Skip to content
Snippets Groups Projects
FAQ 31.8 KiB
Newer Older
  • Learn to ignore specific revisions
  • Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    Updated: March 16, 2004 (http://curl.haxx.se/docs/faq.html)
                                      _   _ ____  _
                                  ___| | | |  _ \| |
                                 / __| | | | |_) | |
                                | (__| |_| |  _ <| |___
    
                                 \___|\___/|_| \_\_____|
    
    FAQ
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
     1. Philosophy
      1.1 What is cURL?
      1.2 What is libcurl?
      1.3 What is cURL not?
      1.4 When will you make curl do XXXX ?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      1.5 Who makes cURL?
      1.6 What do you get for making cURL?
    
      1.7 What about CURL from curl.com?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      1.8 I have a problem who do I mail?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
     2. Install Related Problems
      2.1 configure doesn't find OpenSSL even when it is installed
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
       2.1.1. native linker doesn't find OpenSSL
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
       2.1.2. only the libssl lib is missing
      2.2 Does curl work/build with other SSL libraries?
      2.3 Where can I find a copy of LIBEAY32.DLL?
      2.4 Does cURL support Socks (RFC 1928) ?
    
     3. Usage Problems
      3.1 curl: (1) SSL is disabled, https: not supported
      3.2 How do I tell curl to resume a transfer?
      3.3 Why doesn't my posting using -F work?
      3.4 How do I tell curl to run custom FTP commands?
      3.5 How can I disable the Pragma: nocache header?
    
      3.6 Does curl support ASP, XML, XHTML or HTML version Y?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.7 Can I use curl to delete/rename a file through FTP?
      3.8 How do I tell curl to follow HTTP redirects?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.9 How do I use curl in my favorite programming language?
    
      3.10 What about SOAP, WebDAV, XML-RPC or similar protocols over HTTP?
    
      3.11 How do I POST with a different Content-Type?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.12 Why do FTP specific features over HTTP proxy fail?
    
      3.13 Why does my single/double quotes fail?
    
      3.14 Does curl support javascript or pac (automated proxy config)?
    
      3.15 Can I do recursive fetches with curl?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
     4. Running Problems
      4.1 Problems connecting to SSL servers.
    
      4.2 Why do I get problems when I use & or % in the URL?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.3 How can I use {, }, [ or ] to specify multiple URLs?
      4.4 Why do I get downloaded data even though the web page doesn't exist?
      4.5 Why do I get return code XXX from a HTTP server?
       4.5.1 "400 Bad Request"
       4.5.2 "401 Unauthorized"
       4.5.3 "403 Forbidden"
       4.5.4 "404 Not Found"
       4.5.5 "405 Method Not Allowed"
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.6 Can you tell me what error code 142 means?
    
      4.7 How do I keep user names and passwords secret in Curl command lines?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.9 Curl can't authenticate to the server that requires NTLM?
    
      4.10 My HTTP request using HEAD, PUT or DELETE doesn't work!
    
      4.11 Why does my HTTP range requests return the full document?
    
      4.12 Why do I get "certificate verify failed" ?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
     5. libcurl Issues
    
      5.2 How can I receive all data into a large memory chunk?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      5.3 How do I fetch multiple files with libcurl?
    
      5.4 Does libcurl do Winsock initing on win32 systems?
    
      5.5 Does CURLOPT_WRITEDATA and CURLOPT_READDATA work on win32 ?
    
      5.6 What about Keep-Alive or persistent connections?
    
      5.7 Link errors when building libcurl on Windows!
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
     6. License Issues
      6.1 I have a GPL program, can I use the libcurl library?
      6.2 I have a closed-source program, can I use the libcurl library?
    
