Dedicated Torrent Server for Mass Downloads -Banana Pi Torrent

 

Introduction

As technology advance, data are getting more detailed and larger in size. A few years ago a 10TB commercial hard drive was unheard of, but right now, you can get one for a few hundred dollars. In additions with SSDs, storage devices are getting lightning read and write speeds!

But there is still one problem, internet speed. With gigabit internet still in the process of coming to houses, downloading large files, like an OS, can take a long time. So you do want to keep your computer on the whole time? Well, welcome to instructions for a dedicated mass download server!

Disclaimer: This blog or any one relating to this blog is not responsible for what you chose to download. This guide is meant for educational purposes only. 

What's needed

  • Banana Pi M1 Single Board Computer (other might work too)
  • SD card with Debian installed (also known as Bananian)
  • Internet connection
  • Optional external storage (USB or sata HHD)
  •  A computer 

Connect and Install

I am tired of writing this, but connect to your Banana Pi through SSH or a keyboard to access the Debian command line. Check out other guides on this blog for detailed instructions on how to do it.

Installing Deluge
This guide will use Deluge, open source software for download management. 

First lets update our software and OS
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade



Installing deluged
apt-get install deluged
Treaties of two options

You have two options right now, to access you server remotely, you can use a web console or a desktop client. Differences are? Well, they are basically the same, but desktop client can be easier to manage while the web console can be easy to use and set up; or get both:)




Installing web client required software
apt-get install python-mako


Installing Deluge web client
apt-get install deluge-web
optional deluge console
apt-get install deluge-console
note: deluge-web starts deluge web client but once you end the command, the web console will be closed, but deluge will still download, to access web console again simply start deluge-web.

Deluge and Storage Configuration

Start the web console
deluge-web



Type the IP address of your Banana Pi followed by port 8112 (the default port)
It should look like below numbers with actual numbers substituted for '*'
192.168.0.***:8112
Log in with default password
deluge 

Add a new connection with Host as Banana Pi IP adress and port as 8112 as shown above.

Go under 'preferences' and you can change download location, proxy setting any more.




Mount external drives in Bananian 

To store downloads in an external location, USB or HDD, just plug it to a port and mount it.




To list storage devices
fdisk -l
Find the one with sda header (it should be in the second paragraph)
In this case, my USB is detected as
Disk /dev/sda: 16.0GB, 16008609792 bytes 

Create a directory for mounting
mkdir /media/usb
Mount the USB drive (files can be written and accessed once the USB is mounted, it gives the device a location in the directory)
mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /media/usb
note the space between sda1 and /media

note: my USB is formatted in FAT32, if you have a NTFS HDD, you will need to install a software with below command.
apt-get install ntfs-3g



With our drive mounted, lets go back to Deluge preferences
under storage>downloads, change download location to your new mounted drive
/media/usb 

Testing 

Now that deluge is installed, how does it fair in real world testing?
To download a file, simply download the torrent file and add it through the web-console. 

Below pictures show detailed steps





Starting the Download
The torrent download should start immediately after looking for seeds and peers.

note: that the speed of the download might not be ideal, but this is a dedicated server and you will be greeted with the file tomorrow when you wake up!





Finishing the download
Start up the web console again
deluge-web
and connect to it through IP address in a browser, and tadaaa!
The file is downloaded!



To double check, I explorered the files in Debian command line and there it is the file on my flash drive!


Concluding

So, hopefully you found this guide helpful! I tried to screen shot as much as possible.
If you are confused on something, check out other starter guides here to see if it helps you.

You can also ask me a question through a comment!

thanks