How to Create a SSH Tunnel Through Your Seedbox IP (Proxy for Your Home PC)

March 22, 2010 by sharky

Faster torrents, high connectivity and seed-ability are notably the primary reasons why most of us opt to use a seedbox. Fair enough - but a seedbox (server) can be used to implement a variety of tasks that extend far beyond just torrenting. We’ll explain how you can run a SSH tunnel through your seedbox server, in order to use your seedbox’s IP address as a proxy on your local machine (home PC). And it works for most Internet apps that support SOCKS5 (web browser, IRC/MSN, even a home uTorrent client).

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Increase FTP Speeds With Segmented Downloading

March 10, 2010 by sharky

One of the biggest complaints from seedbox users is not about the BitTorrent upload/download speeds within the server itself; rather, the FTP speeds in which the files are transferred back to the home PC. Often these sluggish FTP speeds can be attributed directly to the server provider; OVH is one of the usual suspects here. We’ll show you how to get the most out of your bandwidth using FTP clients that support segmented downloading.

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ReScene - Rebuild Extracted Scene Releases Into Rars

February 24, 2010 by sharky

Most of us who download scene releases don’t keep the original RARs, sample, NFO & SFV files after extracting the goodies inside. If you unpack and delete the RARs, there’s no way to get back to the originals without some major hacking - and even this doesn’t guarantee that the rar set will pass a proper CRC check when reseeding. But if you have the *.avi or *.mkv file, ReScene is a cool utility that lets users rebuild scene release NFO, SFV and RARs from a single extracted file back into their original scene format.

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How To Install rTorrent & ruTorrent (using Socket + SSL + Authentication) on Ubuntu or Debian

February 13, 2010 by sharky

There are plenty of tutorials out there that explain how to install rTorrent + ruTorrent, but this one’s a little different. This tutorial will guide you through the steps of installing rTorrent+libTorrent and ruTorrent on a Ubuntu or Debian server; with sockets, SSL, and authentication. The end product is a very secure rTorrent/ruTorrent installation that uses sockets (instead of ports); a password-protected GUI; and even an encrypted SSL (https) ruTorrent browse & login page.

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Private Tracker IRC Torrent Auto Downloader Made Easy

January 10, 2010 by sharky

For years torrenters have been using private tracker RSS feeds to filter out and download the latest torrents coming onto the site. While RSS may offer a distinct advantage over conventional ‘browse & download’ when it concerns jumping into a swarm early, it’s no secret that IRC autodl scripts easily beat out their RSS cousin by as much as 15 minutes (an eternity on What.CD or BMTV). Most trackers that announce new releases (torrents) in an IRC channel will offer a specific customized IRC script to accomplish this (IRSSI), but that’s not the topic for this tutorial. Instead, we’ve discovered a brand new plugin for ChatZilla that supports several different private tracker #announce channels for the purpose of downloading & filtering .torrents, and then it automatically sends these torrent files to a local or remote BitTorrent client.

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Quickstart Guide to Free Satellite TV (IKS Edition)

October 30, 2009 by sharky

This quickstart guide covers everything you need to know about how to enjoy free satellite TV in North America, although other regions may be supported. For around $300 just about anyone can easily set up a motorized satellite dish complete with an LNB & receiver. With the blackout of Nagra3, most satellite pirates have turned to IKS to provide free satellite.

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How to Block Seedbox IP Ranges in uTorrent, Vuze

October 25, 2009 by sharky

The purposefulness of blocking or banning seedbox IP ranges when torrenting through a home PC is to be able to increase your upload rates to non-seedbox peers. By limiting your BitTorrent traffic to mostly other home users only, such as yourself, this will effectively cut out seedbox traffic - simply put; it means you won’t be uploading to seedbox peers in the torrents, in turn giving you an advantage to seed to lower-speed home torrenters. For some trackers that are difficult to seed on, in our tests we’ve found this solution to be somewhat effective in increasing upload data and sharing ratios.

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IPFilter.dat Not Blocking Bad Connections in uTorrent 1.8?

September 28, 2008 by sharky

For those of you who incorporate IP Blocking into µTorrent, you may have noticed that when you upgraded to v1.8, the ipfilter.dat addon doesn’t seem to be blocking anything. Rest assured, it is working. If you use µTorrent v1.7.7 with ipfilter.dat and click on the Logger tab at the bottom, blocked IPs are automatically shown (and logged). This is not the case for v1.8, and you’ll need to manually enable the log to get it to display the blocked peers.

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How To Run Multiple Instances of uTorrent (v1.7.7 & v1.8)

August 08, 2008 by sharky

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to run multiple instances of µTorrent on the same computer. We’ve seen similar tutorials posted throughout ‘torrent forums’ in the past; however, it’s getting more difficult to find. The reason we are redoing it is to add some needed screenshots, and to use it as a setup for an upcoming article on "uTorrent Mods & Ratio Hacking" in which we need to explain how to run different versions of µTorrent on the same computer simultaneously (hacked clients vs. original). Thus, it’s not imperative that you run the same version of µTorrent for this to work - you’ll be able to run the ‘latest stable release’ v1.7.7 and the new µTorrent v1.8 at the same time.