      6.3 I have a BSD licensed program, can I use the libcurl library?
      6.4 I have a program that uses LGPL libraries, can I use libcurl?
      6.5 Can I modify curl/libcurl for my program and keep the changes secret?
      6.6 Can you please change the curl/libcurl license to XXXX?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    ==============================================================================
    
    1. Philosophy
    
      1.1 What is cURL?
    
      cURL (or simply just 'curl') is a command line tool for getting or sending
      files using URL syntax. The name is a play on 'Client for URLs', originally
    
      with URL spelled in uppercase to make it obvious it deals with URLs. The
    
      fact it can also be pronounced 'see URL' also helped, it works as an
      abbrivation for "Client URL Request Library" or why not the recursive
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      version: "Curl URL Request Library".
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      Curl supports a range of common Internet protocols, currently including
    
      HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, LDAP, DICT, TELNET and FILE.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      We spell it cURL or just curl. We pronounce it with an initial k sound:
      [kurl].
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      NOTE: there are numerous sub-projects and related projects that also use the
      word curl in the project names in various combinations, but you should take
      notice that this FAQ is directed at the command-line tool named curl (and
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      libcurl the library), and may therefore not be valid for other curl-related
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      1.2 What is libcurl?
    
    
      libcurl is a reliable and portable library which provides you with an easy
    
      interface to a range of common Internet protocols.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      You can use libcurl for free in your application, be it open source,
      commercial or closed-source.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
      1.3 What is cURL not?
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Curl is *not* a wget clone. That is a common misconception.  Never, during
      curl's development, have we intended curl to replace wget or compete on its
      market. Curl is targeted at single-shot file transfers.
    
      Curl is not a web site mirroring program. If you want to use curl to mirror
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      something: fine, go ahead and write a script that wraps around curl to make
      it reality (like curlmirror.pl does).
    
    
      Curl is not an FTP site mirroring program. Sure, get and send FTP with curl
      but if you want systematic and sequential behavior you should write a
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      script (or write a new program that interfaces libcurl) and do it.
    
      Curl is not a PHP tool, even though it works perfectly well when used from
      or with PHP.
    
    
      Curl is not a single-OS program. Curl exists, compiles, builds and runs
    
      under a wide range of operating systems, including all modern Unixes (and a
      bunch of older ones too), Windows, Amiga, BeOS, OS/2, OS X, QNX etc.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      1.4 When will you make curl do XXXX ?
    
    
      We love suggestions of what to change in order to make curl and libcurl
      better. We do however believe in a few rules when it comes to the future of
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      curl:
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      * Curl -- the command line tool -- is to remain a non-graphical command line
        tool. If you want GUIs or fancy scripting capabilities, you should look
        for another tool that uses libcurl.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      * We do not add things to curl that other small and available tools already
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        do very fine at the side. Curl's output is fine to pipe into another
        program or redirect to another file for the next program to interpret.
    
    
      * We focus on protocol related issues and improvements. If you wanna do more
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        magic with the supported protocols than curl currently does, chances are
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        big we will agree. If you wanna add more protocols, we may very well
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        agree.
    
    
      * If you want someone else to make all the work while you wait for us to
        implement it for you, that is not a very friendly attitude. We spend a
        considerable time already on maintaining and developing curl. In order to
        get more out of us, you should consider trading in some of your time and
        efforts in return.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
      * If you write the code, chances are bigger that it will get into curl
        faster.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      1.5 Who makes cURL?
    
      cURL and libcurl are not made by any single individual. Sure, Daniel
    
      Stenberg writes the major parts, but other persons' submissions are
      important and crucial. Anyone can contribute and post their changes and
      improvements and have them inserted in the main sources (of course on the
      condition that developers agree on that the fixes are good).
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      The list of contributors in the docs/THANKS file is only a small part of all
      the people that every day provide us with bug reports, suggestions, ideas
      and source code.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
      curl is developed by a community, with Daniel at the wheel.
    
      1.6 What do you get for making cURL?
    
    
      Project cURL is entirely free and open. No person gets paid for developing
      curl. We do this voluntarily on our spare time.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      We get some help from companies. Contactor Data hosts the curl web site,
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Haxx owns the curl web site's domain and sourceforge.net hosts project
      services we take advantage from, like the bug tracker.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      If you want to support our project with a donation or similar, one way of
    
      doing that would be to buy "gift certificates" at useful online shopping
      sites, such as amazon.com or thinkgeek.com. Another way would be to sponsor
    
      us through a banner-program or even better: by helping us coding,
    
      documenting, testing etc. You're welcome to send us a buck using paypal, as
      described here: http://curl.haxx.se/donation.html
    
    
      1.7 What about CURL from curl.com?
    
    
      During the summer 2001, curl.com was busy advertising their client-side
    
      programming language for the web, named CURL.
    
