitretry to set a delay between retries.

   $ wget --tries=10 --waitretry=5 https://www.example.com/unreliable-file.zip

3. Monitor logs to see if retries eventually succeed.
4. Adjust the number of retries or delay based on network conditions.
5. Combine with --continue to resume partial downloads after network recovery.