Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with torrent

Ugly bittorrent ratio needs a facelift

alitorbati — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:03:31 -0800

Is there any software of Mac OS X that will protect my bittorrent seed/leech ratio? I'm looking for something like GreedyTorrent, but for mac. Obviously, freeware is preferred but I'm willing to hear any suggestions. Please don't use this post to encourage me to seed more. I seed as much as I can on one of my computers but my mac just won't do it.

Also, can anyone suggest any reasons that my mac is extremely finicky about seeding any torrents I get from what.cd? I'm using Transmission, if it matters.

Thanks!

Easiest way to set up a 'fake' torrent tracker?

JMB1138 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:38:06 -0800

I need to create a website for a fake invite-only torrent community to feature in a short movie centering around said community. What's the easiest way to set up a customizable tracker? It's important to note that there will be no actual torrents shared, this is just for the purposes of the movie. I just need the colors and graphics to be customizable so it looks pretty on screen, and so I can 'update' it with fake accounts posting fake torrents as needed for the story. I already have a domain and a webhost with MySQL access. Do I need to go through all the trouble of setting up a real tracker script? Or you think I can just get away with a customizable BBS system?

Any thoughts appreciated!

How to stop torrents at work?

numlok — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:13:20 -0800

I'm sure this question will not make me the most popular student at the dance, but is there a way to identify (via IP) machines running BitTorrent clients within an internal network (ie. work)? My company has around 50 employees, and the old, "Please don't torrent at work" doesn't seem to be doing much good anymore. It brings our email and web browsing to a near standstill, and dropping by the "usual suspects" is not only tiresome, but doesn't seem to find all the sources of traffic any longer. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

How to fix windows premissions for torrented files

Four Flavors — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:10:39 -0800

Torrented files can't be read by a remote machine until they are cut/pasted. Why, and how to fix it? I have 2 computers, one of which downloads torrents. The completed directories can be seen by the other computer, but clicking on them gets an 'access denied' error. Moving the directory somewhere else, then moving it back where it was causes the error to go away. This happens long after the file is done & the torrent stopped.

What could be causing this? I use uTorrent, in case it matters. The torrents are downloads of movies I already own on VHS from various trackers. Both machines are windows XP boxes, in the same workgroup. Both users have admin rights on their respective machines, and the share allows all users full access. No users are set to 'deny'.

Downloading on an open wireless connection...hypothetically

Anonymous — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:31:23 -0800

Is there a way to anonymously download a torrent? I got a letter from my cable company, saying they had noticed that I might have downloaded some copyrighted material and could I please erase all that stuff? The letter said it could have been someone on my open wireless account, a minor in my household or a virus.
Wow. Relief. Whatever happened, it won't happen again.
However, if one were to want to download something, a weekly show that's unavailable any other way...
what would happen if one were to go to someplace with a wireless network, download the torrents, then leave after erasing the torrent files? Can the ISP trace the files to my notebook or just to the wireless router?
Just curious, hypothetical question.

Help me design my torrent management system.

christonabike — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:04:28 -0800

I'm looking for tips, tricks, hacks, scripts, and ideas for managing torrents using Linux. Here's what I would like to be able to do:

Automated unpacking. If a torrent contained a zip, rar, etc it should be unpacked automatically.

Automated move on completion. Move music, television, and movies to their appropriate folders. This can probably be done by looking at file type and size.

Continued sharing after a file is moved. Is this even possible? I use some torrent sites that require share ratios, plus I want to be a good file sharer and give back. What if the files are further organized by Amarok?

Remote downloading. I want to be able to go to download a torrent from anywhere. I've already got Apache and PHP setup.

Other cool things. I want to do as little hands on torrent management as possible. Are there scripts that automatically download things with high scores on MetaCritic, Pitchfork, etc? Can I setup a script to automatically download new episodes of a show when they get hosted? I want to know about them!

I think most of this can be done using shell scripts and CRON jobs, but I figured there may already be existing tools.

Ghost bit-torrent tracker

daksya — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:50:39 -0800

How do torrents work? I thought I knew. Something like this, basically:

Person A wants to share files. She creates a .torrent which contains
file-list +
pieces & their checksums +
tracker address +
maybe some other stuff

She uploads it to tracker, which loads the torrent, and if there's an associated directory, also gets it indexed.

Persons B, C, D come across the listing in the index and open the .torrent in their client. Client contacts tracker which, in short, returns list of seeds & peers. Client contacts seeds & peers and individually tries to hook up all connections it can. Enter DHT, which means, I think, is that you get peer lists from peers you already are in touch with.

***

Now it turns out that a pretty famous public tracker went down a couple of months ago, but with some lingering hope of its resurrection still present. I found a torrent on one of the *novas, with the only tracker listed being that of downed-site. On a whim, I open it in utorrent, and although tracker status is "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.", I get some seeds and the torrent is "working".

