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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.

Continue reading for the complete guide…

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 firewall with this base system as the example:

• 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

These are what I found missing from my install. You may come up with some missing packages ‘apt-get’ to install packages and google to find the package names.

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

This overwrites the original source code for the Transmission-cli a new version extended for the Torrentflux-b4rt interface.

Install from Transmission from source

./configure
make
make install

This should install the transmission-cli binary in /usr/local/bin/transmission-cli

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

Follow the directions onscreen to finish the setup. Give it your MySQL username, password, and database name. It should solve the rest.

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“

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Mark Young. Software Developer. Nagios Guru.  Interests in web technologies, data visualizations, and network infrastructure. Nagios Guru.

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