Slackware HowTo

Use curl and wget for HTTP debugging on Slackware

Read headers, redirects, and response codes before blaming the application or reverse proxy.

1. When to use it

Useful when an endpoint looks broken but the real issue is in redirects, certificates, or missing headers.

curl | wget | headers | redirects | HTTP debug

2. Base setup

curl -I -L https://example.org
curl -v https://example.org/robots.txt -o /tmp/robots.txt
wget -S --spider https://example.org

Adjust host names, IPs, interfaces, paths, and versions to the real system before making the change persistent.

3. Quick verification

curl -w '%{http_code} %{redirect_url}\n' -o /dev/null -s https://example.org
wget --server-response --spider https://example.org 2>&1 | head
sed -n '1,20p' /tmp/robots.txt

Confirm that the output matches the expected state before considering the intervention complete.

4. Operational notes

Headers and redirects explain many false alarms: always inspect them before touching the server configuration.

Quick checklist

[ ] Steps completed\n[ ] Config updated\n[ ] Tests executed\n[ ] Rollback ready\n[ ] Logs checked

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