[gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Pandu Poluan]

I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?

Rgds,
-- 
FdS Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~

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[gentoo-user] Re: CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Pandu Poluan]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 18:07, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?
>

To be clearer: a curses-based Torrent client is preferred, but if the
best recommended is a pure CLI one, then so be it.

I am *not* going to install any GUI just to download torrents :-)

Rgds,
-- 
FdS Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~

 • LOPSA Member #15248
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Michael Mathurin]

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On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 07:25:22PM +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 18:07, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> > I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?
> >
> 
> To be clearer: a curses-based Torrent client is preferred, but if the
> best recommended is a pure CLI one, then so be it.
> 
> I am *not* going to install any GUI just to download torrents :-)
> 
> Rgds,
> -- 
> FdS Pandu E Poluan
> ~ IT Optimizer ~
> 
>  • LOPSA Member #15248
>  • Blog : http://pepoluan.tumblr.com
>  • Linked-In : http://id.linkedin.com/in/pepoluan
> 

I prefer rtorrent and consider it the best GNU/Linux torrent client available. 
It's fast, easily configured, and has lots of room to customize it to work the 
way you want.

-- 
t: https://www.twitter.com/mikankun
b: http://mikankun.wordpress.com

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 07:25:22PM +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 18:07, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> > I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?
> >
> 
> To be clearer: a curses-based Torrent client is preferred, but if the
> best recommended is a pure CLI one, then so be it.
> 
> I am *not* going to install any GUI just to download torrents :-)

I haven’t used it yet as I rarely use torrent at all, but elinks, being a
curses-based web browser, has torrent support. I imagine it shows torrents in
its download manager.
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

The circle is the parallel to the dot.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CLI Torrent client(s)?

[covici]

Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 18:07, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> > I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?
> >
> 
> To be clearer: a curses-based Torrent client is preferred, but if the
> best recommended is a pure CLI one, then so be it.
> 
> I am *not* going to install any GUI just to download torrents :-)

Rtorrent seems pretty good to me and is quite flexible.  I is ncurses
based.

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

[gentoo-user] Re: CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Holger Hoffstaette]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:07:10 +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote:

> I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?

deluge has explicit separation between server and clients, so whether one
uses the web, remote-GUI or cli simply becomes a matter of choice.
Most of the time I use the remote GUI from my Windows laptop to control
the server on my Linux box, but occasionally I also use the server-local
cli directly. It's not super-feature-rich, but has shell-like completion
and does what one would expect. Very happy.
This model is different (and IMHO much better) from many other cli torrent
clients which require you to keep the shell open, or use screen.

-h

Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Stroller]

On 29 December 2011, at 11:07, Pandu Poluan wrote:

> I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?

deluge.

I believe that when I checked it was the only client that could be run in daemon and client mode.

The CLI front end isn't perfect, but it's ok, especially once you get used to using the pageup / pagedwn keys (and working out the function-key equivalents on a cramped MacBook keyboard).

`deluge-console` starts the curses interface and once it's running you can run commands like `info` to show the status of torrents (use `info abce123` to show the status of the torrent for which the hash begins with abc123). However you can also run `deluge-console info` at the command line and grep the results. To add parameters to commands applied from the bash prompt you need to quote them - e.g. `deluge-console 'config -s max_download_speed 150'`

I mislaid my installation notes from a few months ago, but basically you emerge deluge and have to create for yourself a deluge user, with limited permissions and a home dir of something like /media/Torrents/. Edit /etc/conf.d/deluge to accommodate this user and start the daemon.
Next you start the UI as the deluged user - I can't recall if this involved `sudo -u deluge deluge-console` or whether it involved giving the user a shell (afterwards return it to /bin/false) and `su - deluge`, but you will find a ~deluge/.config/deluge/ is created. Exit the client, stop the daemon and copy this and all its contents to your own homedir (~stroller/.config/deluge/), making sure you set ownership to yourself. Now when you start deluge-console as your own user (having restarted the deluged daemon) it will connect using the deluged credentials.

Caveats that I can remember are that you add your own user to the deluge group, and you need to set permissions (umask?) on ~deluge so that files / directories are created 660 / 770 (or at least readable). When a torrent finishes you copy it from /media/Torrents/ to /media/Videos/ (or wherever) and then use the deluge UI to delete it; the files are then removed from from /media/Torrents/. When you add a torrent its torrent file is stored in as ~deluge/.config/deluge/state/abc123….torrent (where abc123… is the hash); deluge has a function that can monitor a directory for new .torrents, and I just made this directory ~deluge, then added the below to my .bashrc:

function torrent {
  if [[ ! -n "$1" ]] ; then echo "Torrent what file?" >&2 ; return 1 ; fi
  while [ "$1" ] ; do
    if [[ ! -e "$1" ]] ; then echo "$1 isn't a file!" >&2 ; return 1 ; fi
    if [ ! "$(file -b "$1")" == 'BitTorrent file' ] 
      then echo "$1 appears not to be a BitTorrent file!" >&2 ; return 1 ; fi
    chmod 666 "$1" && mv "$1" "~deluge/${1##*/}.torrent"
  shift ; done ; return 0 ;
}

These permissions allow deluge to keep its homedir clean - it can delete files belonging to you, and create copies in its state folder. Alternatively you could share the folder over Samba and ensure the permissions that way.

