SBLinux.org

I wrote a letter (attached as a PDF) recently to the VUZE BitTorrent developers. I was seeking some information and advice, and tried to explain what I thought was slowing the start of the recent KDE4 torrents by Danum. I've also attached their E-mail response to that letter. I would like to thank them again for their quick response, and for taking the time to look, to care and to offer us some advice.

Wow!
Quite a piece of detective work, John.
Thanks!

Do you have any suggestions as to how we should proceed?
For ISOs from Warren, we can always just hold the torrent creation until 4 or 5 of us have the file via FTP. That way we start with a decent seed base.

Since I wasn't around when Danum released the "cano" ISOs I don't know how the release was done. He started the torrent as the first and only seed?
I have a couple half-baked notions of how to proceed, but I'd rather hear more from you [and the others who were in this swarm] first.

--SB

Well, first and way more importantly, it's damn nice to see you here SilverBear. You have been missed. I guess what I picked up on from the response by Olivier was the idea of using Azureus as the tracker and issuing tokens to a known group. I believe Azureus can act as it's own Tracker in order to do this, and issue those tokens, but I've never done it. I'd like some others to chime in before I open my big mouth any more.
EDIT: Yes, you are correct, Danum was the lone seeder with the last torrent.
Thank You SilverBear, and again it's really, really nice to "see" you!

jblu,
Just a link to tie into where we talked before about torrent problems;
mepis-dvd-cano-be-32-bit-t279.html

Thanks for doing the leg work on this, hopefully we can get these iso's up on ftp in the future so more of us can seed from the start. We'll still have the utorrent bunch but with more of us seeding it won't take so long for the torrent to get up and running at a reasonable speed.

Wayne

Thanks Wayne.
Ok, I was right, there is the possibility of using Azureus as a Tracker. I just looked into it briefly here: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/faq.php#17
I've used the free DynDNS Service in the past with another Internet provider, and it works very well.
http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/
However, I have since managed to get a static address assigned to me by my new Internet provider. It's nice, especially for running my Web Server, and for sharing small files with family and friends.

So, I guess my two ideas would be:
> Use the Tracker in VUZE
> Start with multiple Seeds, by using a static server somewhere that the Torrent Team and interested Mepis Lovers members could download the file.
(I suppose we should see if Danum wants our help.)

SilverBear? You said you had some ideas as well.

If your wanting to setup and use your own private bittorrent tracker you might want to check out xbtit they have a php tracker as well as the xbt c++ tracker I currently have it setup an running on my Buffalo Linkstation Pro 500gb NAS running freelink with is based on Debian Etch. I have been using it to share some video torrents with a couple friend we are using the xbt tracker and its required resources are very low I am also using a dynamic dns service as well since I do not have a static ip. Also the xbtit frontend along with the php and c++ trackers are all free to use here is a link to the website to check them out http://www.btiteam.org/ I would be willing to allow you to use my tracker for Mepis torrent team members let me know however I am only one a dsl line so the bandwidth is not the greatest another possible problem is the NAS is located at a remote location which I normally only service during the week ie at work and when there is a power failure the NAS defaults to off it does not turn on with the restoration of power you have to do that manually.

Thank you Shadowtester:
Another great idea, and option, and a gracious offer to use your Tracker. I had TorrentFlux (available in our repositories for Debian) set up and running out of Apache2 at one time, but I never liked it much. It was hard to use, and I felt it was a security risk. I also had Ampache set up and running. One day I went to log into Ampache, and got the TorrentFlux login! I have no idea how that happened, but that ended TorrentFlux real quick. What torrent client(s) do you run? I used to use Azureus, years ago, almost exclusively. I think I'm going to return to using it, myself. One nice thing about Azureus, that I remember, is that if the Tracker would go down, and it was already a Seeder, it would remember and continue to seed to the Leechers (if the clients didn't disconnect). Things kept going pretty well, until the Tracker came back up. There are a lot of settings in Azureus, and it's extremely powerful, and can be enhanced with plugins, much like Firefox, but it does have a bit of a learning curve to know how to set things up. (That ability to customize and tweak is why I liked it.) Some also think it takes more "horsepower" to run, since it's Java-based. I didn't find it to be a resource hog though, myself, but yes, it does seem to use more resources. But for a Tracker, maybe there are better options...like you have talked about.
Thank you, I very much appreciate your input.
jblu

Well at home I use Vuze since I really need the extensive seeding que rules for the private music trackers I am a member of however on my Work NAS I use rtorrent which is great and I would prefer to use it over Vuze if it had a que setup and rules like Vuze I hate all the overhead that Java creates I even ended up having to install a desktop gui on my Debian server I use at home so that I could run Vuze and configure all the seeding que rules that server was running headless and Vuze is the only thing I use the desktop gui for on that machine.

