Remotely Control your Torrents on Linux

You have a spare PC lying around or you travel a lot and want to monitor your Bitorrent downloads. Well then what you could do is make yourself a mini seedbox, essentially what a seedbox is a spare computer that you use for torrent downloads now I am going to show you how to create one so that it may be easy for you to monitor your Bittorrent downloads on the go.

First thing’s first we need a torrent client in this case we will be using a modified version of Torrent Flux ( which is a php torrent client) called Torrentflux-b4rt. I choose the modified version because it has more features and also the option to use different back ends. you must be wondering why not just use the uTorrent with its webUI, let me tell you that utorrent webUI has very limited set of features as opposed to TorrentFlux and utorrent webUI cant be accessed from your cellphone if you decide to control it on the go and last but not the least torrentflux is very customizable as you can install plugins and theme to either change the look or to add more features.

Now first we need to install Xampp which will act as a way to execute the php scripts that make torrentflux. First download Xampp from here and make sure to download it into your home folder. Now execute these commands step by step

su

tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.6.7.tar.gz -C /opt

Xampp has been installed into your computers /opt directory.

Now to start Xampp enter this:



/opt/lampp/lampp start

once you are done you should see some conformation messages telling you that Xampp has started successfully. To test enter this URL into a browser http://127.0.0.1 .Before you start doing anything else i suggest you make your xampp installation secure. to do so enter this command.

/opt/lampp/lampp security

Remember the passwords that you set in this configuration because we will require them later on. Now get the files for Torrentflux-b4rt from the link mentioned above. Now extract the content of the zipped file that has been downloaded. Copy all of the contents in the directory /opt/lampp/htdocs directory. But there is one problem as a normal user you cant change any of the contents of that folder so you need to go into super user mode to edit that.

To do so For GNOME enter this:

sudo Nautilus

Or for KDE enter this:

sudo Konqueror

This will open up the respective file managers for each of the desktop environments in super user mode, with this you will be able to copy the torrentflux files into the xampp htdocs folder.

Once all the contents are copied point your web browser to the following URL http://127.0.0.1. This will start the the torrentflux installation.

The first step is selection of the database type, since we are using xampp the database type will be MySQL, since this is the default configuration you don’t need to change it

The second step is telling torrent flux how your SQL server is setup. Leave the host as localhost, in name enter the name of the database that you would like torrentflux to use, you do not need to create this database because torrent flux will create it for you. Next is the user name and password, this is the user name and password that you choose during the security script so enter that, then click continue

Before continuing to the next step, we need to make the config folder of torrent flux writable by the web server user, to do that enter this command:

sudo chmod 777 /opt/lampp/htdocs/inc/config

Once that is done click continue and torrentflux will save the provided SQL information into a file. Now for the next 2 or 3 steps just keep clicking continue because it is all automated. Once you reach the step where torrentflux asks you for the download location stop clicking continue.

Here is what you need to do first in the htdocs folder of xampp create a folder called downloads. Then enter this command:

sudo chmod 777 /opt/lampp/htdocs/downloads

Then in the user downloads path in the setup of torrent flux enter this:

/opt/lampp/htdocs/downloads

Now click continue and torrentflux will check for the third party utilities that are available

Torrentflux will report to you that some requirements where not found do not be alarmed by this as torrentflux functions just fine without these and so click Continue and do so for the next 2 steps once your finished you will be prompted with the torrentflux login screen:

Now in this login screen whatever user name and password you type will become your Administrator user name and password for torrentflux.

Your finished now upload torrent to the torrentflux interface and start downloading them

This is a guest post by Ruhaan Ahmed who is a hardcore linux fan and likes trying out different linux distros . Check out his Blog.

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