Aria2

aria2 is lightweight, command-line download manager featuring support for HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, BitTorrent and Metalink protocols. aria2 is generally regarded as one of the lightest and fastest download managers available and across multiple platforms. Some of the more outstanding features of aria2 include great flexibility of layout through the use of numerous options and configuration files and a built-in XML-RPC and JSON-RPC management interface.

Installation

Install aria2 from official repositories.

You may also want to install aria2-systemd.

Execution

The executable name for the aria2 package is aria2c. This legacy naming convention has been retained for backwards compatibility.

Configuration

aria2.conf

aria2 looks to ~/.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 ~/.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 ~/.aria2/aria2.conf does not yet exist and you wish to simplify the management of configuration options:

$ touch ~/.aria2/aria2.conf

Example .bash_alias

alias down='aria2c --conf-path=${HOME}/.aria2/aria2.conf'
alias rapid='aria2c --conf-path=/file/aria2.rapidshare'

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 the aria2 man page 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() 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.

arch ~ $ cd /file
arch /file  $ chmod 600 /file/aria2.rapidshare
arch /file $ 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.

Frontends

In order to use frontends start aria2c with --enable-rpc option. Here is a list of available UIs.

Warning: Note that configurations changed using these tools are not stored.

• Diana — A command line tool

https://github.com/baskerville/diana || diana^AUR

• Webui — Html frontend

https://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2 ||

It is convenient to append a monitor function based on diana in your shell configuration file:

da(){ watch -ctn 1 "(echo -e '\033[32mGID\t\t Name\t\t\t\t\t\t\t%\tDown\tSize\tSpeed\tUp\tS/L\tTime\033[36m'; diana list| cut -c -112; echo -e '\033[37m'; diana stats)" }

Useful Tips & Tricks

pacman XferCommand

aria2c can be used as the default download manager for the pacman package manager. See the ArchWiki article Improve Pacman Performance for additional details.

Custom Minimal Build

Gains in application response can be gleaned by removing unused features and protocols. Further gains can be accomplished by removing support for external libraries with a custom build. The following example creates an aria2c executable with HTTP/HTTPS, FTP download and asynchronous DNS support only. See the Arch Build System page for further details.

Minimal PKGBUILD Example

pkgname=aria2
pkgver=1.10.0
pkgrel=100
pkgdesc="Download utility that supports HTTP(S) and FTP"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
url="http://aria2.sourceforge.net/"
license=('GPL')
depends=('c-ares' 'gnutls' 'zlib' 'ca-certificates')
source=(http://downloads.sourceforge.net/aria2/aria2-${pkgver}.tar.bz2)
md5sums=('1386df9b2003f42695062a0e1232e488')

build() {
  cd ${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}

 ./configure --disable-bittorrent --disable-metalink \
 --disable-dependency-tracking --disable-xmltest --disable-nls \
 --without-sqlite3 --without-libxml2 --without-libexpat \
 --with-ca-bundle=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt --prefix=/usr

 make
}

package() {
	cd ${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}
	make DESTDIR=${pkgdir} install
}

aria2 sometimes stops downloading without exiting

You can use this little script to restart the download every 30 minutes:

#! /bin/bash

if [ ! -x /usr/bin/aria2c ]; then
    echo "aria2c is not installed"
    exit 1
fi

if [ ! -d ~/.torrentdl ]; then
    mkdir ~/.torrentdl
fi

while :; do
    for i in $@; do
        MAGNET=false
	if [[ "$i" = magnet* ]]; then
	    MAGNET=true
	elif [ ! -f "$i" ]; then
	    echo "The file ('$i') is not given or does not exist"
	    exit 1
	fi
	if ! aria2c --hash-check-only=true "$i" &> /dev/null; then
	    aria2c "$i"
	    sleep 30m && kill -9 $(pidof aria2c)
	else
	    echo "Torrent is downloaded!"
	fi
    done
done

See also

• aria2 Wiki - Official Site
• aria2 Usage Examples - Official Site
• Aria2c Downloader through VPN Tunnel - UnOfficial Site