My question: where did it get the list of seeds from?

If it's from the downed-site, is the moral that it's "down" but not really?

Quality Dedicated Hosting that allows Bittorrent Tracker? Have Budget.

mrflip — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:01:41 -0800

I will soon be distributing a bunch of large scientific and research datasets, all entirely legal for redistribution, many as large as a few gigabytes. Bittorrent is the best solution for this. Many respectable webhosting sites don't allow Bittorrent trackers; too many of those that do seem fly-by-night. I have a budget for this and want something respectable and reliable. Recommendations? My current host (Bluehost) has 6000GB/transfer a month, but I hear that these large caps can often be illusory; I want to be prepared for one to ten TB of traffic per month. I also need to be able to receive similarly large datasets, which I think will be much easier over bittorrent than asking folks to POST >1GB over ADSL and have it crap out after 3 hrs transfer (not to mention hitting CPU limits).

Amazon S3, at $0.18/GB, would be ~ $1000/mo for 6000 GB. I've reviewed most of the previous hosting q'ns, including Dealing with spikes in website popularity, but none of those suggestions make this work financially.

This clearly calls for bittorrent, but I've had real trouble finding dedicated hosting that will allow me to install a tracker. Bitrot has happened to the last question along these lines, and too many of the directories for tracker sites seem populated by rug merchants and fly-by-night operations.

I'm willing to spend money -- preferably in the $100-$200/mo range -- and want something respectable and reliable. If you tell me it will cost more than that then so be it. I'm figuring that the bittorrent solution (combined with throttling, ratios and a cooperative userbase) will keep me in the 1 TB/month range.

Can you recommend dedicated hosting that will allow me to run a tracker?

Sci-fi/fantasy/nerdcore shows that I can download legally and freely via torrent

poppo — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 06:17:01 -0800

With a nice high speed connection now installed at home, I'd like recommendations for finding sci-fi/fantasy TV shows that I can download legally and freely via torrent, that I would not typically have already seen on American cable. I'm specifically interested in sci-fi, fantasy, or other nerd stuff. I especially would like a mini-series or shows with a serial story.

I'm American and have cable, so I already have access to things like the Sci-Fi channel and BBC America, so I'm looking for stuff I can't get on American cable TV that would also be legal to download.

I wouldn't mind whether you suggest current shows or ones that have already come and gone. Chances are if it wasn't on American cable somewhere I've never seen it.

What's a good source for finding TV shows online? Specifically, Ninja Warrior (originally titles Sasuke in Japan)?

ignignokt — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:23:52 -0800

TV-over-the-internet-filter: What's a good source for finding TV shows online? Specifically, Ninja Warrior (originally titled Sasuke in Japan)? I don't have a Tivo and am not usually at home during prime time, so I download my TV shows and watch them when convenient. I haven't had problems finding episodes of The Office and The Ultimate Fighter on Usenet and Demonoid (a torrent sharing site), but Ninja Warrior (from G4TV, which I don't receive, BTW, so I can't do an old-school VCR recording of it) is giving me trouble. I've found three episodes, and I've found a torrent for an episode recorded straight from Japanese TV, but that's about it.

Any tips? Where do you guys usually get your shows?

Another Bittorrent Question

apetpsychic — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:32:39 -0800

I've seen this and this,and this. When I'm running Transmission (I used to use Azareus, with the same problems, but I switched because a lot of the trackers I used banned it. I will switch if anyone can suggest a better client) on OSX it kills all of my web browsing. Even when I turn on Speed Limiter there is no web browsing. I'm only downloading one file, with one peer at the moment, for what that's worth. But when I cap upload at 5k, web browsing works again (by the way, I browse with Firefox). That doesn't seem right to me. I have Time Warner Road Runner cable internet and a Netgear WGR614v7 - 54 Mbps Wireless Router. Is there anything I'm overlooking to be able to browse the web while downloading torrents?

How do I auto-open .torrent files?

zardoz — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:42:30 -0800

When on torrent sites, I click on a link for a .torrent file and it automatically downloads the file to my desktop. In the past, the torrent file would automatically open in my torrent app, and presumably be saved in a temporary file. I'm not sure what I did to make the change, but I'd like it to auto open like before, save in a temp file and not on my desktop. My OS is XP SP2. I've right-clicked on a .torrent file and changed the properties so that it will be opened with my client (uTorrent), but this doesn't seem to help.