    
      We are in no way associated with curl.com or their CURL programming
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      language.
    
      Our project name curl has been in effective use since 1998. We were not the
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      first computer related project to use the name "curl" and do not claim any
    
      We recognize that we will be living in parallel with curl.com and wish them
      every success.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      1.8 I have a problem who do I mail?
    
    
      Please do not mail any single individual unless you really need to. Keep
      curl-related questions on a suitable mailing list. All available mailing
      lists are listed in the MANUAL document and online at
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      http://curl.haxx.se/mail/
    
    
      Keeping curl-related questions and discussions on mailing lists allows
      others to join in and help, to share their ideas, contribute their
      suggestions and spread their wisdom. Keeping discussions on public mailing
      lists also allows for others to learn from this (both current and future
      users thanks to the web based archives of the mailing lists), thus saving us
      from having to repeat ourselves even more. Thanks for respecting this.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    2. Install Related Problems
    
      2.1. configure doesn't find OpenSSL even when it is installed
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      This may be because of several reasons.
    
        2.1.1. native linker doesn't find openssl
    
        Affected platforms:
          Solaris (native cc compiler)
          HPUX (native cc compiler)
          SGI IRIX (native cc compiler)
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
          SCO UNIX (native cc compiler)
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        When configuring curl, I specify --with-ssl. OpenSSL is installed in
        /usr/local/ssl Configure reports SSL in /usr/local/ssl, but fails to find
        CRYPTO_lock in -lcrypto
    
        Cause: The cc for this test places the -L/usr/local/ssl/lib AFTER
        -lcrypto, so ld can't find the library. This is due to a bug in the GNU
        autoconf tool.
    
        Workaround: Specifying "LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/ssl/lib" in front of
        ./configure places the -L/usr/local/ssl/lib early enough in the command
        line to make things work
    
    
        Solution submitted by: Bob Allison <allisonb@users.sourceforge.net>
    
        2.1.2. only the libssl lib is missing
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
        If all include files and the libcrypto lib is present, with only the
        libssl being missing according to configure, this is mostly likely because
        a few functions are left out from the libssl.
    
        If the function names missing include RSA or RSAREF you can be certain
    
        that this is because libssl requires the RSA and RSAREF libs to build.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
        See the INSTALL file section that explains how to add those libs to
        configure. Make sure that you remove the config.cache file before you
        rerun configure with the new flags.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      2.2. Does curl work/build with other SSL libraries?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      Curl has been written to use OpenSSL, although there should not be much
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      problems using a different library. If anyone does "port" curl to use a
    
      different SSL library, we are of course very interested in getting the
      patch!
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      2.3. Where can I find a copy of LIBEAY32.DLL?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
      That is an OpenSSL binary built for Windows.
    
      Curl uses OpenSSL to do the SSL stuff. The LIBEAY32.DLL is what curl needs
    
      on a windows machine to do https://. Check out the curl web site to find
    
      accurate and up-to-date pointers to recent OpenSSL DLLs and other binary
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      packages.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      2.4. Does cURL support Socks (RFC 1928) ?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Yes, SOCKS5 is supported when curl is built with IPv6 support disabled.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    3. Usage problems
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.1. curl: (1) SSL is disabled, https: not supported
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
      If you get this output when trying to get anything from a https:// server,
      it means that the configure script couldn't find all libs and include files
      it requires for SSL to work. If the configure script fails to find them,
      curl is simply built without SSL support.
    
      To get the https:// support into a curl that was previously built but that
      reports that https:// is not supported, you should dig through the document
      and logs and check out why the configure script doesn't find the SSL libs
      and/or include files.
    
      Also, check out the other paragraph in this FAQ labeled "configure doesn't
      find OpenSSL even when it is installed".
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.2. How do I tell curl to resume a transfer?
    
      Curl supports resumed transfers both ways on both FTP and HTTP.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Try the -C option.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.3. Why doesn't my posting using -F work?
    
    
      You can't simply use -F or -d at your choice. The web server that will
      receive your post assumes one of the formats. If the form you're trying to
    
      "fake" sets the type to 'multipart/form-data', then and only then you must
    
      use the -F type. In all the most common cases, you should use -d which then
      causes a posting with the type 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'.
    
