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Paul Russell
Asked: 2011-02-19 03:59:14 +0800 CST

Alternatives to CURL, WGET

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Is anyone aware of any alternatives to curl and wget? The key functional requirement I'm looking for is to be able to execute an HTTPS GET request against a known URL.

The reason I'm looking for an alternative is simply that I'm trying to execute a connectivity test from a server which currently doesn't have wget or curl installed. The server concerned is under strict change control and so installing new software on it is a no-no.

The operating system installed on the server is AIX.

command-line-interface aix curl wget

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    [Pushing up from comments]

    Two options:

    • 7

  2. If you can ssh into the server, I recommend this:

    1. Think of a random port, like 5555 that you will use on your local machine.
    2. Run ssh -L 5555:remote_server:443 username@aix_server
    3. Point your browser to https://localhost:5555/

    Your browser will report an error that the certificate is not for localhost, but for the remote_server, but at least you would have proved that the connectivity works. You could also use openssl s_client -connect localhost:5555, as noted on other answers to verify more in detail the encrypted communication.

    Good luck!

    • 1

  3. Have you got Perl with LWP::Simple?

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