I would like to thank everyone who has responded, a lot of good information was provided but unfortunately I still cannot connect with Wget and get the same error response. The Tomcat server has othe Basic Auth pages and I can use Wget successfully with them but not the 1 page using digest auth. Here is what I have tried without success.
- confirmed ID and password work from a browser.
- tried wrapping the ID and password in single quotes.
- tried using the --header option
- installed the latest version to eliminate the bug in earlier versions
- tried using curl -w -S -v -u admin:abc --digest <URL_here>

Thanks to Tim R., Wget is now working for the version of Digest Authentication on my server.

What Tim discovered:

Your server expects the client to use RFC 2617 Digest Access Authentication.
Wget just supports RFC 2069 Digest Access Authentication - i took a look into wget's source code.
Firefox - and maybe all other modern browsers - uses (of course) RFC 2617.

That's why Firefox works ok and wget doesn't.

To solve your problem, you can either
- configure your server to accept RFC 2069 (which is a bit unsafer)
- wait until someone extends wget (which seems not to be a big deal)

Then I received the below patch and ran it in on file http.c in directory: wget/wget-1.13.4/src/
Patch -p1 < 0001-add-support-for-RFC-2617-Digest-Access-Authenticatio.patch
cd ../
sudo make install
Wget now is able to connect to the Digest protected page.

Thanks to everyone for their help on this.

Hereis the code for the patch.

From 649b8693d699c28830fc60f5da2c11ae83fdb22b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tim R.
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 17:45:18 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] * add support for RFC 2617 Digest Access Authentication
---
src/http.c | 98 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
1 file changed, 76 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
diff --git a/src/http.c b/src/http.c
index 8d4edba..9ff7f28 100644
--- a/src/http.c
+++ b/src/http.c
@@ -3655,19 +3655,23 @@ digest_authentication_encode (const char *au, const char *user,
const char *passwd, const char *method,
const char *path)
{
- static char *realm, *opaque, *nonce;
+ static char *realm, *opaque, *nonce, *qop;
static struct {
const char *name;
char **variable;
} options[] = {
{ "realm", &realm },
{ "opaque", &opaque },
- { "nonce", &nonce }
+ { "nonce", &nonce },
+ { "qop", &qop }
};
+ char cnonce[16] = "";
char *res;
+ size_t res_size;
param_token name, value;

- realm = opaque = nonce = NULL;
+
+ realm = opaque = nonce = qop = NULL;

au += 6; /* skip over `Digest' */
while (extract_param (&au, &name, &value, ','))
@@ -3683,11 +3687,19 @@ digest_authentication_encode (const char *au, const char *user,
break;
}
}
+
+ if (qop!=NULL && strcmp(qop,"auth"))
+ {
+ logprintf (LOG_NOTQUIET, _("Unsupported quality of protection '%s'.\n"), qop);
+ user=NULL; /* force freeing mem and return */
+ }
+
if (!realm || !nonce || !user || !passwd || !path || !method)
{
xfree_null (realm);
xfree_null (opaque);
xfree_null (nonce);
+ xfree_null (qop);
return NULL;
}

@@ -3716,27 +3728,69 @@ digest_authentication_encode (const char *au, const char *user,
md5_finish_ctx (&ctx, hash);
dump_hash (a2buf, hash);

- /* RESPONSE_DIGEST = H(A1BUF ":" nonce ":" A2BUF) */
- md5_init_ctx (&ctx);
- md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)a1buf, MD5_DIGEST_SIZE * 2, &ctx);
- md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
- md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)nonce, strlen (nonce), &ctx);
- md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
- md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)a2buf, MD5_DIGEST_SIZE * 2, &ctx);
- md5_finish_ctx (&ctx, hash);
+ if (!strcmp(qop,"auth"))
+ {
+ /* RFC 2617 Digest Access Authentication */
+ /* generate random hex string */
+ snprintf(cnonce, sizeof(cnonce), "%08x", random_number(INT_MAX));
+
+ /* RESPONSE_DIGEST = H(A1BUF ":" nonce ":" noncecount ":" clientnonce ":" qop ": " A2BUF) */
+ md5_init_ctx (&ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)a1buf, MD5_DIGEST_SIZE * 2, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)nonce, strlen (nonce), &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)"00000001", 8, &ctx); /* TODO: keep track of server nonce values */
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)cnonce, strlen(cnonce), &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)qop, strlen(qop), &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)a2buf, MD5_DIGEST_SIZE * 2, &ctx);
+ md5_finish_ctx (&ctx, hash);
+ }
+ else
+ {
+ /* RFC 2069 Digest Access Authentication */
+ /* RESPONSE_DIGEST = H(A1BUF ":" nonce ":" A2BUF) */
+ md5_init_ctx (&ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)a1buf, MD5_DIGEST_SIZE * 2, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)nonce, strlen (nonce), &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)":", 1, &ctx);
+ md5_process_bytes ((unsigned char *)a2buf, MD5_DIGEST_SIZE * 2, &ctx);
+ md5_finish_ctx (&ctx, hash);
+ }
+
dump_hash (response_digest, hash);

- res = xmalloc (strlen (user)
- + strlen (user)
- + strlen (realm)
- + strlen (nonce)
- + strlen (path)
- + 2 * MD5_DIGEST_SIZE /*strlen (response_digest)*/
- + (opaque ? strlen (opaque) : 0)
- + 128);
- sprintf (res, "Digest \
-username=\"%s\", realm=\"%s\", nonce=\"%s\", uri=\"%s\", response=\"%s\"",
- user, realm, nonce, path, response_digest);
+ res_size = strlen (user)
+ + strlen (user)
+ + strlen (realm)
+ + strlen (nonce)
+ + strlen (path)
+ + 2 * MD5_DIGEST_SIZE /*strlen (response_digest)*/
+ + (opaque ? strlen (opaque) : 0)
+ + (qop ? 128: 0)
+ + 128;
+
+ res = xmalloc (res_size);
+
+ if (!strcmp(qop,"auth"))
+ {
+ snprintf (res, res_size, "Digest "\
+ "username=\"%s\", realm=\"%s\", nonce=\"%s\", uri=\"%s\", response=\"%s\""\
+ ", qop=auth, nc=00000001, cnonce=\"%s\"",
+ user, realm, nonce, path, response_digest, cnonce);
+
+ }
+ else
+ {
+ snprintf (res, res_size, "Digest "\
+ "username=\"%s\", realm=\"%s\", nonce=\"%s\", uri=\"%s\", response=\"%s\"",
+ user, realm, nonce, path, response_digest);
+ }
+
if (opaque)
{
char *p = res + strlen (res);
--
1.7.10