    
      This is described in some detail in the MANUAL and TheArtOfHttpScripting
      documents, and if you don't understand it the first time, read it again
      before you post questions about this to the mailing list. Also, try reading
      through the mailing list archives for old postings and questions regarding
      this.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.4. How do I tell curl to run custom FTP commands?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      You can tell curl to perform optional commands both before and/or after a
      file transfer. Study the -Q/--quote option.
    
    
      Since curl is used for file transfers, you don't use curl to just perform
    
      FTP commands without transferring anything. Therefore you must always specify
    
      a URL to transfer to/from even when doing custom FTP commands.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.5. How can I disable the Pragma: nocache header?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      You can change all internally generated headers by adding a replacement with
      the -H/--header option. By adding a header with empty contents you safely
      disable that one. Use -H "Pragma:" to disable that specific header.
    
      3.6. Does curl support ASP, XML, XHTML or HTML version Y?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      To curl, all contents are alike. It doesn't matter how the page was
    
      generated. It may be ASP, PHP, Perl, shell-script, SSI or plain
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      HTML-files. There's no difference to curl and it doesn't even know what kind
      of language that generated the page.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      See also item 3.14 regarding javascript.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.7. Can I use curl to delete/rename a file through FTP?
    
      Yes. You specify custom FTP commands with -Q/--quote.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      One example would be to delete a file after you have downloaded it:
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
         curl -O ftp://download.com/coolfile -Q '-DELE coolfile'
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.8 How do I tell curl to follow HTTP redirects?
    
      Curl does not follow so-called redirects by default. The Location: header
      that informs the client about this is only interpreted if you're using the
      -L/--location option. As in:
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
         curl -L http://redirector.com
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.9 How do I use curl in my favorite programming language?
    
      There exist many language interfaces/bindings for curl that integrates it
      better with various languages. If you are fluid in a script language, you
      may very well opt to use such an interface instead of using the command line
      tool.
    
    
      Find out more about which languages that support curl directly, and how to
      install and use them, in the libcurl section of the curl web site:
    
            http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/
    
      In February 2003, there are interfaces available for the following
      languages: Basic, C, C++, Cocoa, Dylan, Euphoria, Java, Lua, Object-Pascal,
      Pascal, Perl, PHP, PostgreSQL, Python, Rexx, Ruby, Scheme and Tcl. By the
      time you read this, additional ones may have appeared!
    
      3.10 What about SOAP, WebDAV, XML-RPC or similar protocols over HTTP?
    
    
      Curl adheres to the HTTP spec, which basically means you can play with *any*
    
      protocol that is built on top of HTTP. Protocols such as SOAP, WEBDAV and
    
      XML-RPC are all such ones. You can use -X to set custom requests and -H to
      set custom headers (or replace internally generated ones).
    
    
      Using libcurl is of course just as fine and you'd just use the proper
      library options to do the same.
    
      3.11 How do I POST with a different Content-Type?
    
      You can always replace the internally generated headers with -H/--header.
      To make a simple HTTP POST with text/xml as content-type, do something like:
    
            curl -d "datatopost" -H "Content-Type: text/xml" [URL]
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      3.12 Why do FTP specific features over HTTP proxy fail?
    
    
      Because when you use a HTTP proxy, the protocol spoken on the network will
      be HTTP, even if you specify a FTP URL. This effectively means that you
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      normally can't use FTP specific features such as FTP upload and FTP quote
    
      etc.
    
      There is one exception to this rule, and that is if you can "tunnel through"
    
      the given HTTP proxy. Proxy tunneling is enabled with a special option (-p)
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      and is generally not available as proxy admins usually disable tunneling to
    
      other ports than 443 (which is used for HTTPS access through proxies).
    
    
      3.13 Why does my single/double quotes fail?
    
      To specify a command line option that includes spaces, you might need to
      put the entire option within quotes. Like in:
    
       curl -d " with spaces " url.com
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      or perhaps
    
       curl -d ' with spaces ' url.com
    
      Exactly what kind of quotes and how to do this is entirely up to the shell
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      or command line interpreter that you are using. For most unix shells, you
    
      can more or less pick either single (') or double (") quotes. For
      Windows/DOS prompts I believe you're forced to use double (") quotes.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Please study the documentation for your particular environment. Examples in
    
      the curl docs will use a mix of both these ones as shown above. You must
      adjust them to work in your environment.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Remember that curl works and runs on more operating systems than most single
    
      individuals have ever tried.
    
