May 06, 2008 by sharky
Here is a basic tutorial designed as a “quick start” to get you going straight away, once you’ve signed up for a TorrentFlux seedbox account. By no means is this the end-all of TorrentFlux guides, and the b4rt forums offers much more advanced documentation.
Part I - Adding & Managing Torrents
The entire premise of setting up a seedbox is to upload, or seed. Which is probably why they don’t call them leechboxes. In this tutorial we’ll explain the basics on how to add torrents, start-stop jobs and run transfers, and change (tweak) your seedbox settings to maximize performance. If you’ve figured out the general ins-and-outs of a BitTorrent client such as µTorrent or Azureus, then the transition to the TorrentFlux interface is simplistic.
Log in to your Account
After signing up, you’ll receive an email with the URL of the seedbox, plus a username and password to access your account. Click the link, and log into your account:
Download .torrents
Depending on the service plan and provider you’ve chosen for your seedbox, you’ll most likely be limited on the number of allowable (active) torrents. By default, LeaseTorrent allows for just one active torrent; and seedboxhosting allows for an unlimited number. For now, we’ll explain how to add just one. We’ve used Firefox as the browser of choice for these guides, although they all operate in a similar fashion.
Find and Download Your Torrents:
The easiest method for manually adding torrents to your seedbox is to download them to your PC’s hard drive first; and then add them from there. This will ensure that your ‘passkey’ is directly associated with the torrent so you’ll be sure to get the stats counted towards your private tracker account. (This can also be done through the ‘Cookie Management’ feature in your Profile - we’ll get to this later).
When browsing torrents on your private tracker, you won’t be able to use the ‘quicklink’ feature (often represented by a green ‘down’ arrow or “DL” link) to download the torrent. This will only launch the BitTorrent client on your PC, which has nothing to do with your seedbox. So, you’ll need to manually save the actual *.torrent file. To do this, click on a desired torrent to get into the “details” page - you’ll see the proper title of the torrent:
Now that you’re in the details of the torrent, right-click the torrent title, and (in Firefox) select “Save Link As…”. The torrent is now saved to your hard drive. It’s important to know where you’re saving them, as you’ll need to ‘browse’ to them later on.
Adding .torrents to your seedbox (The TorrentFlux Interface)
To add a torrent, click on the “Browse” button where it says “Select a Metafile for upload…”.
Browse to your torrent file - select ‘OPEN’ once found:
The path (and title) of the torrent should now be displayed in the TorrentFlux GUI - see below:
Starting the .torrent
Now that the torrent is added, you’ll need to start it. Click on the “Go” button next to ‘Upload‘ (see above image) - you should now notice that the torrent has been added to your list of Transfers.
The torrent is now being processed, and is confirmed by this message:
By default, the torrent won’t actually “run” (that is, download or upload) - it remains in a paused state. There are a couple of different ways to get this going. We’ll first explain the easy methods of getting a torrent downloading and uploading - but beware - you’ll be using the default settings on your account, which in most cases are not favourable to down/up speeds; seed percentage; number of upload connections, etc.
While all options are configurable during the ‘transfer’ or ‘run’, often the torrent is downloaded so fast that you may not even have time to change crucial settings, such as “Completion Activity” which allows you to keep seeding the torrent once it’s finished downloading. Skip down to Change the settings if you prefer to configure the options before starting the torrent.
1. Run Transfer (Quick) Method:
If you want to just start the torrent into its downloading frenzy, click on the “Run Transfer (Quick)” button - it’s the double-green arrow underneath the Admin heading (see below):
2. Run Transfer (Advanced) Method:
You can change the torrent settings during the transfer if preferred; click the “Run Transfer (Advanced)” button - it’s the single-green arrow (see below). What this does is start the transfer in a popup window, and basically just launches the advanced panel while the torrent is being downloaded/uploaded.
