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Bittorrent implementation

RJ Raphaël Jadot Public Seen by 264

Message from John Cave

I would like to start a bit of a brain storm into how we implement bittorrent, because it is something we have not discussed during any of our meetings.

Most distros offer an official torrent. It is a great way to deliver the distro without using up too much of our servers' resources. We can say "we would prefer you to download the torrent if at all possible" and many people will use it. Furthermore, it is an easy way for people to give something back to the distro, by allowing them to upload the file and help to spread it.

So, the questions are this:

  1. Will we set up a separate CMS for the .torrent files or simply provide a page with the links to them? An example of the CMS route is Sabayon http://tracker.sabayon.org/ The CMS would not require any login (whew).

  2. What will we use as the central tracker? Will we set up our own or use something like publicbt? I know setting up our own sounds very silly, but using our own does cut out any association to the darker side of bittorrent.

  3. Will we set up a small virtual machine (for example with only 256 mb of RAM) to seed the torrent very slowly? Only one hundred kilobytes or even fifty would suffice - just to make sure the torrents never stall.
    My own server would be seeding pretty much permanently - but I couldn't guarantee uptime and it would be very very slow (~6 kb/s). I know how annoying it is to start a download, get to 89.2% and have it stop. I am doing that right now, actually. Is there some way we could automate the process of making the .torrent or would we have to make one ourselves every year?

My suggestion is to have a CMS, use a public tracker, have a server to seed it slowly and automate the process if at all possible.

RJ

Raphaël Jadot Thu 7 Mar 2013 3:51PM

@johncave
1) what do you exaclty call a CMS? A full Content manaagement such as Drupal/Plone/Spip? Or has it another meaning?
2) what are the technical requirements for a Tracker?
3) What could be the consequences of a short downtime for a torrent?

JC

John Cave Thu 7 Mar 2013 7:37PM

By CMS I mean a custom CMS to host the torrent files. There are many specially designed CMSes for doing so. I refer you to http://tracker.sabayon.org/ where I think they use phpBTtracker. There would be absolutely no need for a SSO ability in that CMS.

A tracker only need be a small server because all it does is tell the new peers where other peers are, so that the download process can begin. I personally don't think we should set up our own, but I merely suggested that because the foundation might wish to avoid association with the darker side of BitTorrent. That is all.

A short downtime for a torrent can leave many, many users with stalled downloads until a seeder can come online, which may take a long time. In some extreme cases all seeders abandon the torrent and we can't even start it up again. While this is unlikely (my server will be seeding 24/7, for example) It is very annoying for the users. Seeding even at fifty kilobytes per second will stop this from ever happening, and stop the torrent from stalling (as you can see, some of Sabayon's torrents read "stalled")

If the build system can automatically make a torrent and perhaps E-mail them to one of us (if it can't upload the .torrent itself), then we can upload it to the index CMS and start to download it so we can seed it. In this scenario, the build system would have to seed it out at least ten times so the torrent can get started.

JC

John Cave Thu 7 Mar 2013 7:39PM

Wow. I wrote all that down there, before I read the column on the right. Never mind, just ignore me.

JC

John Cave Sat 9 Mar 2013 5:49AM

Oh I forgot about linuxtracker.org! We can simply use that instead of going through the hassle of running our own! :D

RJ

Raphaël Jadot Sat 9 Mar 2013 7:51PM

@johncave yes then, I think we don't need to host everything, and promote openservices :)

JC

John Cave Sun 10 Mar 2013 4:40AM

Hi everyone! The index software on tracker.sabayon.org is also the central tracker software. Shall I set it up anyway or look for an indexer?

RJ

Raphaël Jadot Sun 10 Mar 2013 5:59PM

@johncave It's not a field in which I have any knowledge, for my part I totally trust you :)

JC

John Cave Mon 18 Mar 2013 5:07AM

I think we should have a simple page to offer up either BitTorrent or direct downloads, and we can write "we would prefer you to use the torrent and seed as much as possible" See the Fuduntu project for this in action.

For trackers I think public ones are fine. Does everyone agree?

I also think we should make a small VM so seed out the torrent, therefore preventing the file getting jammed and stopping the torrent from becoming excruciatingly slow.

Does anyone know if we can automatically make a .torrent on the build system or does one of us need to start it?

RJ

Raphaël Jadot Mon 18 Mar 2013 12:47PM

I agree, however for the BS, we need to ask rosa.
No problem for having a small VM doing that.
Would you like to do it?

WS

Wayne Sallee Mon 18 Mar 2013 8:17PM

Yes, I agree, both options should be on the same page, so as not to make it look like we are twisting their arms.

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