    
      3.14 Does curl support javascript or pac (automated proxy config)?
    
      Many web pages do magic stuff using embedded javascript. Curl and libcurl
      have no built-in support for that, so it will be treated just like any other
      contents.
    
      .pac files are a netscape invention and are sometimes used by organizations
      to allow them to differentiate which proxies to use. The .pac contents is
      just a javascript program that gets invoked by the browser and that returns
      the name of the proxy to connect to. Since curl doesn't support javascript,
      it can't support .pac proxy configuration either.
    
      Some work-arounds usually suggested to overcome this javascript dependency:
    
        - Depending on the javascript complexity, write up a script that
          translates it to another language and execute that.
    
        - Read the javascript code and rewrite the same logic in another language.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        - Implement a javascript interpreter, people have successfully used the
    
          Mozilla javascript engine in the past.
    
        - Ask your admins to stop this, for a static proxy setup or similar.
    
    
      3.15 Can I do recursive fetches with curl?
    
      No. curl itself has no code that performs recursive operations, such as
      those performed by wget.
    
      There exist wrapper scripts with that functionality (for example the
      curlmirror perl script), and you can write programs based on libcurl to do
      it, but the command line tool curl itself cannot.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    4. Running Problems
    
      4.1. Problems connecting to SSL servers.
    
      It took a very long time before we could sort out why curl had problems to
      connect to certain SSL servers when using SSLeay or OpenSSL v0.9+.  The
      error sometimes showed up similar to:
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      16570:error:1407D071:SSL routines:SSL2_READ:bad mac decode:s2_pkt.c:233:
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      It turned out to be because many older SSL servers don't deal with SSLv3
      requests properly. To correct this problem, tell curl to select SSLv2 from
      the command line (-2/--sslv2).
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      There have also been examples where the remote server didn't like the SSLv2
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      request and instead you had to force curl to use SSLv3 with -3/--sslv3.
    
    
      4.2. Why do I get problems when I use & or % in the URL?
    
      In general unix shells, the & letter is treated special and when used, it
    
      runs the specified command in the background. To safely send the & as a part
    
      of a URL, you should quote the entire URL by using single (') or double (")
    
      quotes around it.
    
      An example that would invoke a remote CGI that uses &-letters could be:
    
         curl 'http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?text=yes&q=curl'
    
      In Windows, the standard DOS shell treats the %-letter specially and you
      need to use TWO %-letters for each single one you want to use in the URL.
    
      Also note that if you want the literal %-letter to be part of the data you
    
      pass in a POST using -d/--data you must encode it as '%25' (which then also
      needs the %-letter doubled on Windows machines).
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.3. How can I use {, }, [ or ] to specify multiple URLs?
    
      Because those letters have a special meaning to the shell, and to be used in
      a URL specified to curl you must quote them.
    
      An example that downloads two URLs (sequentially) would do:
    
        curl '{curl,www}.haxx.se'
    
      To be able to use those letters as actual parts of the URL (without using
    
      them for the curl URL "globbing" system), use the -g/--globoff option:
    
    
        curl -g 'www.site.com/weirdname[].html'
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.4. Why do I get downloaded data even though the web page doesn't exist?
    
      Curl asks remote servers for the page you specify. If the page doesn't exist
      at the server, the HTTP protocol defines how the server should respond and
      that means that headers and a "page" will be returned. That's simply how
      HTTP works.
    
      By using the --fail option you can tell curl explicitly to not get any data
      if the HTTP return code doesn't say success.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.5 Why do I get return code XXX from a HTTP server?
    
    
      RFC2616 clearly explains the return codes. This is a short transcript. Go
      read the RFC for exact details:
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
        The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed
        syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
        The request requires user authentication.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it.
        Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
        The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication
        is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.
    
