This issue seems more related to Plan 9 than hget. On Linux :
$ time hget -o /dev/null http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar real 0m1.783s user 0m0.037s sys 0m0.046s On 9vx: % time hget -o /dev/null http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar couldn't set mtime: permission denied 0.00u 0.00s 1.93r hget -o /dev/null http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar On Plan 9: % time hget -o /dev/null http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar couldn't set mtime: permission denied 0.02u 0.01s 37.95r hget -o /dev/null http://downloads.kergis.com/kertex/kertex_bundle.tar -- David du Colombier