Torrents

jimmowatt · Post by **jimmowatt** » July 15th, 2006, 12:38 am

I was just having a bit of a ponder.
Do we have a pool of talent here as regards torrents?
It is, by far, the preferred method of download by the greatest number of people. Mostly, it must be admitted because it's the ideal way of sharing stuff that perhaps you shouldn't be.

But

I wonder if Librivox might benefit from running its own torrent site.
One of the problems with torrents is that they tend to die off if no-one is seeding. If someone were responsible for running a torrent site then they could monitor performance and try to round up volunteer seeders.

I found a link to some open source software that could help http://www.blogtorrent.com/

It would need some webspace (not much tho as all you would store on there is .torrent files) and you'd need to be able to run PHP to run that program.
I haven't had a good look at the software (I can't run PHP or create directories on my 50 meg of webspace) but it looks quite simple.
Don't know if it has its own tracker built in. I would have thought it must have.
Would there be bandwidth issues in hosting a torrent site ?

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions or even volunteers ?

DSayers · Post by **DSayers** » July 15th, 2006, 12:49 am

Stephan is the contact for this, as I understand it.

I know that my reading of Robinson Crusoe was sent out as a Torrents file, but am not sure how many readers picked it up as a result.

-denny

jimmowatt · Post by **jimmowatt** » July 15th, 2006, 1:05 am

DSayers wrote:Stephan is the contact for this, as I understand it.

I know that my reading of Robinson Crusoe was sent out as a Torrents file, but am not sure how many readers picked it up as a result.

-denny

Yes, he seems to know his way around torrents pretty well.
I used his step by step instructions for the torrents I've put out on such as piratebay, torrentspy, torrentbox etc.
Unfortunately Stephan really busy at the moment finishing off his PHD.
Maybe a project like this might be better kept on the backburner until he gets back
or maybe we've got other hidden talents lurking around here as yet unmanifest.

We do get a lot of readers via torrents.
On archive.org I note History of England chapter one is somewhat neglected but just from my machine alone 65 copies of it have been downloaded as a result of the torrent, so the actual copies distributed will be multiples of that.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » July 15th, 2006, 1:11 am

We are seeding Librivox books by volunteer power, and we have something like a process for it.
Right now we have very few torrent-creating people. Two or three i assume. So there is rather no need to organize the process other than giving a rough outline how to create the torrents ( i need to update the wiki-articles). We had a stack going that showed everyone, which books he can seed. But it is no use now. Now its "seed what you like", just follow the naming scheme, and attach the correct text-file.

We DO have our own torrent-site - Which is our catalogue. What you perhaps meant, i think, is to profit from running our own tracker? Yup, that would be nice indeed for the reliable info over the amount of downloads we'd have then. No one volunteered to host a tracker on his server yet. It's not nescessary though, we can use public trackers. Or do you mean our own server, seeding! Seeding the books with great speed because of a good connection to the internet. That would be awesome. But pretty expansive i can imagine.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » July 15th, 2006, 1:19 am

Here you can find all our torrents. I imagine most of them are dead.
http://librivox.org/torrent/uploader.rb
By downloading a torrent, and then downloading the book via the torrent and keeping on seeding it, you can help some torrents to stay alive. That's the easy way to help Librivox seed our books.

kri · Post by **kri** » July 15th, 2006, 1:44 pm

I'm going to divert the discussion a bit. I would like to seed torrents, but the firewall I'm using seems to dislike letting the bit torrent software I have to connect to anything. I can download torrents, just not seed them. It always shows a broken connection, and I have DSL. I have Azureus (however that's spelled), and I'm using ZoneAlarm's software firewall. Can anyone give me any suggestions, perhaps another bit torrent program? Other solutions?

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » July 15th, 2006, 2:45 pm

yeah yeah. firewalls, routers and filesharing. always some hassle.

azureus only runs well if you have green smilies for your torrents. If they stay yellow than you have some network ports still closed. Either by your firewall or by your internet provider or they are not forwared by your router.

If you use a router to go online you will have to check
www.portforward.com
or
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Router_configuration
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Port_forwarding
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/NAT_problem

You will have to make your router forward data to your computer (IP) on these exceptional ports and also make your firewall not block these.
Example: Say HTML works via port 80 - and your router forwards it fine by default and your firewall does not block it. But for 6885 your router does not forward the information, and your firewall blocks it.

If you use a DSL-Modem via USB to go online you can skip that forwarding part and only tend to your firewall.

You will have to open exactly the ports in your firewall that Azureus needs to communicate - the same that your router needs to forward in case. Do a search for +Azureus +Ports +NAT (+ZoneAlarm) and you will very likely get a tutorial how and which ports to open.

These are the standart Ports:

6969 (TCP Incoming / Outgoing) Communikation with Tracker
6881-6889 (TCP Incoming / Outgoing) Communikation with Peers (Upload / Download)

------------------------------
52525 instead of 6881 (TCP Incoming / Outgoing) = Alternative Port works fine and fast for many, including me. You will be encouraged to not use the standart ports to avoid some problems. Set Azureus to use port 52525 and tend to it in firewall and router after you have gathered some experience.

kri · Post by **kri** » July 15th, 2006, 3:42 pm

Thanks S tephan, that's a lot of help

I think I MAY have gotten it to work.[/quote]

kri · Post by **kri** » July 17th, 2006, 8:39 am

OK, and I know this further diverts the intended topic: I must say it is quite satisfying to see those Green smileys (working torrents).

jimmowatt · Post by **jimmowatt** » July 19th, 2006, 8:50 am

Stephan wrote:We are seeding Librivox books by volunteer power, and we have something like a process for it.

Yes, I know.
Torrents haven't been mentioned for a while and I figured it might be a good idea to bring up the subject to see if any more people were interested in seeding torrents.

Stephan wrote: We DO have our own torrent-site - Which is our catalogue. What you perhaps meant, i think, is to profit from running our own tracker? Yup, that would be nice indeed for the reliable info over the amount of downloads we'd have then. No one volunteered to host a tracker on his server yet.

Not yet but I'm sure someone will come along soon who would be happy to host a tracker.
I think this would be a great help in keeping track of which torrents have people seeding them and which don't.
Then anyone wanting to help has a clear view of what needs doing.
At the moment there are only a very few people seeding but I wonder if we had our own tracker and could make it obvious what needs doing I think it might encourage more participation in the seeding process.
As always tho' it needs a volunteer.
I have almost no web space and can't run PHP but hopefully there's someone out there who can step in and do the necessary
....
maybe ...

As for the the caqtalogue; I understand, on your advice we're no longer linking to the torrent file as it's difficult to keep track of what torrents are still being seeded.

Stephan wrote: It's not nescessary though, we can use public trackers. Or do you mean our own server, seeding! Seeding the books with great speed because of a good connection to the internet. That would be awesome. But pretty expansive i can imagine.

The public trackers will give us access to more people but I reckon the point of us having a tracker would have more to do with monitoring the health of seeds rather spreading the files.
As for high speed server - wonderful but as you imply quite a remote possibility.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » July 24th, 2006, 6:35 am

I am not sure how much an own tracker would aid us, perhaps you're right. Who knows what would come out of this.

Also, Kara just wrote me that perhaps an opportunity arises that our host also torrents and seeds for/with us.