wget using --timeout and --tries together

Question

How long would you expect this command to take before exiting?

wget --timeout=1 --tries=2 "http://www.google.com:81/not-there"

I would expect a timeout of 1 seconds and 2 tries would mean 2 seconds, but it takes 6.025 seconds

wget --timeout=1 --tries=2 "http://www.google.com:81/not-there"
--2017-04-27 16:49:12--http://www.google.com:81/not-there
Resolving www.google.com (www.google.com)... 209.85.203.105, 209.85.203.103, 209.85.203.99, ...
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.105|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.103|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.99|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.104|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.106|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.147|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|2a00:1450:4009:80d::2004|:81... failed: Network is unreachable.

I don't know why it tries 6 times before quitting.

It seems like tries is for retrying. If I set --retry-connrefused it at least does the retry, but still the total time taken isn't what I would expect. I'd like to be able to decide how many times it should try on a timeout.

Edit:

After a suggestion from @Socowi I tried using waitretry in combination with retry-connrefused and got the same behaviour:

$ wget --timeout=1 --waitretry=0 --tries=2 --retry-connrefused "http://www.google.com:81/not-there"
--2017-04-27 20:29:47--  http://www.google.com:81/not-there
Resolving www.google.com (www.google.com)... 2a00:1450:400b:c00::68, 209.85.203.99, 209.85.203.147, ...
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|2a00:1450:400b:c00::68|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.99|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.147|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.103|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.104|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.106|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.105|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Retrying.

--2017-04-27 20:29:54--  (try: 2)  http://www.google.com:81/not-there
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|2a00:1450:400b:c00::68|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.99|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.147|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.103|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.104|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.106|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.105|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Giving up.

Edit Two

I was really confused when two identical commands behaved differently.

root@8c59d6dd05fe:/var/www/html# wget --timeout=1 --waitretry=0 --tries=2 --retry-connrefused "http://www.google.com:81/not-there"
converted 'http://www.google.com:81/not-there' (ANSI_X3.4-1968) -> 'http://www.google.com:81/not-there' (UTF-8)
--2017-04-27 19:50:28--  http://www.google.com:81/not-there
Resolving www.google.com (www.google.com)... 216.58.211.164, 2a00:1450:4009:805::2004
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|216.58.211.164|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|2a00:1450:4009:805::2004|:81... failed: Cannot assign requested address.
Retrying.

--2017-04-27 19:50:29--  (try: 2)  http://www.google.com:81/not-there
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|216.58.211.164|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|2a00:1450:4009:805::2004|:81... failed: Cannot assign requested address.
Giving up.

root@8c59d6dd05fe:/var/www/html# wget --timeout=1 --waitretry=0 --tries=2 --retry-connrefused "http://www.google.com:81/not-there"
converted 'http://www.google.com:81/not-there' (ANSI_X3.4-1968) -> 'http://www.google.com:81/not-there' (UTF-8)
--2017-04-27 19:50:35--  http://www.google.com:81/not-there
Resolving www.google.com (www.google.com)... 209.85.203.104, 209.85.203.147, 209.85.203.106, ...
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.104|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.147|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.106|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.103|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.105|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.99|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|2a00:1450:400b:c03::68|:81... failed: Cannot assign requested address.
Retrying.

--2017-04-27 19:50:41--  (try: 2)  http://www.google.com:81/not-there
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.104|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.147|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.106|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.103|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.105|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|209.85.203.99|:81... failed: Connection timed out.
Connecting to www.google.com (www.google.com)|2a00:1450:400b:c03::68|:81... failed: Cannot assign requested address.
Giving up.

I thought I was going a bit crazy, but it was only when @Socowi pointed out in the comments that the IPs each retry were different that it clicked. It depends on the number of possible IPs being returned. The magic number 7 (retries) I was seeing was number the IP options. When I just choose one specific IP it only tries it once.

Answer 1

Wrong Number of Retries

Your wget seems to resolve the URL to multiple IP addresses as seen in the second line of your wget's output. Each IP is then tested with the specified timeout. Unfortunately I haven't found any options to limit the DNS lookup to one address or set a total timeout for all IPs together. But you could try to use "<googles ip address>:81/not-there" instead of the domain name.

To automatically resolve the domain to a single IP address you can use

wget "http://$(getent hosts www.google.com | sed 's/ .*//;q'):81/not-there"

Seemingly Too Long Timeout

As you already found out, setting --retry-connrefused lets wget retry even after a »connection refused« error. The specified timeout is used for each retry, but between the retries there will be a pause which gets longer after each retry.

Example

wget --timeout=1 --tries=5 --retry-connrefused URL

does something like

try to connect for 1 second
failed -> wait 1 second
try to connect for 1 second
failed -> wait 2 seconds
try to connect for 1 second
failed -> wait 3 second
try to connect for 1 second
failed -> wait 4 second
try to connect for 1 second

Therefore the command takes tries * timeout + 1 + 2 + ... + (tries - 1) seconds. This behavior is specified in man wget under the option, which allows you to change it :)

--waitretry=seconds
If you don't want Wget to wait between every retrieval, but only between retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget will use linear backoff, waiting 1 second after the first failure on a given file, then waiting 2 seconds after the second failure on that file, up to the maximum number of seconds you specify.

By default, Wget will assume a value of 10 seconds.

I think you wanted to use something like

wget --timeout=1 --waitretry=0 --tries=5 --retry-connrefused URL

which eliminates the pause between two retries, resulting in a total time of timeout * tries.