Oops!! Confused with wget skip certificate check?

We use a skip certificate check option in order to Ignore SSL Certificate Error with wget.

At Bobcares, we often get requests regarding wget skip certificate check, as a part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s see how our Support Engineers help customers in solving problems related to this.

Why wget skip certificate check?

In Linux, we use wget for downloading the files from the web. We just ran the command ‘wget’ along with the URL for downloading.

By default, wget performs a validity check of SSL certificates for the websites which are based on SSL.

But when trying to access websites that are having a self-signed certificate or those with expired SSL certificate we have to bypass this in wget.

In such a case we can do this easily with the option given below,

--no-check-certificate

What if there is no “–no-check-certificate”?

Recently, one of our customers approached us saying that he is getting an error like the one shown below when he is trying to download a file using wget.

On checking, we found that the customer is trying to access the site having an improperly configured SSL. So, we used the option ‘–no-check-certificate‘ along with wget. And then the customer successfully downloaded the file.

We also handled a situation where the customer approached with an error:

ERROR: The certificate of 'xxxx.com' is not trusted.
ERROR: The certificate of 'xxxx.com' hasn't got a known issue.

Then, our Support Engineers checked and found that the local machine on which he is trying to download doesn’t have the Internets Certificate Authority certificates installed.

This happened because the computer on which he was trying to download the file from an SSL URL with wget have no idea about SSL certificate and thus it produced an error like this.

So, our Support Engineers installed the CA certificate for him and tried downloading the file after the installation. Finally, we succeeded in downloading the file.

[Need any assistance with wget errors? – We’ll help you]

Conclusion

In short, while accessing websites which are having a self-signed certificate or those with expired SSL certificate, our Support Engineers use the option ‘–no-check-certificate‘  for avoiding SSL Certificate Error with wget.