I am trying to download more than 1m pages (URLs ending by a sequence ID). I have implemented kind of multi-purpose download manager with configurable number of download threads and one processing thread. The downloader downloads files in batches:

curl = Curl::Easy.new

batch_urls.each { |url_info|
    curl.url = url_info[:url]
    curl.perform
    file = File.new(url_info[:file], "wb")
    file << curl.body_str
    file.close
    # ... some other stuff
}

I have tried to download 8000 pages sample. When using the code above, I get 1000 in 2 minutes. When I write all URLs into a file and do in shell:

cat list | xargs curl

I gen all 8000 pages in two minutes.

Thing is, I need it to have it in ruby code, because there is other monitoring and processing code.

I have tried:

• Curl::Multi - it is somehow faster, but misses 50-90% of files (does not download them and gives no reason/code)
• multiple threads with Curl::Easy - around the same speed as single threaded

Why is reused Curl::Easy slower than subsequent command line curl calls and how can I make it faster? Or what I am doing wrong?

I would prefer to fix my download manager code than to make downloading for this case in a different way.

Before this, I was calling command-line wget which I provided with a file with list of URLs. Howerver, not all errors were handled, also it was not possible to specify output file for each URL separately when using URL list.

Now it seems to me that the best way would be to use multiple threads with system call to 'curl' command. But why when I can use directly Curl in Ruby?

Code for the download manager is here, if it might help: Download Manager (I have played with timeouts, from not-setting it to various values, it did not seem help)

Any hints appreciated.