Wget SSL error can occur due to many different reasons that include Wget not supporting HTTPS downloads, no-check-certificate, the issue with secure protocol option, and son on.
Wget command help in downloading files from the Internet through the command line.
Here at Ibmi Media, as part of our Server Management Services, we regularly help our Customers to fix SSL related errors.
In this context, we shall look into how to fix this error.

Main causes and steps to fix Wget SSL error?

It is a very generic error. When the Wget SSL error occurs, it normally pops an error message "Unable to establish SSL connection".
Here are a few causes of the error. Let's discuss them in detail.

1. Wget not supporting https downloads resulting in Wget SSL error

This error occurs when Wget does not support the https downloads in some distributions.
If we find any such error our Support Engineers fix this by compiling the source code manually using OpenSSL. After that, we can do https downloads.

2. Errors with the secure protocol option

Sometimes, the error may be with the secure protocol option. In such cases, our Support Engineers fix this by adding a secure-protocol option with a suitable protocol argument.
We set this using the command below;
secure-protocol=protocol

We can set the protocol to any of these 'auto', 'SSLv2', 'SSLv3','TLSv1_1', 'TLSv1_2'.
And, this can resolve the error easily. However, the older versions of TLS are vulnerable.

3. Wget error due to Date/time

Date/time mismatch can be a cause for the error to popup.
We double-check the date/time and refresh the SSL certificate to fix this error. We use the command below for refreshing.

/usr/sbin/update-ca-certificates --fresh

4. No-check-certificate

Similarly, we can also fix the error by setting “–no-check-certificate“. On setting this, Wget does not check for servers certificate.
This will generally prompt for a password check. But this method is not always recommended.

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