Changing the settings BEFORE you begin the transfer:
If you want to change the torrent settings before you begin to download it (recommended), click on the small “Notepad” icon:
The torrent’s ‘Transfer Stats‘ window will launch in a popup, without the torrent starting. By default, the ‘Settings‘ or ‘Control‘ Tab will display - here you’ll be able to make a number of key changes. You are free to alter whatever you wish, provided that you abide by your ToS. (Some services put a ‘cap’ on the upload rate - if you change this to anything higher than allowable, you may jeopardize your account). Other than that, feel free to modify the settings - most of them come pre-configured with ‘low-end’ options.
Here are some “key” settings that can be controlled - note that the screenshot below is from the “Tornado” client, so actual features will vary (more on this later).
- — 1. Max Upload Rate: “0″ is unlimited, but you may be restricted by upload rate ‘capping’ under your contract.
- — 2. Max Download Rate: “0″ is unlimited (the default is “0″ on most webhosts). This can be tweaked to a lower number (to remain in the swarm longer) although it won’t matter too much with smaller torrents (1.38 GB and down).
- — 3. Max Upload Connections: “20″ is usually a good number. Set this too high, and you start to split your upload bandwidth among too many leechers in the torrent. Tweak this setting to find a ’sweet spot’.
- — 4. Max Cons: These are the overall maximum connections. Again, if this is set too high, the server will become flooded and there will be packet delays and other problems.
— 5. Completion Activity: This is important! If you wish to seed after finishing the download (and who doesn’t??) you’ll need to change this option to “Keep Seeding“. Plus you’ll need to change the settings in #6 (see below). You’ll also need to do this before the torrent finishes downloading, which is also why it’s important to launch the torrent’s settings before starting it.
- — 6. Percentage When Seeding Should Stop: If you want to do some heavy seeding to buffer those private accounts, 100% will NOT be enough. For example, if you set this to 900%, in theory you should be able to get a 9:1 sharing ratio on the torrent. Again, this also may be restrictive of your service contract. “Unmetered, Unlimited and Uncapped” is the best way to go!
- — 7. Save: Be sure to save your settings after changing them. Be aware that these are not “Global” settings, and only specific to that particular torrent.
After making changes (and saving them), either click the “Control” tab (next to ‘Settings’) and scroll to the bottom then click “Run Transfer”, or go back to the main window in Firefox and click the single-green arrow to “Start All Transfers”.
If you closed the popup window, you can always re-open it again by clicking the green ‘radio’ button next to the running torrent. If it is not green, you may have to restart the torrent.
This should now start the torrent. The stats will be updated periodically in the main Firefox window, and also in the smaller “Transfer Stats” window (click the “Stats” tab at the far left). To refresh the results, just click the stats tab again.
NOTE: You may be able to change the default “client” side of things for more options. The above screenshot examples are from LeaseTorrent, and the only client they run is Tornado (there’s no option to change this). Below is an example of a TorrentFlux b4rt GUI that allows for changing of the default client. For most users, Tornado works just fine.
Other Options in the ‘Transfer Stats’ Window:
- — 1. Stats: Real-time statistics of the up/down traffic.
- — 2. Hosts: Shows a list of IPs that are sharing in the torrent (that you are connected to).
- — 3. Scrape: This shows a pie-chart of seeders vs. leechers in the torrent. Often a ’scrape’ will fail - not to worry - it shouldn’t affect your connections anyways.
- — 4. Images: Also shows a pie-chart of users you are connected to, and your total up/down traffic.
- — 5. Log: Provides proper paths of files and a log of stats and settings.
- — 6. Details: This shows the files in the torrent, dir name and at the bottom you can find the ‘announce URL’ for the tracker, plus your passkey.
- — 7. Files: Lists the files in the torrent. Also, if the job has not been yet started, you’ll be able to select/de-select certain files in the job.
- — 8. Settings: Shows the specific settings associated with the torrent.
- — 9. Control: If the job has not been run, you’ll be able to select and de-select certain files in the torrent here, change the settings, and “run the transfer” at the bottom. If the download has already been completed, you’ll be able to restart and stop the torrent here.
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