I love automation. Especially when it comes to torrents. It turns out my favorite FlexGet torrent downloader is not as easy to install on Mac as Ubuntu. I will fix that by an easy to follow install guide.

FlexGet is a python based script that parses RSS feeds for torrents and downloads them to a directory. It automates torrent downloading when used in conjunction with a torrent application that supports watch directories such as Transmission or my favorite command line application rTorrent.

Install XCode

Put your MacOS X install disk and run the xcode.mpkg from the optional install folder.

Install MacPorts

Download the package from the MacPorts site and install the mpkg file.

Install Python (optional)

Depending on the state of your system you may need to install or update python.

sudo port install python

Install wget (optional)

sudo port install wget

Install the Python dependencies for FlexGet

sudo easy_install FeedParser && sudo easy_install SQLAlchemy && sudo easy_install PyYAML 
sudo easy_install BeautifulSoup && sudo easy_install html5lib && sudo easy_install pynzb
sudo easy_install progressbar && sudo easy_install flask && sudo easy_install cherrypy

Install FlexGet from source

We need to download the latest source to a directory and run the python setup.py with sudo privileges. The following is the latest source from the flexget website. In the end you should have a flexget binary to

/usr/local/bin/flexget

cd ~/Downloads
wget http://download.flexget.com/unstable/FlexGet-1.0r1862.tar.gz
tar xzf FlexGet-1.0r1862.tar.gz
cd FlexGet-1.0r1862
sudo python setup.py install

Configure FlexGet

Create a directory ~/.flexget and a config.yml

mkdir ~/.flexget
cd ~/.flexget
touch config.yml

Edit the file to contain the contents where RSS_URL and WATCH_DIR_LOCATION. For more configuration options check out the configuration page.

#feeds:
#  my_feed:
#    rss: http://example.com/rss.xml
#    patterns:
#      - something.rexexp
#    download: ~/downloads/

feeds:
  tv-shows:
    regexp:
      accept:
        - torrent
    rss: RSS_URL
    download: WATCH_DIR_LOCATION

Test out flexget. It should download the torrents from your specified

/usr/local/bin/flexget

Configure Cron: Now lets make it automatic!

Open your crontab. This may require some vi editing. Check out this vi tutorial.

crontab -e

The following will run flexget every 30 mins (as your current user).

*/30 * * * * /usr/local/bin/flexget --cron

Congrats! Everything should be working. Check console output if you are still having trouble. Often you will get a hint for a missing dependency when installing python packages. If flexget seems to install correctly check your configuration file.

showRSS custom TV torrent feeds

ShowRSS rises in the in the wake of the sad demise of FeedMyTorrents (due in part to legal troubles). ShowRSS works much the same way as FeedMyTorrents. Where you are given the ability to create combined television show torrent RSS feeds or use any of the pre-existing feeds. These feeds are already pruned for duplicates and have the ability to filter Proper, Repacks, and HD torrents.

Overall showRSS works much better than FeedMyTorrents ever did. Creating a custom feed is simple, and the server response time is much improved! So load up your torrent client and give it a go.

Additional Resources

• ShowRSS
• TorrentFreak post on the demise of FeedMyTorrents

photo credit: irina slutsky

I had some interesting requirements for my Bittorrent needs. First I wanted to move everything to my linux mediaserver/fileserver. So I needed a way to work with bittorrent files without traditional access to the machine. eg. No screen or windowing system. This led me to TorrentFlux-b4rt, which is a php based web interface to Transmission client meant to be run on apache servers. Second I wanted to ability to download torrents automatically from RSS sources using scripting. This is where the original TorrentFlux had failed me and I went searching. The following is a gathering of scripts I have found and tested. Most scripts require that you have access to Cron scheduling and the python scripting language. And, of course, a bittorrent client that scans a directory looking for torrent files. I am using these scripts in conjunction with rTorrent (a commandline bittorrent client) as well as TorrentFlux-b4rt on various servers.

