Being a command line junkie, I prefer using the terminal for my downloading needs. Let me introduce you to Aria2. As from the website.

aria2 is a multi-protocol & multi-source, cross platform download utility. The supported protocols are HTTP(S), FTP, BitTorrent (DHT, PEX, MSE/PE), and Metalink.

Using Fedora, my favourite distro of choice, you first have to install it via yum.

yum install aria2

Next, you’ll need to have your cookies saved. Refer to the previous post for more details.

Now comes the fun part, actually downloading the files.

Here’s a file which I uploaded, a movie trailer for a recent movie:-

http://rapidshare.com/files/207110649/terminatorsalvation-tlr1_h1080p.mov

To download with aria2, type in the following command:-

aria2c -s 5 -j 1 -c --load-cookies=/home/raja/cookies.txt http://rapidshare.com/files/207110649/terminatorsalvation-tlr1_h1080p.mov

The switches for this explained:-

• -s 5 Split the download into 5 connections
• -j 1 How many files to download at once.
• -c Continue any paused / cancelled downloads
• –load-cookies /path/to/cookie The rapidshare cookie file that was created earlier. This has to be an absolute path
• And finally the actual URL of the file

If you have a list of files to download, you can enter them in to a text file, and pass them to aria2 for batch downloading via the -i list_file_name option. e.g.

aria2c -s 5 -j 1 -c --load-cookies=/home/raja/cookies.txt -i lists.txt

Happy batch downloading!!!