Does anyone know of good public torrent trackers that don't require end-user logins?

June 28, 2004 12:35 PM

I'm convinced that until they figure out a way to make publishing a torrent file easier, bittorrent will never become completely popular. So I have torrentmaker. I have a valid announcement url. I can create the torrent file easily enough but I can't seem to find a reliable tracker to upload the file to to make it publically available. It seems like most tracker sites require people to log in in order to download the file, and that's just a pain in the ass. Short of setting up my own tracker, anyone know of good public trackers that don't require end-user logins? (And that don't have obnoxious popunders, like &$%#*&@ing Suprnova)?
posted by crunchland to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

They don't have much yet, but keep an eye on Downhill Battle Labs for a simplified torrent-making solution.
posted by Aaorn at 12:39 PM on June 28, 2004

Suprnova has popunders?

Man. Firefox denies me all these little gifts. :p
posted by linux at 1:51 PM on June 28, 2004

Response by poster: Well, I've signed up for 4 of those "open" trackers, skallas, and all of them require not only a uid to upload, but a uid to download.

Isn't there an easier way?
posted by crunchland at 2:25 PM on June 28, 2004

Demonoid will allow people to download without an id, but it does require one to upload. It's been fairly reliable over the past few months, although these things do tend to get shut down.
posted by toothless joe at 2:44 PM on June 28, 2004

I had to ask my friend Waxy if he would host it. I was very confused in trying to set up a tracker.
posted by inksyndicate at 2:58 PM on June 28, 2004

Azureus has its own built in tracker, so you can host a file yourself if you wish. I have not tried this though.
posted by phatboy at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2004

I have no sympathy for people who complain about pop-[ups|unders]. Use a real browser.
posted by waldo at 3:59 PM on June 28, 2004

Response by poster: ..and I have no sympathy for people who are waldos. Come back when you've got something useful to contribute.

Demonoid.com, like all the others I've tried, requires a login to download as well.
posted by crunchland at 4:02 PM on June 28, 2004

Oh, I see your problem. If you download the link directly from the sites, it will require a password. If you upload the link to suprnova afterwards, however, it will create a copy of the torrent that doesn't require a password. Then you can use that link publicly without going through suprnova.

If that didn't make sense, when you upload the link to demonoid, it will create a file that's something like this: http://www.demonoid.com/some_file.torrent. Then if you add it to suprnova (which you can do anonymously), it will mirror it to something like http://66.someipaddress/some_file.torrent and that link will work publicly.

Not exactly an elegant solution, but one that will work. A good way to find trackers, incidentally, is to go to a big public site like suprnova and save the torrent files (instead of launching them). Then you can open them in notepad and it will tell you the tracker address.
posted by toothless joe at 7:56 PM on June 28, 2004