Network Solution for Windows – Windows system, Linux system, Ubuntu server configuration tip

A seed box is a server for downloading and uploading digital files, commonly making use of the BitTorrent protocol. A common use for seed boxes is seeding torrents, it’s much more efficient to setup a Seedbox as it’s likely to have access to higher upload speeds. They are also good for general downloading, its easier to have a server running 24/7 then it is running your PC or Laptop all day. The ability to remote control seed boxes is a great advantage, it enables you to add and monitor downloads from anywhere, especially useful if someone recommends you something to watch at work.

In this tutorial I’m going to talk you through setting up a seed box designed for downloading torrents. I’m going to use TorrentFlux for this tutorial as it can easily be installed on a LAMP stack

First off you need an Ubuntu computer/server running LAMP, if you don’t already have this check out my tutorial on setting up a LAMP server. Now you’ll need to update your repository’s:

sudo apt-get update

now it’s time to get TorrentFlux installed:

sudo apt-get install TorrentFlux

You’ll be greeted buy a window asking if you want to configure your database using dbconfig-common, say Yes, then be asked for your MySQL password, enter the password of your MySQL root account:

Now you’ll be asked for the TorrentFlux root password, you’ll need to enter this twice:

This will initiate the final instillation steps, once this has gone through it will ask you if you want to restart apache2, say Yes:

We need to setup a folder for TorrentFlux to download to, this is up to you but I’m going to use /mnt/data for my download folder. We also need to make this folder readable by TorrentFlux, to do this we’ll set www-data as the owner:

Sudo Mkdir /mnt/data
sudo chown www-data:www-data /mnt/data

Now you’re ready to login to your new server, navigate to http://yourdomain/torrentflux using your web browser, you should be greeted by the TorrentFlux login window, enter root for your username and use the password you entered during the install:

After you’ve logged in you should see the settings screen for TorrentFlux, the only change you need to make is “Path”, change this to the directory we made earlier, (e.g. /mnt/data) and click the “update settings” button at the bottom of the page

And you’re done, your Seedbox should now be up and running. To add a new torrent copy its link location (e.g. http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.10/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent) into the “URL for the Torrent Flie:” box and click get file:

This will add the torrent to the download list, you now need to click the green download button next to the torrent, select the files you want to download, and any other settings, from the pop up window and click the “Run Torrent Button”

This will now start the download, once it has finished you can download your files by clicking “directory” at the top of the main screen, finding the file and clicking the download button.