FlexGet

FlexGet is a program aimed to automate downloading content (torrents, podcasts, etc.) from various sources like RSS-feeds, html-pages, various sites and more. It's most often used to download torrent-files from RSS-feeds and works very well in that environment, but there are additional modules for other kind of situations as well. FlexGet is extremely useful in conjunction with applications and clients which have watch directory support. - http://flexget.com/

I've been using flexget over the last few weeks and it is my top pick for script to use.

rsstorrent

rsstorrent is a very simple RSS torrent downloading script. It does as advertised and is still being developed. Though it lacks the nice documentation of FlexGet.

tvrss member script

This is the script that I had been using for about a year to automate the torrent downloading. It scans the tvrss.net website using an easy to understand configuration file. It worked like a charm for me but I found a new charm with more sparkle.

TED - Torrent Episode Downloader

This is a different way to download torrent episodes. This is not a script. It is a fully functional cross-platform program dedicated RSS Torrents. It is way to heavy for my use. But interesting none the less.

ted can find episodes of any TV show you like to watch. Just add your favorite shows to ted and he will search for the newest episodes and downloads them for you. ted uses bittorrent and RSS technology to get you the newest episodes as fast as possible! http://www.ted.nu/

What is Torrentflux-b4rt?

What is Torrentflux-b4rt you say? Torrentflux-b4rt is a sophisticated web-based PHP BitTorrent client based off the original Torrentflux. It allows you to use an old linux server as your happily obedient bittorrent client , while you gallivant around town feeding it torrents. Its greatest feature is freeing you from being constantly connected to the internet while downloading.

This guide is intended to be followed by a linux user confident with the command line and in full control of a server they wish to employ the use of TorrentFlux with. Good luck.

Base System

I am going to describe how to setup a basic server with these sources:

• Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS (hardy)
• basic apt sources. (hardy main, hardy-updates main, hardy-securrity main)

Installation

Basic Requirements

• LAMP Stack
• Python
• Perl
• A custom transmission-cli bittorrent client interface

LAMP ( Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP )

A cleaver guide has already been written Installing LAMP On Ubuntu For Newbies.

PHPMyAdmin

This gives you a web interface into the MySql server. Greatly simplifies life with MySql.

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Install extra packaged needed for Torrentflux

sudo apt-get install zip unzip unrar php5-cli php5-gd perl python libxml-dom-perl libxml-simple-perl libthreads-shared-perl libdigest-sha1-perl libhtml-parser-perl transmission-cli

Install Torrentflux-b4rt

Download the latest package Torrentflux-b4rt package

From your home directory:

cd ~
wget http://prdownload.berlios.de/tf-b4rt/torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2.tar.bz2
tar xjvf torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2.tar.bz2

Create the custom Transmission-cli client

Download the Transmission 1.06 Source

cd ~/torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2/clients
wget http://download.m0k.org/transmission/files/transmission-1.06.tar.bz2
tar jxvf transmission-1.06.tar.bz2
tar jxvf transmission-1.06.tar.bz2
tar jxvf Transmission-1.06_tfCLI-svn3356.tar.bz2
cp Transmission-1.06_tfCLI-svn3356/cli/transmissioncli.c transmission-1.06/cli/transmissioncli.c

Install from Transmission from source

./configure
make
make install

Copy the Torrentflux-b4rt html directory to a web visible location

cp ~/torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2/html/ /var/www/torrentflux -R

Create the Torrentflux database and user using PHPMyAdmin

Log Into PHPMyAdmin

Log into your phpmyadmin interface using your MySQL root user/password by going to:

http://yourserverip/phpmyadmin

Create the User and Database

Steps to follow from the phpmyadmin frontpage:

• Click the 'Privileges' link from the home page.
• Then click on the "Add a new User" link.
• Create a new user named 'torrentflux', set a strong password, select "Create database with same name and grant all privileges", click go.

Run the TorrentFlux-b4rt setup.php script

Point your browser to:

http://yourserverip/torrentflux/setup.php

Additional Resources

In case you get stuck or would like to more information check out these pages:

• TorrentFlux-b4rt - Includes support forms and plugins to extend functionality
• TorrentFlux - the original TorrentFlux
• Transmission - Cross Platform BitTorrent Client
• Linux.com - TorrentFlux: A BitTorrent client on a server
• TorrentFreak.com's article on "Seedboxes"