# How do you use bittorrent

## asterix404

I was recomended to use this over valknot and I really don'tknow how. I think I managed to set up my share but i don't even know, the help files are not there and I don't know why. So how do you use it to get stuff?

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## SerfurJ

find a website that has .torrent files and open the file in a bittorrent client.  sharing is automatic, you don't have to worry about setting it up (except for the upload speed).

i use bittornado with the curses or headless interface.

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## Petyr

depends on what you're looking for.

1) Find website with torrent files on it

2) download to your computer

3) tell BT client that you installed to use those torrent files to download files ^^

example

www.animesuki.com

grab a torrent

(assuming you're using bittornado)

btdownloadgui.py -> select torrent file -> tell it where to save.

celebrate happy anime ^^

hth,

Petyr

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## placeholder

Yeah, and Firefox will also denote btdownoadgui.py as the default, so things shall be easier. I recommended using BitTornado as well.

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## asterix404

I am fairly sure i installed bittornado and it didn't have a gui and I kinda freaked, it also didn't do anything. I mean... there was no man page for it. Only something in my /etc/init.d/ How does that work?

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## GlooM

IMO azureus is much better then tornado, very customizable and u can keep control over almost everything.

It has a nice GUI btw   :Razz: 

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## bakreule

Screen & btlaunchmanycurses.py are your friends.

Start a screen session, run btlaunchmanycurses and drop all your .torrent files in the directory specified when you ran btlaunchmancurses. Then detach the screen session.

Advantages:

1) No extra, messy download dialogs or screens. Only check the status when you want to.

2) Check your downloads anywhere: at home, work, or at a friends place. Just ssh in and reattach the screen session

3) START a torrent download anywhere. SSH in, wget the .torrent file, and drop it in the directory specified when you started btlaunchmanycurses.py. The script will automatically see the new torrent and start connecting to peers. You don't even have to attach the screen session. If you do this, it's  better to wget the torrent somewhere temporary, and then cp it to the torrent directory. Rarely, if the web server isn't fast enough, the bittorrent client will read the incomplete file and then just sit there doing nothing.

4) Persistance over system reboots. Create a small shell script, such as this:

```
#!/bin/bash

cd /path/to/torrent/dir

exec btlaunchmanycurses.py /path/to/torrent/dir
```

Then drop this command in your /etc/conf.d/local.start:

```

sudo -u local_user screen -dmS torrents /path/to/above/script

```

The last line will start a screen session, call it "torrents", run the bittorrent client, and then detach automatically. To see it, type "screen -r torrents" in a shell. The only downside to this is that the disk checks can slow down your logins, especially for really large files. Once it's up and running though, it's completely transparent.

Don't forget to add the --max_upload_rate option, too high an upload speed can slow down your system. Also, this option is for EACH torrent session that is being run, not the whole session together.

This system work beautifully for me, and is very, very convenient.

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## Deathwing00

Moved from Desktop Environments.

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## mrpdaemon

I like gnome-btdownload as a mime handler for firefox, it is like a download dialog for a torrent file.

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## InfinityX

bakreule: Great tutorial there, converted me from Azureus in 10 seconds flat, but one question - does btlaunchmanycurses automatically overwrite the downloaded file if finished? That seems to be the behaviour I've experienced when testing it out, it would certainly make seeding large downloads next to impossible  :Confused: 

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## bakreule

 *Quote:*   

> does btlaunchmanycurses automatically overwrite the downloaded file if finished? That seems to be the behaviour I've experienced when testing it out, it would certainly make seeding large downloads next to impossible

 

btlaunchmanycurses shouldn't delete anything, ever. It it does, something is wrong. Once a downloaded is complete, it should continue serving other people. If you restart it, it will do a disk check on the file(s), see that it's done and then continue serving it.

The way to stop a specific torrent session is just to delete the .torrent file.

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## mrpdaemon

 *bakreule wrote:*   

> The last line will start a screen session, call it "torrents", run the bittorrent client, and then detach automatically. To see it, type "screen -r torrents" in a shell. The only downside to this is that the disk checks can slow down your logins, especially for really large files. 

 

Why not put some sleep into the shell script? Like 'sleep 5m' before starting the whole thing backgrounded  :Smile: 

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## bakreule

 *Quote:*   

> Why not put some sleep into the shell script? Like 'sleep 5m' before starting the whole thing backgrounded

 

Perfect   :Very Happy:  Of course, this is all assuming that we have to reboot at all....

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