Q about DMCA takedown notice I received

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:41:16 -0800

Here is my dilemma. Last week I received a DMCA takedown notice from my ISP regarding a TV show that I torrented (is that a word yet?). Do I ignore the message, or give them the information? I know this was wrong, but my thinking was that this was a TV show, and not music, HBO, movies, etc. I guess I was seriously wrong. I deleted the file and uninstalled uTorrent. I guess uTorrent was also uploading, and herein lies the problem.

The note states that I need to send my ISP (quoted from email):
(a) a physical or electronic signature of the subscriber;

(b) identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or disabled;

(c) a statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled;

(d) the subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located.

[end quote]

My question is: what should I do? By filling out this information, aren't I admitting guilt? Wouldn't I be setting myself up to be included in a lawsuit in the future? I actually spoke with a lawyer who said just send them the information because there were no damages, but sending an email "under penalty of perjury" is kind of scary. Ignoring this might be a huge mistake too...

Torrential Reign

Mach3avelli — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:38:48 -0800

Niche bit torrent sites. I've always noticed that the best torrent sites for finding obscure stuff are the specialized ones. They also have the best communities. I'm interested in basically everything, from all genres of music (from shoegaze to neo-postpunk) to all types of films (from comedy to Korean horror), etc. Please point me in the direction of all such niche torrent sites.

How do I get rid of these blankety-blank tabs?

Manjusri — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 17:17:10 -0800

Firefox opens a blank "(untitled)" tab when downloading certain files used by helper applications such as torrent files, or .smil files which are processed by a homegrown vb app. How can I suppress these blank tabs or force them to autoclose? I thought I saw an addon or greasemonkey script to do this at some point, but can't find one now.

How safe is torrent now?

Dave Faris — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:18:26 -0800

Asking for a friend, and as an update to old askme. Since it's been more than a year, how hazardous is it to continue to use the p2p torrent sites? Setting aside the general "piracy is bad" argument, is it still pretty safe for someone to download files provided they don't ever originate a torrent stream? Since everyone who participates in the torrent networks uploads by design, isn't everyone an uploader? And is there any legal leg to stand on if you close down the transfer of a particular file as soon as it's finished?

terrible torrents torment teens

Bonzai — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:51:10 -0800

Why do so many torrent music collections not have proper mp3 tags? Has anyone else experienced this? You download a collection of albums for a particular artist and the mp3 files don't have any information for track name, artist name or album name. Usually this information is contained in the file name but WinAmp, iTunes or other such programs don't know anything about the file.

Is this an attempt to avoid the wrath of RIAA?

Bit Comet screwing up my internet?

tomw — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:31:20 -0800

When I start Bit Comet dowloads (of legal material only) I notice it works momentarily, but then messes up the internet connection for all other apps. Logmein goes offline, MSN Msg logs out, and i can access websites intermittently... What gives? I should point out that bit comet has worked for me fine before... just done a clean reinstall. The only thing I can think of is some kind of conflict with Logmein? Which is the only thing I didn't have before. I have also changed the random listening port. My housemate uses torrents on a Mac Mini with no problems which makes me think its not the routing set up.

I have latest version, XP. Any tips would be gratefully recieved.

Crazy port-forwarding setup

jacobsee — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 23:14:52 -0800

Complicated port-forwarding situation not working: ICS on Win 2000 into WRT54GL, trying to port-forward to uTorrent. I have an old Windows 2000 (SP4) box with my internal pci DSL modem supplying my internet connection. This is running Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) to the LAN which feeds into a Linksys WRT54GL router. I'm trying to set up uTorrent on my main Windows XP (SP2) pc with a port forwarded from outside but can't get it to work.

I'm pretty confident that I have the router set up correctly, following the instructions here

I'm less confident about my ICS forwarding setup. I've gone into the ICS setup, Services tab and added two services for uTorrent, one for UDP, one for TCP, with the correct port number. But I'm unsure of the IP address to use. I've tried every combination I can think of without it working yet. I've redialed the DSL connection each time, unsure as to whether the changes take effect without resetting the connection. One thing I haven't done yet is to reboot the Win2000 box because it takes forever to reboot.

Ip of Win2000 gateway is 192.168.0.1

Ip of my linksys is 192.168.1.1

static IP of my PC inside the linksys is 192.168.1.11

I've tried all these plus the computer name of the pc.

I've disabled the XP firewall on the pc and no firewall is running on the gateway computer.

uTorrent is working but very slowly. Apparently if I can get this port forwarding to work it will speed things up. Thanks!

Roll my own torrent player for my TV

blueplasticfish — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 13:47:48 -0800

How can I build a machine (PVR?) that downloads torrents automatically via RSS and allows me to access them in a Tivo/DVR/PVR like interface on my television? Ideally, I'd like to be able to control it through a remote. I don't watch a lot of TV, and therefore don't have cable. I do, however, enjoy a lot of educational shows and would like to be able to download and watch them on my television (not monitor).

