Torrentflux is web based, feature-rich BitTorrent download manager.
Torrentflux is a must have installed server software for anyone who does regular torrent downloads and want to access the downloads from anywhere on the internet.
TorrentFlux is a PHP based BitTorrent controller that runs on a web
server. It can manage all of your BitTorrent downloads from anywhere
through a convenient and easy-to-use web interface.
.
TorrentFlux uses a MySQL database to manage the downloads.
TorrentFlux enables you to run BitTorrent downloads unattended on a monitor-less or remote server 24 hours a day, while still maintaining complete control from any web browser. Now you can control your downloading on your firewall, or keep up with downloads while on vacation. It uses the BitTornado client to download files, and also requires a web server with PHP.
Some of the Torrentflux features:
* Upload Torrents via URL or File Upload
* Start, Stop, and Delete Torrents with ease
* Advanced Torrent start options (ports, speeds, etc.)
* Multi-user interface
* RSS Feeds, download Torrents files with a click
* Run several torrents at once
* View Download Progress of all torrents at a glance
* View drive space at a glance
* View Torrent file meta information
* Built-in User management and Security
* Private Messaging
* Themes (selectable per user)
* Upload History
Before installing Bittorrent you will need to have a running version of Debian, Ubuntu or any other debian derivative (though it can easily be run on any Linux distro). To install AMP (Apache MySQL Server, PHP) you can follow first part of my previous article Installing Usual PHP Apache MySQL for new Debian GNU / Linux installs.
So what for is TorrentFlux Useful?
Torrenflux is precious and must have if you have to access filtered torrent from outside of your homecountry and you have a running server already in your home country in that I was using TorrentFlux to access Bulgarian Zamunda.Net Torrent Tracker from Holland and was downloading first movies from the Bulgarian Torrent Tracker to my Fluxbox installed on my Dobrich home router and then used FTP to transfer movies to the Netherlands. Talking about many people choose to also install VSFTP and use it together with Torrentflux …
1. Install TorrentFlux and its dependencies (BitTornado, Bittorrent, Zip, Unzip, Bzip etc.) the "Debian Way"
On my Debian 7 Wheezy home machine I run
apt-get install –yes bzip2 php5-gd php5-cli unrar-free grep python net-tools mawk wget unzip cksfv vlc-nox uudeview python-crypto libxml-simple-perl libxml-dom-perl libdbd-mysql-perl bittorrent bittornado
a) Install TorrentFlux the Debian Way
apt-get install –yes torrentflux
You will be prompted with a coule of screens, to set a new MySQL database user and password and SQL database, as well as offered to restart Apache to make Torrentflux accessible like as on below screenshots.
To make new installed torrentflux accessible from web you will either have to configure it via some new Apache VirtualHost or make a symbolic link to /usr/share/torrentflux/www :
cd /var/www/
ln -sf /usr/share/torrentflux/www/ torrentflux
That's all you're all done to access torrentflux either access it via your default configured webserver domain name or via localhost if you're logged in to same pc where installing.
http://www.your-domain.com/torrentflux
or
http://127.0.0.1/torrentflux
2. Install latest Torrentflux version from source
Alternatively if you want to have the latest version (because the Debian version is part of the stable distribution is a little bit outdated you will have to fetch Torrentflux-b4rt and unarchive it:
cd /tmp/
wget http://download.berlios.de/tf-b4rt/torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2.tar.bz2
tar -xjf torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2.tar.bz2mv torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2 /opt/torrentflux
Then to make torrentflux visible from web server I had to create a symbolic link to installation directory:
ln -sf /opt/torrentflux/html /var/www/torrentflux
For further initial configuration its necessery to make Torrentflux config writtable by www-data (the user with which Apache is running on Debian).
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/torrentflux/inc/config/
Next it its required to create somewhere download folder where TorrentFlux will keep downloaded Torrents
mkdir /var/lib/torrentflux
Apache HTTP server will have to have write ther:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/torrentflux
If you already haven't restarted Apache earlier in installing TorrentFlux pre-requirements, you will have to do it now:
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
As TorrentFlux depends on its MySQL backend, we need to also create manually TorrentFlux database username and a password
export SQL_DB='torrentflux';
TFLUXSQL_USERNAME='torrentflux';
TFLUX_SQL_PWD='any-secret-password';echo "CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS $SQL_DB DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci"
| mysql –user=root –passwordecho "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON $SQL_DB.*
TO $TFLUXSQL_USERNAME@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY $TFLUX_SQL_PWD;" | mysql –user=root –password
Substitute with your Database, Username and Password above shell variables – $SQL_DB, $TFLUX_USERNAME, $TFLUX_SQL_PWD
To configure TorrentFlux access it in browser:
http://your-domain.com/torrentflux
By accessing it for a first time, you will redirected to setup.php, in case something goes wrong and yuo're not redirected (probably some mod_rewrite issues add setup.php to url – e.g., acess –
http://your-domain.com/torrentflux/setup.php
I will not enter details, about Web config, because everything there is pretty clear.
Just in short – you will have to now choose:
Choose Database
Choose Database Information of database (put in the exact name of TorrentFlux databse previously created)
Uncheck the box for "Create new database"
Choose as a download location upper created directory – /var/lib/torrentflux
If you get an error on software dependencies screen for missing unrar – just install it
VLC may show an error as well, that's not a problem because VLC is probably not to be used.
