How to download from file sharing websites using plowshare

Many file sharing websites require running non-free JavaScript. Some websites such as Filefactory can be accessed via the terminal by using plowshare. In order to install plowshare one needs to download a few dependencies. A list of required dependencies can be found here:

https://github.com/mcrapet/plowshare/blob/master/INSTALL

First we need the basic software to download and compile files:

$ sudo aptitude install build-essential git

In order to install all dependencies available in Trisquel's repositories simply run the following command for Trisquel 6:

$ sudo aptitude install recode imagemagick sxiv qiv fim fbi aview caca-utils libcaca-dev rhino

(feh has been removed as it depends on Trisquel's libcurl)

And this command for Trisquel 7

$ sudo aptitude install recode imagemagick sxiv qiv fbi feh aview caca-utils libcaca-dev rhino

Plowshare requires a newer version of curl than the one provided in Trisquel 6's repositories. First, remove curl from Trisquel:

$ sudo aptitude remove curl

Now, compile a newer version of curl with SSL support (which is why we are installing libssl-dev). One can find different versions of curl here:

http://curl.haxx.se/download/

To compile the current version (7.49.1) run the following commands:

$ wget --no-check-certificate https://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.49.1.tar.gz
$ tar xvf curl-7.49.1.tar.gz
$ cd curl-7.49.1/
$ sudo aptitude install libssl-dev build-essential
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libcurl.so.4 /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4
$ cd

Now we can compile plowshare.

In order to install plowshare run the following command:

$ git clone https://github.com/mcrapet/plowshare.git
$ cd plowshare
$ sudo make install

In order to install plugins run

plowmod -i

In Trisquel 7 due to newer version of git you can update using

plowmod -u

In Trisquel 6 simply remove the folder ~/.config/plowshare and then run "plowmod -i" again.

Now in order to download a link simply run (replace "URL" by the link):

$ plowdown URL

In order to download from MEGA you need to install the MEGA plugin. First install the following dependencies:

$ sudo aptitude install libssl-dev autoconf automake

Then use plowmod:

$ plowmod -i https://github.com/mcrapet/plowshare-module-mega.git
$ cd ~/.config/plowshare/modules.d/mega.git
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --enable-local
$ make

To update on Trisquel 7 as before use "plomod -u" and on Trisquel 6 as before remove the directory ~/.config/plowshare/modules.d/mega.git and run the above commands again.
In order to download from MEGA you need to use quotes '*' because of the special characters in the URL, e.g. (replace the stars by the URL you wish to download):

plowdown 'https://mega.co.nz/#!***'

Note that when I tested the MEGA plugin it didn't always work (sometimes after downloading the file it wasn't saved correctly). If you receive an error just retry the download until it works.
Update: MEGA plugin works fine now.

Revisions

01/27/2014 - 08:13
aloniv