The Problem: If you already have µTorrent installed - for example v1.7.7 - and you download the new version 1.8 and try to run it, it will either launch the previously installed (older) version; or (if you have µTorrent closed and run the new desktop ’shortcut’), it will override the older one and take over the existing torrents. While v1.8 is superior to its predecessor, it’s still not an acceptable client for most private trackers, so it should be used with discretion. For torrenters who want to run both versions concurrently (or play around with hacked / modded µTorrent clients), here is the solution:

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The Best of YouTube: Torrent Guides, How-To’s & Tutorials

August 07, 2008 by sharky

For torrenters who prefer to "see" a tutorial in real-time rather than try to follow some wordy & confusing guide, YouTube offers a goldmine of videos pertaining to BitTorrent tutorials and how-to’s. Everything from ‘Download Torrents on Your PS3′ to ‘Increase µTorrent Speeds’ can be found. The caveat being; as with everything else on YouTube, much of the content leaves a lot to be desired, and guides are no exception - some are horribly amateurish; while others are brilliantly done.

We’ve come up with a collection of YouTube’s "Best of BitTorrent" videos. With almost 500,000 views, here is the #1 Top Viewed BitTorrent Tutorial video on Youtube:

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Installing TorrentFlux on a Linux Server in WinXP/Vista

July 07, 2008 by sharky

Are TorrentFlux Seedbox reseller hosts getting you down? If you want total control over TorrentFlux and your torrents, you’ll need to purchase your own server and install TF yourself. In most cases, it’ll be cheaper anyways, and you’ll be free to share the cost with any number of users (think: resell accounts to your friends). This tutorial is aimed towards WinXP/Vista users who wish to run a TF seedbox through a Linux server. Knowledge of the Linux OS is not required.

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A Quickstart Guide to Burning XBOX360 Games

June 12, 2008 by sharky

This tutorial is intended for users that have a ‘modded’ XBOX360 (i.e. "Firmware Flashed") and is not intended for out-of-the-box systems. Nowadays XBOX360 rips are done professionally, and in most cases require a minimal amount of tweaking to get them going as planned.

You will require:

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Play Downloaded XBOX360 Games without a Mod Chip

June 11, 2008 by sharky

Searching the Internet for a proper way to "mod" an XBOX360 to play downloaded games (backups) can be an arduous endeavor. I spent hours sifting through dozens of sites and pages before I found out how it is really done, so I thought I would share that knowledge.

When browsing the latest XBOX360 torrents, one thing stands out - many ‘proper’ scene releases are tailored towards XBOX360’s that have been "firmware-flashed". Firmware Flashing is not the addition of a so-called mod-chip - however, it does require a few tools; plus it includes opening of the unit chassis - which, in turn, breaks the warranty. It can also void out your XBOX Live account, or, in a worst-case scenario, brick the unit completely. Yet I recommend that this firmware approach is still much safer than a mod-chip hardware solution.

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How To Set Up Your Own Home Seedbox (in Windows)

June 01, 2008 by sharky

Got an old clunker of a computer that’s just collecting dust? Why not turn it into your own BitTorrent seedbox! In this tutorial we’ll explain how you can transform an old shitbox into a seedbox. For those of you who know nothing about Linux (*.Nix), then this is a great solution to optimize that second unused PC. You’ll require nothing more than an old computer, a router/hub (and cables), and software to connect it to your main system. After the whole thing is configured, you won’t even need a monitor/keyboard/mouse on the old system.

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Use Your XBOX 360 to Download Torrents, Extract RARs and Watch Movies

May 28, 2008 by sharky

This tutorial will show you how to set up your XBOX 360 to download torrents, automatically extract the RAR files and stream (link) the video files to your XBOX from your PC. You’ll also be able to browse your private tracker and control the torrents on your PC through µTorrent, all from the comfort of your couch and your XBOX 360. You will require:

• An XBOX 360

• Windows XP MCE (Media Center Edition) or Windows Vista with Media Center.

• PC Software:

• 1. MCE Browser — A plugin for Microsoft Windows Media Center which allows you surf the Internet using a Media Center remote control.
• 2. AutoUnpack — A freeware utility to download and extract compressed files, similar to WinRAR or 7-Zip. The main difference is that AutoUnpack can be set up to monitor a specified folder every couple of minutes for new archives and automatically unpack them to a set folder.
• 3. µTorrent

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How To: Download Torrents Through a Proxy/Firewall

April 16, 2008 by sharky

You may find yourself in a situation where you’re unable to download *.torrent files onto the PC that you’re using. Perhaps you’re sitting in an Internet Café, public Library or other place that blocks the actual downloading (or opening) of torrent files to the computer. I know that some Universities do this, as do many non-commercial ISPs & corporate firewalls (proxies) at the workplace.

Many firewalls and security measures will block P2P traffic, filesharing programs (and any new installations of such), or disallow new ports from being added to the “allow” list. These are somewhat difficult to override, depending on the situation (not to mention risky to attempt at work). But if you are able to install, use and launch a BitTorrent client, but not download *.torrent files for it, then this tip may work well. (You may still be able to run µTorrent through a USB stick in situations where new software installations/P2P programs are not allowed).

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How To: Seed Private Torrents You’ve Already Downloaded

April 14, 2008 by sharky

This is a great tip to increase your ratio on private trackers. It allows you to seed a torrent through your private BitTorrent account that’s already been downloaded from a public site (or another private one). Thus, only the upload stats will be counted towards your ratio, without incurring any downloading against it.

I’ve seen this tutorial posted elsewhere, but I’ve cleaned it up and redone it as a complete, easy-to-follow walkthrough. Credits go out to all who’ve done it before.

NOTE: This hack is not considered a dirty trick, and it likely won’t lead to you being warned or banned by your private site.

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