itTorrent is a tool for distributing files. It's extremely
easy to use - downloads are started by clicking on hyperlinks.
Whenever more than one person is downloading at once
they send pieces of the file(s) to each other, thus relieving
the central server's bandwidth burden. Even with many
simultaneous downloads, the upload burden on the central server
remains quite small, since each new downloader introduces new
upload capacity.
Windows web browser support is added by running an installer.
A prebuilt one is available, but instructions for building it
yourself are in BUILD.windows.txt
Instructions for Unix installation are in INSTALL.unix.txt
To start hosting -
1) start running a tracker
First, you need a tracker. If you're on a dynamic IP or otherwise
unreliable connection, you should find someone else's tracker and
use that. Otherwise, follow the rest of this step.
Trackers refer downloaders to each other. The load on the tracker
is very small, so you only need one for all your files.
To run a tracker, execute the command bttrack.py Here is an example -
./bttrack.py --port 6969 --dfile dstate
--dfile is where persistent information is kept on the tracker across
invocations. It makes everything start working again immediately if
you restart the tracker. A new one will be created if it doesn't exist
already.
The tracker must be on a net-addressible box, and you must know the
ip number or dns name of it.
The tracker outputs web logs to standard out. You can get information
about the files it's currently serving by getting its index page.
2) create a metainfo file using btmakemetafile.py
To generate a metainfo file, run the publish btmakemetafile and give
it the file you want metainfo for and the url of the tracker
./btmakemetafile.py
http://my.tracker:6969/announce myfile.ext
This will generate a file called myfile.ext.torrent
Make sure to include the port number in the tracker url if it isn't 80.
This command may take a while to scan over the whole file hashing it.
The /announce path is special and hard-coded into the tracker.
Make sure to give the domain or ip your tracker is on instead of
my.tracker.
You can use either a dns name or an IP address in the tracker url.
3) associate .torrent with application/x-bittorrent on your web server
The way you do this is dependent on the particular web server you're using.
You must have a web server which can serve ordinary static files and is
addressable from the internet at large.
4) put the newly made .torrent file on your web server
Note that the file name you choose on the server must end in .torrent, so
it gets associated with the right mimetype.
5) put up a static page which links to the location you uploaded to in step 4
The file you uploaded in step 4 is linked to using an ordinary url.
6) start a downloader as a resume on the complete file
You have to run a downloader which already has the complete file,
so new downloaders have a place to get it from. Here's an example -
./btdownloadheadless.py --url
http://my.server/myfile.torrent --saveas myfile.ext
Make sure the saveas argument points to the already complete file.
If you're running the complete downloader on the same machine or LAN as
the tracker, give a --ip parameter to the complete downloader. The --ip
parameter can be either an IP address or DNS name.
BitTorrent defaults to port 6881. If it can't use 6881, (probably because
another download is happening) it tries 6882, then 6883, etc. It gives up
after 6889.
7) you're done!
Now you just have to get people downloading! Refer them to the page you
created in step 5.
BitTorrent can also publish whole directories - simply point
btmakemetafile.py at the directory with files in it, they'll be published
as one unit. All files in subdirectories will be included, although files
and directories named 'CVS' and 'core' are ignored.
If you have any questions, try the web site or mailing list -
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BitTorrent
You can also often find me, Bram, in #bittorrent of irc.freenode.net
thats the readme file and this is the install unix file
install Python, version 2.0 or later -
http://python.org/
install wxPython -
http://wxpython.org/
(under debian, you can currently get the above using
apt-get install libwxgtk2.2-python
from testing and use python 2.1)
untar and put a line in /etc/mailcap which is similar to the
following, only replace the path to
/usr/bin/btdownloadgui.py with the one it's actually in.
application/x-bittorrent; /usr/bin/btdownloadgui.py %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
You may have to restart your web browser for it to start
using BitTorrent.
If you're using a web browser which doesn't respect
/etc/mailcap you can go into the mimetype configuration for
your web browser and manually associate application/x-bittorrent
with btdownloadgui.py (with the appropriate path, of course.)