"wget" command question from Blobtool tutorial - bioinformatics

Question

I followed up a tutorial (https://blobtoolkit.genomehubs.org/install/) based on 2. Fetch the nt database follows up
first step 1.mkdir -p nt (I am done with that part)
second step 2.
wget "ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt.??.tar.gz" -P nt/ && \
for file in nt/*.tar.gz; \
do tar xf $file -C nt && rm $file; \
done
If I copied and paste the second step command, it won't work maybe I am not sure what
&& \
for file in nt/*.tar.gz; \
do tar xf $file -C nt && rm $file; \
done
means, so I tried using
wget "ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt/*.tar.gz"
first, but I received this error messages:
Resolving ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)... 130.14.250.13, 2607:f220:41e:250::13, 2607:f220:41e:250::11, ...
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|130.14.250.13|:21... failed: Connection refused.
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|2607:f220:41e:250::13|:21... failed: Network is unreachable.
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|2607:f220:41e:250::11|:21... failed: Network is unreachable.
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|2607:f220:41e:250::10|:21... failed: Network is unreachable.
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|2607:f220:41e:250::12|:21... failed: Network is unreachable.
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|2607:f220:41e:250::7|:21... failed: Network is unreachable.
Any idea what the problem is ? how to I adjust the second step command to download the database, please let me know , thank you.

Answer 1

wildcards not supported in HTTP.
http://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt/*.tar.gz Resolving ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
The host looks like an ftp server. You shouldn't be requesting to it with http. It should be wget ftp://ftp.ncbi.... instead
I can't seem to find where in the tutorial you linked they have wget http://ftp... The command before the one you referenced (2. Fetch the nt database) is a curl command and uses ftp.
Perhaps edit the question with where in the docs it tells you to do what you did, and I can look closer.
Edit:
First try this: wget "ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov". It's a simpler command. It should tell you that you logged in as anonymous.
Given more info in the question, I tried both the commands given.
The first one worked for me out of the box. I got the following output:
wget "ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt.??.tar.gz" -P nt/ && \ for file in nt/*.tar.gz; \ do tar xf $file -C nt && rm $file; \ done
--2020-11-15 13:16:30-- ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt.??.tar.gz
=> ‘nt/.listing’
Resolving ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)... 2607:f220:41e:250::13, 2607:f220:41e:250::10, 2607:f220:41e:250::11, ...
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|2607:f220:41e:250::13|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD (1) /blast/db ... done.
==> EPSV ... done. ==> LIST ... done.
.listing [ <=> ] 43.51K 224KB/s in 0.2s
2020-11-15 13:16:32 (224 KB/s) - ‘nt/.listing’ saved [44552]
Removed ‘nt/.listing’.
--2020-11-15 13:16:32-- ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt.00.tar.gz
=> ‘nt/nt.00.tar.gz’
==> CWD not required.
==> EPSV ... done. ==> RETR nt.00.tar.gz ... done.
Length: 3937869770 (3.7G)
nt.00.tar.gz 3%[ ] 133.87M 10.2MB/s eta 8m 31s
The second one seemed to also work. Probably a typo in the file path somewhere, but nothing big.
wget "ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt/*.tar.gz"
--2020-11-15 13:17:14-- ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/nt/*.tar.gz
=> ‘.listing’
Resolving ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)... 2607:f220:41e:250::10, 2607:f220:41e:250::11, 2607:f220:41e:250::7, ...
Connecting to ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)|2607:f220:41e:250::10|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD (1) /blast/db/nt ...
No such directory ‘blast/db/nt’.
About && and \, those are just syntactic sugar. && means 'and', allowing you to chain multiple commands in one. \ means new line, so you can write a new line in the command line without it treating as you pressing enter.
Neither of these are the root of your problem.
The errors you're getting seems to be nothing to do with the actual commands and more to do with the network. Perhaps you're behind a firewall or a proxy or something. I would try the commands on a different WIFI network. Or if you know how to disable firewall settings on your router (I don't), try to fiddle around with that.