I've waited to mention this as a possible solution, since I needed to check with our MEPIScommunity.org hosting admin, Peregrine, to see if she has the server space. She says it's "do-able."

The Proposal:
Since the main problem seems to be that the Bandwidth Bandits strike when there is only 1 original seed. . . how about if we do not put up a torrent until we have at least 3-4 seeds ready?

We do that by giving an FTP password to Danum & Marcos --and whomever else produces a remaster/whatever that we are going to release as an Unofficia; Community Edition-- for the MEPIScommunity.org server. Only Torrent Team members will DL from the server, and when we have roughly 4 MTT members with complete ISOs for seeding, one of us can then start the torrent and all 4 get into it to provide a solid seed core. We should only need the ISO on Peregrine's server for a day or so, right? After we get our initial seeder in place, the torrent swarm should be strong enough.

The Question:
jblu: will this solve the problem, in your opinion?

hopeful,
--The friendly, neighborhood SilverBear

That would work a private ftp server for the MTT to get the initial torrent downloaded and seeded prior to public release on the Linux Tracker. If that is not possible as I said I could provide MTT member with access to my tracker and we could use that to get the iso initially distributed prior to releasing on Linux Tracker the FTP server might be a faster alternative depending on the bandwidth that could be used for the FTP transfers to get the file distributed between torrent team members.

I'm continually impressed and pleased with the helpfulness and friendliness of the Open Source folk. In this case, Linux and specifically, MEPIS. Thank you Shadowtester for the offer. It's always nice to have choices. And SilverBear please relay my thanks to Peregrine. Mulling it over a bit, I think the FTP server might be the best choice. We would probably only need 4 or 5 people to download the file from Peregrine's server, and then start the public torrent at Linux Tracker. The window for use of the server would only need to be open until these individuals had the file, and the link could be closed. Maybe we could do a "heads-up", the file will be available (and possibly indicate when; e.g., in an hour, 2-hours from the time of this announcement?) thread at MEPISLovers, as well, right before it's going to be posted at Linux Tracker, in hopes that the MEPIS community would see this, and if interested, be some of our first leechers- for a little more insurance- so to speak.

EDIT: What do the rest of you think?

[OT: SilverBear and other members: As you can imagine, I was not keen on disclosing what I thought the "Bandwidth Bandits" (love that one, SilverBear) were up to, publicly. This was not done using the scientific method! However, when I received the reply from Olivier at VUZE, and his technical explanation of how this could be easily done,(The clients from both swarms not being aware of one another, and their Tracker only seeing our seeders.) and it fit so well with what I was seeing, that I decided to post it.]
[Further OT: I noticed the blue jblu you used in your post, SilverBear. If it shows up (just uploaded), how about this snazzy new avatar. ]

I'd like to add my thanks to Shadowtester and Peregrine to their offer of server space for FTP downloads to get us started with our torrents.
Letting 4-5 torrent team members get it downloaded before starting the torrent is probably the best way to go.

I like SilverBear's description also,"bandwidth bandits" fits what seems to have been done.

Thanks again, jblu.
Wayne

I, too, would like to say "Thank you."

In my case, an e-mail notification would be very helpful. I have lots of bandwidth to share, but I'm not on MepisLovers daily any more, so I frequently miss the beginnings of the torrents. To make matterss worse, I'm subscribed to the Mepis torrents at LinuxTracker, but I haven't received notice from them since the last Antix release.

-Bruce

Hi Bruce,
Beings you're still having that problem with torrent notifications from LinuxTracker, I'll try to shoot you an e-mail, with the link, next new torrent.
Wayne

Thanks, Wayne.

-Bruce