    
        4.5.5 "405 Method Not Allowed"
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
        The method specified in the Request-Line is not allowed for the resource
        identified by the Request-URI. The response MUST include an Allow header
        containing a list of valid methods for the requested resource.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
        If you get this return code and an HTML output similar to this:
    
    
           <H1>Moved Permanently</H1> The document has moved <A
           HREF="http://same_url_now_with_a_trailing_slash/">here</A>.
    
        it might be because you request a directory URL but without the trailing
        slash. Try the same operation again _with_ the trailing URL, or use the
        -L/--location option to follow the redirection.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.6. Can you tell me what error code 142 means?
    
      All error codes that are larger than the highest documented error code means
    
      that curl has exited due to a crash. This is a serious error, and we
    
      appreciate a detailed bug report from you that describes how we could go
    
      4.7. How do I keep user names and passwords secret in Curl command lines?
    
      This problem has two sides:
    
      The first part is to avoid having clear-text passwords in the command line
      so that they don't appear in 'ps' outputs and similar. That is easily
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      avoided by using the "-K" option to tell curl to read parameters from a file
      or stdin to which you can pass the secret info. curl itself will also
      attempt to "hide" the given password by blanking out the option - this
      doesn't work on all platforms.
    
      To keep the passwords in your account secret from the rest of the world is
      not a task that curl addresses. You could of course encrypt them somehow to
      at least hide them from being read by human eyes, but that is not what
      anyone would call security.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Also note that regular HTTP (using Basic authentication) and FTP passwords
      are sent in clear across the network. All it takes for anyone to fetch them
      is to listen on the network.  Eavesdropping is very easy. Use more secure
      authentication methods (like Digest, Negotiate or even NTLM) or consider the
      SSL-based alternatives HTTPS and FTPS.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      It is not a bug if the behavior is documented. Read the docs first.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Especially check out the KNOWN_BUGS file, it may be a documented bug!
    
    
      If it is a problem with a binary you've downloaded or a package for your
      particular platform, try contacting the person who built the package/archive
      you have.
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      If there is a bug, read the BUGS document first. Then report it as described
      in there.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      4.9. Curl can't authenticate to the server that requires NTLM?
    
    
      This is supported in curl 7.10.6 or later. No earlier curl version knows
      of this magic.
    
      NTLM is a Microsoft proprietary protocol. Proprietary formats are evil. You
      should not use such ones.
    
      4.10 My HTTP request using HEAD, PUT or DELETE doesn't work!
    
      Many web servers allow or demand that the administrator configures the
      server properly for these requests to work on the web server.
    
      Some servers seem to support HEAD only on certain kinds of URLs.
    
      To fully grasp this, try the documentation for the particular server
      software you're trying to interact with. This is not anything curl can do
      anything about.
    
    
      4.11 Why does my HTTP range requests return the full document?
    
      Because the range may not be supported by the server, or the server may
      choose to ignore it and return the full document anyway.
    
      4.12 Why do I get "certificate verify failed" ?
    
      You invoke curl 7.10 or later to communicate on a https:// URL and get an
      error back looking something similar to this:
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
          curl: (35) SSL: error:14090086:SSL routines:
    
          SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed
    
      Then it means that curl couldn't verify that the server's certificate was
      good. Curl verifies the certificate using the CA cert bundle that comes with
      the curl installation.
    
      To disable the verification (which makes it act like curl did before 7.10),
      use -k. This does however enable man-in-the-middle attacks.
    
      If you get this failure but are having a CA cert bundle installed and used,
      the server's certificate is not signed by one of the CA's in the bundle. It
      might for example be self-signed. You then correct this problem by obtaining
      a valid CA cert for the server. Or again, decrease the security by disabling
      this check.
    
      Details are also in the SSLCERTS file in the release archives, found online
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      here: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    5. libcurl Issues
    
      Yes.
    
      We have written the libcurl code specificly adjusted for multi-threaded
      programs. libcurl will use thread-safe functions instead of non-safe ones if
      your system has such.
    
      We would appreciate some kind of report or README file from those who have
    
      used libcurl in a threaded environment.
    
      5.2 How can I receive all data into a large memory chunk?
    
    
      [ See also the examples/getinmemory.c source ]
    
    
      You are in full control of the callback function that gets called every time
      there is data received from the remote server. You can make that callback do
    
      whatever you want. You do not have to write the received data to a file.
    
