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What is the `GET` command in Ubuntu?

rated 0 times [ 0] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 351 / 1 Year ago, thu, december 22, 2022, 8:30:50

What is the GET command in Ubuntu? When I was trying out telnet, I accidentally typed in GET / too slowly, and it timed out, and I accidentally pressed Enter, and it ran the command GET.

The output was:

HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Directory /</TITLE>

<BASE HREF="file:/">

</HEAD>

<BODY>

<H1>Directory listing of /</H1>

<UL>

<LI><A HREF="./">./</A>

<LI><A HREF="../">../</A>

<LI><A HREF="bin/">bin/</A>

<LI><A HREF="boot/">boot/</A>

<LI><A HREF="cdrom/">cdrom/</A>

<LI><A HREF="dev/">dev/</A>

<LI><A HREF="etc/">etc/</A>

<LI><A HREF="home/">home/</A>

<LI><A HREF="lib/">lib/</A>

<LI><A HREF="lib32/">lib32/</A>

<LI><A HREF="lib64/">lib64/</A>

<LI><A HREF="libx32/">libx32/</A>

<LI><A HREF="lost%2Bfound/">lost+found/</A>

<LI><A HREF="media/">media/</A>

<LI><A HREF="mnt/">mnt/</A>

<LI><A HREF="opt/">opt/</A>

<LI><A HREF="proc/">proc/</A>

<LI><A HREF="root/">root/</A>

<LI><A HREF="run/">run/</A>

<LI><A HREF="sbin/">sbin/</A>

<LI><A HREF="snap/">snap/</A>

<LI><A HREF="srv/">srv/</A>

<LI><A HREF="swapfile">swapfile</A>

<LI><A HREF="sys/">sys/</A>

<LI><A HREF="tmp/">tmp/</A>

<LI><A HREF="usr/">usr/</A>

<LI><A HREF="var/">var/</A>

</UL>

</BODY>

</HTML>

What is this command?

When I run GET / HTTP/1.1, it displays http://www.i5.com/calacom at the end of the page... What is that website?

Edit:

man GET says:

LWP-REQUEST(1p)                                     User Contributed Perl Documentation                                    LWP-REQUEST(1p)



NAME

       lwp-request - Simple command line user agent

Seriously! I did not run the command inside telnet!

whereis GET shows GET: /usr/bin/GET /usr/share/man/man1/GET.1p.gz.

All GET commands were run on the terminal itself! Do not post answers talking about HTTP in telnet. I am not new to HTTP.

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alkeake

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answered 1 Year ago altybol · Accepted Answer

This was also new to me. However, doing some investigation I concluded to the following:

$ whereis GET

GET: /usr/bin/GET /usr/share/man/man1/GET.1p.gz

So, this is a "command" under /usr/bin.

$ file /usr/bin/GET ; ll /usr/bin/GET

/usr/bin/GET: symbolic link to lwp-request

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Jan 11 21:01 /usr/bin/GET -> lwp-request*

It is a symbolic link for lwp-request under the same directory.

$ ll /usr/bin/ | grep lwp-request

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root          11 Jan 11 21:01 GET -> lwp-request*

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root          11 Jan 11 21:01 HEAD -> lwp-request*

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root          11 Jan 11 21:01 POST -> lwp-request*

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root       16200 Jan 11 21:01 lwp-request*

There are other "symbolic links" to the same executable.

$ file /usr/bin/lwp-request ; dpkg -S /usr/bin/lwp-request

/usr/bin/lwp-request: Perl script text executable

libwww-perl: /usr/bin/lwp-request

This is a Perl script coming with the libwww-perl package.

$ man GET

More information about the command will reveal that there is a -u option:

-u Print request method and absolute URL as requests are made.

So, if we try the command in the Question using the -u option:

$ GET -u / HTTP/1.1

it displays:

GET file:/

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Directory /</TITLE>

<BASE HREF="file:/">

</HEAD>

<BODY>

<H1>Directory listing of /</H1>

...

</BODY>

</HTML>

GET http://www.HTTP.com/1.1

<html><head><title>www.http.com</title></head><frameset BORDER='0' frameborder='0' framespacing='0' rows='100%,*'>

<frame name='target' src='http://www.i5.com/calacom'>

<noframes>  <body BGCOLOR='#FFFFFF'>

This page requires that your browser supports frames.

<BR>You can access the page without frames with this <a href='http://www.i5.com/calacom'>link</A>.

</body></noframes></frameset></html>

We see that when the GET command is given two arguments, it tries to access two URLs:

file:/

http://www.HTTP.com/1.1

The first one is a listing of the local / directory. The second one is the (probably non-existent) "page" 1.1 of the web site http.com which contains a "frame" to display the page http://www.i5.com/calacom.