You ask specifically for a CLI client, but the gtk front end is really pretty acceptable, and having already copied the .config/deluge/ stuff you can use it over ssh & X11 on your Apple Mac. The first time you might need to go into the app's prefs, enable "show remote servers" and connect using the new button that appears in the toolbar. You can install the scheduling plugin using the gtk client and arrange for your downloads to only run at offpeak times; once this is saved you don't need to use the gtk client again. There's a webinterface; it's a bit shit (in 1.3.2, I haven't tried it in 1.3.3; I think some improvements are supposed to be coming) but it's ok.

I think I've used Enhanced CTorrent in the past on an old system - it seemed to work ok but I think it has some flaws; it's been at least a couple of years so I don't remember the details. I think it's rtorrent that everyone raves about as "the best" command-line client, but IIRC you fundamentally have to run it inside a tmux or screen session, and thus you can't have it initiated at boot (not reliably, at least); it also doesn't have a separate daemon, and IMO this is just iffy. On a headless box you're going to have to ssh in as the rtorrent user, or run it as you and leave your files and privileges exposed. Yeah, as far as I can see, most authors of BitTorrent clients overlook best practices for security because "it isn't a real service" or, uh, no-one's actually looked for exploits yet. Not that they've disclosed publicly, anyway. 

deluge was the only client I could find that addressed this security issue properly, was well enough supported and which had a good selection of clients. I did look at, and try, Transmission; I can't recall why I rejected it. 

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:33:02 +0000, Stroller wrote:

> > I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And
> > why?  
> 
> deluge.
> 
> I believe that when I checked it was the only client that could be run
> in daemon and client mode.

Transmission also runs as a client/server model. There are various
frontends: text, web, Qt and Gtk, which can connect to a local or remote
server. I used to used Deluge but switched to Transmission a couple of
years ago.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If you shoot a mime, should you use a silencer?

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Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Érico Porto]

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any of this torrents has support to RSS rules like utorrent?

Érico V. Porto


On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:33:02 +0000, Stroller wrote:
>
> > > I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And
> > > why?
> >
> > deluge.
> >
> > I believe that when I checked it was the only client that could be run
> > in daemon and client mode.
>
> Transmission also runs as a client/server model. There are various
> frontends: text, web, Qt and Gtk, which can connect to a local or remote
> server. I used to used Deluge but switched to Transmission a couple of
> years ago.
>
>
> --
> Neil Bothwick
>
> If you shoot a mime, should you use a silencer?
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Daniel Troeder]

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On 29.12.2011 12:07, Pandu Poluan wrote:
> I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?
> 
> Rgds,
I'm definitely a fan (and user) of deluge. It has nice plugins, and can
receive torrents from rss-parser flexget, which is very nice for
tv-shows -> ezrss.it.

But this was not meant to be the 3rd msg regarding deluge - I wanted to
add: "rtorrent" - works very well and is curses based, but does lack a
daemon-mode. Now there is a optional web-frontend: rutorrent.

Bye,
Daniel

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Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 5:07 AM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
> I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?

The only one I've used is bittornado, a few years ago. I have nothing
special to say about it other than "it worked properly".

Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[Francisco Ares]

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I use mldonkey for p2p AND torrents.

Regards
Francisco

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Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[v_2e]

  Hello!

On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:07:10 +0700
Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?

  I've been using Transmission for more than 3 years now, and mostly on
very old and not powerful PCs. For example, it runs on my Pentium-I
processor with 48 MB of RAM without problems. I even tried to run it on
32 MB of RAM and succeeded.
  It is the most lightweight torrent-client I know of. And what is also
pleasant about Transmission is its client-daemon structure which lets
you use the UI of your choice. For example, I use the GTK interface on
my local machine and the Web-interface on the remote PC.

  Good luck!
    Vladimir.

----- 
 <v_2e@ukr.net>

Re: [gentoo-user] CLI Torrent client(s)?

[ny6p01]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 06:07:10PM +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote:
> I'm wondering: what's your recommended CLI Torrent client(s)? And why?
> 
> Rgds,
> -- 
> FdS Pandu E Poluan
> ~ IT Optimizer ~
> 
>  • LOPSA Member #15248
>  • Blog : http://pepoluan.tumblr.com
>  • Linked-In : http://id.linkedin.com/in/pepoluan
> 

Rtorrent is not only a great cli torrent client, it's one of the best
torrent clients, period. Large user base means you will find all you need to
know on the web. 

Terry