    
      One solution to this problem could be to have a pointer to a struct that you
      pass to the callback function. You set the pointer using the
      curl_easy_setopt(CURLOPT_FILE) function. Then that pointer will be passed to
      the callback instead of a FILE * to a file:
    
            /* imaginary struct */
            struct MemoryStruct {
              char *memory;
              size_t size;
            };
    
            /* imaginary callback function */
            size_t
            WriteMemoryCallback(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, void *data)
            {
              register int realsize = size * nmemb;
              struct MemoryStruct *mem = (struct MemoryStruct *)data;
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
              mem->memory = (char *)realloc(mem->memory, mem->size + realsize + 1);
              if (mem->memory) {
                memcpy(&(mem->memory[mem->size]), ptr, realsize);
                mem->size += realsize;
                mem->memory[mem->size] = 0;
              }
              return realsize;
            }
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      5.3 How do I fetch multiple files with libcurl?
    
      libcurl has excellent support for transferring multiple files. You should
      just repeatedly set new URLs with curl_easy_setopt() and then transfer it
      with curl_easy_perform(). The handle you get from curl_easy_init() is not
      only reusable, but you're even encouraged to reuse it if you can, as that
      will enable libcurl to use persistent connections.
    
      5.4 Does libcurl do Winsock initialization on win32 systems?
    
      Yes, if told to in the curl_global_init() call.
    
      5.5 Does CURLOPT_WRITEDATA and CURLOPT_READDATA work on win32 ?
    
    
      Yes, but you cannot open a FILE * and pass the pointer to a DLL and have
    
      that DLL use the FILE * (as the DLL and the client application cannot access
      each others' variable memory areas). If you set CURLOPT_WRITEDATA you must
      also use CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION as well to set a function that writes the
      file, even if that simply writes the data to the specified FILE *.
      Similarly, if you use CURLOPT_READDATA you must also specify
      CURLOPT_READFUNCTION.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      (Provided by Joel DeYoung and Bob Schader)
    
      5.6 What about Keep-Alive or persistent connections?
    
      curl and libcurl have excellent support for persistent connections when
      transferring several files from the same server.  Curl will attempt to reuse
      connections for all URLs specified on the same command line/config file, and
      libcurl will reuse connections for all transfers that are made using the
      same libcurl handle.
    
      5.7 Link errors when building libcurl on Windows!
    
      You need to make sure that your project, and all the libraries (both static
      and dynamic) that it links against, are compiled/linked against the same run
      time library.
    
      This is determined by the /MD, /ML, /MT (and their corresponding /M?d)
      options to the command line compiler. /MD (linking against MSVCRT dll) seems
      to be the most commonly used option.
    
      (Provided by Andrew Francis)
    
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    6. License Issues
    
      Curl and libcurl are released under a MIT/X derivate license. The license is
      very liberal and should not impose a problem for your project. This section
      is just a brief summary for the cases we get the most questions. (Parts of
      this section was much enhanced by Bjorn Reese.)
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      6.1. I have a GPL program, can I use the libcurl library?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Yes!
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      Since libcurl may be distributed under the MIT/X derivate license, it can be
      used together with GPL in any software.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
      6.2. I have a closed-source program, can I use the libcurl library?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      libcurl does not put any restrictions on the program that uses the library.
    
      6.3. I have a BSD licensed program, can I use the libcurl library?
    
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      libcurl does not put any restrictions on the program that uses the library.
    
    
      6.4. I have a program that uses LGPL libraries, can I use libcurl?
    
      The LGPL license doesn't clash with other licenses.
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
    
      6.5. Can I modify curl/libcurl for my program and keep the changes secret?
    
    Daniel Stenberg's avatar
    Daniel Stenberg committed
    
      The MIT/X derivate license practically allows you to do almost anything with
      the sources, on the condition that the copyright texts in the sources are
      left intact.
    
      6.6. Can you please change the curl/libcurl license to XXXX?
    
      We have carefully picked this license after years of development and
      discussions and a large amount of people have contributed with source code
      knowing that this is the license we use. This license puts the restrictions
      we want on curl/libcurl and it does not spread to other programs or
    
      libraries that use it. It should be possible for everyone to use libcurl or
      curl in their projects, no matter what license they already have in use.