I know there are a bunch of howtos out there about how to roll your own PVR/DVR, but none of them quite get me where I want to go. And, I know there are things like Torrentocracy and MythTV, which is very close to what I am looking for so maybe I just need some direction there. There has to be something like this available somewhere.

Need more TV shows to download. Recommendations please!

BigBrownBear — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:45:32 -0800

Need more TV shows to download. Recommendations please! Shows we like: Entourage, Lost, 24, Arrested Development, Footballers' Wives, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiam, Coupling, Weeds, Monk, Desperate Housewives, I'm Alan Partridge, The Dead Zone, Ali G.

How to clean stubborn hiding media file?

zaelic — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 06:54:58 -0800

How do I clean a large, stubborn, aborted media download from my PC, and how do I interpret all this strange, buggy behavior that has plagued me since I terminated the download? A week ago I tried to download a media file using Utorrent. Two thirds of the way through the computer started to hang, so I terminated the download, and checked for viruses. Spybot found Haxdoor.H and Trend Housecall found win32.alemod. I cleaned them, and deleted the Utorrent program, and went back to not having anything to do with any of this new Torrent technology ever again. I blame it all on the Cylons (hint... hint...) anyway.

Since then, my PC continues acting very buggy. (Windows 98, 4 GB hard drive, PII processor.) Problems are mainly two:
a) My C drive properties list still shows something - from the original media file download? - taking up 275 MB of my disc space from the aborted download. I can’t seem to clear it or find it. Looked through the sytem files, temp files, registry. Asked on a Torrent oriented forum. No luck.

b) Computer still acting buggy – slow, looses passwords, gets hung with “Program not reponding” messages, cannot shut down or restart using Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Does not shutdown automatically after the “Windows is Shutting Down” screen. When I boot up, a very brief screen of DOS info comes up after the first opening “Windows 98” screen, which then shows a message mentioning C:\Windows attrib sys –s-h-r Cannot find Sertgs.dll. … A google finds that Sertgs.dll is part of the Haxdoor virus that I have already cleaned.

Getting a new PC or drive is not an option for now – no spare cash. I know the PC is old, but it has survived a lot and been declared dead by Ask me several times, but it still runs. Help me save my zombie computer, please!

How can I download torrents and still use my network normally?

odinsdream — Thu, 04 May 2006 09:54:26 -0800

How can I use bittorrent clients without bringing my home network to a crawl? Every week, I download one or two torrents with the uTorrent client on a Windows 2000 machine. Inevitably, web browsing is almost unusable on the rest of the network during this time. So, I usually do the downloading when everyone is asleep.

I've tried throttling the upload and download speeds down to, say, 10kbps, but the only way to get full use of the web browsing back is to shut down the client entirely. I'd rather not do this. The web isn't just slow (which would be understandable), it's unusable - the browser will time out trying to contact sites. Immediately upon closing the bittorrent client, everything goes back to normal.

What other settings can I adjust in the client? uTorrent has a wealth of options (Super-Seeding, DHT), but I'm just not sure what each one does.

How can I download more effectively?

How do I search multiple tracker sites at once?

Hildago — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 21:07:41 -0800

Are there any good replacements for Torrent Typhoon? My old standby torrent searcher hasn't been performing up to snuff for the last couple of months.

I'm looking for torrent search engines that allow me to search multiple tracker sites at the same time. Ideally, this would happen through a singer search box, but I'd settle for the kind of site where I type the search query and then select the tracker from a list.

You see, I like to get my completely legal, public domain torrents without a lot of hassle.

Alive...dead...alive...dead

yellowcandy — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:29:30 -0800

My Internet connection develops narcolepsy whenever I use Azureus... strange symptoms inside Here's the full scoop: when I start up Azureus (2.3.0.2, although I was having the same problems with earlier versions) with an active Internet connection (very fast cable broadband), it works really well for a little while-- this varies from a few seconds to an hour or so-- and I can sometimes even exceed 200 kb/sec down. So that's great. No complaints there.

The problem is that this NEVER lasts. At some point in the session, the connection goes completely dead. Literally nothing that uses the Internet from the same computer works (WWW, e-mail, IM, etc.). Other computers on the same router seem unaffected by this problem though. Then, to add to the strangeness, the connection will start up again once in a while and go at a good clip. Then of course, the cycle repeats itself.

I've got port 6881 forwarding on the router to my local IP, and sometimes I've gone so far as to even put my machine in the DMZ to see if this fixes the problem, which it never does. This doesn't sound to me like my ISP throttling my connection, since it's so sporadic.

Oh, one other piece of information, when I disconnect and reconnect to the router, that often helps, although it never solves the problem. I just get a brief respite.