Suggestions for Router Torrent box

[Satal Keto]

Hi, recently I have been thinking about trying to make myself a torrent box (similar to this) which also has the capability to download files from an RSS feed (so for example Hak5 episodes get downloaded automatically when they are added).

Now the software part of this shouldn't be a problem, as I do plenty of programming already (although would probably be best for this to be written in C/C++ which I'm not fluent in, but I could still achieve the result with time), the problem for me is that I dont really want to be having an entire computer running for this as its space which could be used for other things (I only have a small flat).

I was wondering whether anyone know's of anyway that I could have something like a router (Im not certain whether this is something which would be achievable with a Fon router) which runs Linux, allowing for a bit torrent client to be run and some software which would probably need to be created, which downloads files according to RSS feeds.

It would probably only need enough storage for the OS and the software as would set up so files are downloaded to my network HDD.

Hopefully someone might be able to give me some idea's on how I might be able to achieve this or if they know of a pre-existing system (no point re-inventing the wheel).

Thanks for any suggestions/idea/etc. in advance

Satal

[krandor]

i think this could make for a pretty neat episode.

[Satal Keto]

Well I would be MORE than happy to provide all the details of how to make it to the Hak5 team, once I've managed to make it :D

[EDIT]

From what I have read a Fon router would work for what Im trying to do.

Would just need to set up a SMB share with my Network HDD and create the software to deal with the actual reading the RSS feeds and downloading the files as appropriate

[Tenzer]

Well, I have a torrent client running on my Linux server here at home, and it's running rTorrent - A cli torrent client written in C (I think?): http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/

It's set up to check a certain folder every once in a while for new .torrent files, and starts downloading them automatically when it finds them.

I also have set up a webinterface for it rTorrent, in order to easily start/stop/delete torrents, instead of having to SSH into the server. For the webinterface I use wTorrent found here: http://www.wtorrent-project.org/trac/

I got a really slick AJAXy interface where you also are able to add new torrents and what not.

Maybe this could be the base of something?

[Satal Keto]

Thanks :D

You've also made me realise that there will need to be a way to stop the torrents as eventually you would probably want to stop seeding.

I guess I will need to create some sort of a web interface which will allow for the user to control the torrents rather than having to SSH all the time.

[mleo2003]

This is a little old school, but seeing you talk of this reminded me of an old segment on Hak5. An NSLU2 was used to make an Asterisk box in episode 2x03, and I've always thought that was very cool. After doing some research today, I found that some very smart people have found a way to run Debian on the NSLU2, which fits perfectly with what your looking for: a small device that could attach to the network, and dump files off to somewhere else (or even another USB drive, as the device was intended to work as a NAS). The only catch is, according to Wikipedia, the device has been discontinued by Linksys, though only in this year, so you should be able to get one easily.

Seeing this was also good for me, as I have a few ideas on how to use this differently.

[DingleBerries]

I remember seeing a topic like this on the dd-wrt forms. the problem was having an external drive plugged into the router and telling the router to save it there.. the topic never got finished but that would be pretty neat to see.

[Satal Keto]

well shouldn't it be easy enough to have a share (whether it be on another computer or on a Network HDD like Im personally planning) mounted and then specify that location when downloading for example

ctorrent -s /mnt/NAS/ download.torrent

(not certain about the -s on this, haven't tried it out yet)

or

wget --directory-prefix=/mnt/NAS/ http://www.example.com/download.file

But as long as you can mount a share and then specify that the file is going to be saved there, shouldn't that be fine?

[CrashandDie]

There's a lot of existing options.

Torrentflux for instance runs atop of apache, web interface, support for rss feeds, stops at a given ratio (say, 180%), automatic queuing of new .torrent files, etc, etc

[Satal Keto]

Thanks TorrentFlux looks very interesting, if I can get that running on a Fon then that would definately be top of the list of starting places, although a few changes would be needed to support files and RSS's for files rather than torrents (unless Hak5 start doing torrents of their episodes :P)

[iisonly]

i think that.... it supports RSS right, it downloads *.torrent files to some directory and you have to put this directory to "watch list" so flux starts those torrents automatically.

but if you but for example Hak5 feed into it, it would download those files also?

ok, did a little googling and found out that its not feature yet, but hopefully will be... so if you want to use torrentflux, do some code modifying (tf-b4rt.berlios.de/forum...)

i've been using torrentflux-b4rt version of it, if i remember correctly its bit more powerful, but on Fon.... don't know....

[DingleBerries]

http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=7643 i think they did that here but it was to long and i didnt read it

[X3N]

torrent flux is what ive used and it runs great... and i'd imagine if you can get enough space on the nslu2 it would probably run fine.