Wget is an non-interactive down-loader which downloads files from the web. HTTP and FTP protocols being used for downloading the files over internet. However if you don’t have installed wget utility on your system then you may across “bash: wget: command not found” error while execution. This post quickly helps to resolve  “bash: wget: command not found” error.

Error description:

You get following error while using wget command:

[root@rhel2 ~]# wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
-bash: wget: command not found

How to resolve “bash: wget: command not found”

To resolve “bash: wget: command not found” error you need to install wget utility on the server.

On Debian and Ubuntu:

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install wget

Sample installation logs:

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install wget
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  wget
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 298 kB of archives.
After this operation, 901 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ap-south-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64                                                                                         wget amd64 1.17.1-1ubuntu1.2 [298 kB]
Fetched 298 kB in 0s (401 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package wget.
(Reading database ... 51222 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../wget_1.17.1-1ubuntu1.2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking wget (1.17.1-1ubuntu1.2) ...
Processing triggers for install-info (6.1.0.dfsg.1-5) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
Setting up wget (1.17.1-1ubuntu1.2) ...

On RHEL and Centos. 

[root@rhel2 ~]# yum install wget

Sample installation logs:

[root@rhel2 ~]# yum install wget
Loaded plugins: amazon-id, rhui-lb, search-disabled-repos
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package wget.x86_64 0:1.14-13.el7 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

========================================================================================================================================================================
 Package                        Arch                             Version                               Repository                                                  Size
========================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 wget                           x86_64                           1.14-13.el7                           rhui-REGION-rhel-server-releases                           546 k

Transaction Summary
========================================================================================================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 546 k
Installed size: 2.0 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
wget-1.14-13.el7.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                      | 546 kB  00:00:00
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
  Installing : wget-1.14-13.el7.x86_64                                                                                                                              1/1
  Verifying  : wget-1.14-13.el7.x86_64                                                                                                                              1/1

Installed:
  wget.x86_64 0:1.14-13.el7

Complete!
[root@rhel2 ~]#

How to Use wget for downloading files over web.

Syntax:

wget http://url/file

or 

wget ftp://url/file

Sample wget download logs:

[root@rhel2 ~]# wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
--2017-05-01 00:45:45--  http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
Resolving packages.sw.be (packages.sw.be)... failed: Name or service not known.
wget: unable to resolve host address ‘packages.sw.be’
[root@rhel2 ~]# wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm
--2017-05-01 00:46:16--  http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm
Resolving dl.fedoraproject.org (dl.fedoraproject.org)... 209.132.181.24, 209.132.181.25, 209.132.181.23
Connecting to dl.fedoraproject.org (dl.fedoraproject.org)|209.132.181.24|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 14704 (14K) [application/x-rpm]
Saving to: ‘epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm’

100%[==============================================================================================================================>] 14,704      57.8KB/s   in 0.2s

2017-05-01 00:46:17 (57.8 KB/s) - ‘epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm’ saved [14704/14704]

In the above example we have downloaded file “rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm” from the url location “packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.2-2.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm” using http protocol.