Finally after completion of all, you will get an error that setup.php cannot be deleted.
To prevent, someone to re-configure it through http://your-domain/torrentflux/setup.php URL remove setup.php
rm /var/www/torrentflux/setup.php
To prevent someone rewrite anything in config file from web we have to revert back config/ folder not to be writable by Apache
chown -R root:root /var/www/torrentflux/inc/config/
Now in browser to access torrentflux type:
http://ipofyourbox/torrentflux
/torrentflux should redirect you to login.php if for some reason it doesn't type it manually in URL.
First account you will login is the super user account, you can allow multiple users to use it by adding multiple accounts.
As you will see there is plety of configuration options to play with.
You will definitely want to look in Server Page, some very important page to look is the Transfer Page – from there you can adjust the bandwidth of your connection on 100Mbit network this would be 12500 – to use the maximum possible connection provided by your ISP set the max bandwidth to 0. You have the option to also set a default bittorrent client, by default this will be bittornado.
If you have troubles downloading from TorrentTrackers make sure your router is configured to forward port 49160 to 49300
Now if you have a lot of storage create accounts also for your friends and enjoy torrentflux 🙂
How to install and configure Jabber Server (Ejabberd) on Debian Lenny GNU / Linux
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011I've recently installed a jabber server on one Debian Lenny server and hence decided to describe my installations steps hoping this would help ppl who would like to run their own jabber server on Debian . After some research of the jabber server softwares available, I decided to install Ejabberd
The reasons I choose Ejabberd is has rich documentation, good community around the project and the project in general looks like one of the best free software jabber servers available presently. Besides that ejabberd doesn't need Apache or MySQL and only depends on erlang programming language.
Here is the exact steps I followed to have installed and configured a running XMPP jabber server.
1. Install Ejabberd with apt
The installation of Ejabberd is standard, e.g.:
debian:~# apt-get --yes install ejabberd
Now as ejabberd is installed, some minor configuration is necessery before the server can be launched:
2. Edit /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg
Inside I changed the default settings for:
a) Uncomment%%override_acls.. Changed:
%%%% Remove the Access Control Lists before new ones are added.%%%%override_acls.to
%%
%% Remove the Access Control Lists before new ones are added.
%%
override_acls.
b) Admin User from:
%% Admin user
{acl, admin, {user, "", "example.com"}}.
to
%% Admin user
{acl, admin, {user, "admin", "jabber.myserver-host.com"}}.
c) default %% Hostname of example.com to my real hostname:
%% Hostname
{hosts, ["jabber.myserver-host.com"]}.
The rest of the configurations in /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg can stay like it is, though it is interesting to read it carefully before continuing as, there are some config timings which might prevent the XMPP server from user brute force attacks as well as few other goodies like for example (ICQ, MSN , Yahoo etc.) protocol transports.
3. Add iptables ACCEPT traffic (allow) rules for ports which are used by Ejabberd
The minimum ACCEPT rules to add are:
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5222 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5222 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5223 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5223 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5269 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5269 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5280 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 5280 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 4369 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 4369 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 53873 -j ACCEPT
Of course if there is some specific file which stores iptables rules or some custom firewall these rules has to be added / modified to fit appropriate place or chain.
4. Restart ejabberd via init.d script
debian:~# /etc/init.d/ejabberd restart
Restarting jabber server: ejabberd is not running. Starting ejabberd.
5. Create ejabberd necessery new user accounts
debian:~# /usr/sbin/ejabberdctl register admin jabber.myserver-host.com mypasswd1
etc.debian:~# /usr/sbin/ejabberdctl register hipo jabber.myserver-host.com mypasswd2
debian:~# /usr/sbin/ejabberdctl register newuser jabber.myserver-host.com mypasswd3
debian:~# /usr/sbin/ejabberdctl register newuser1 jabber.myserver-host.com mypasswd4
...
ejabberdctl ejabberd server client (frontend) has multiple other options and the manual is a good reading.
One helpful use of ejabberdctl is:
debian:~# /usr/sbin/ejabberdctl status
Node ejabberd@debian is started. Status: started
ejabberd is running
ejabberctl can be used also to delete some existent users, for example to delete the newuser1 just added above:
debian:~# /usr/sbin/ejabberdctl unregister newuser jabber.myserver-host.com
6. Post install web configurations
ejabberd server offers a web interface listening on port 5280, to access the web interface right after it is installed I used URL: http://jabber.myserver-host.com:5280/admin/
To login to http://jabber.myserver-host.com:5280/admin/ you will need to use the admin username previously added in this case:
admin@jabber.myserver-host.com mypasswd1
Anyways in the web interface there is not much of configuration options available for change.
7. Set dns SRV records
I'm using Godaddy 's DNS for my domain so here is a screenshot on the SRV records that needs to be configured on Godaddy:
In the screenshto Target is the Fually qualified domain hostname for the jabber server.
Setting the SRV records for the domain using Godaddy's DNS could take from 24 to 48 hours to propagate the changes among all the global DNS records so be patient.
If instead you use own custom BIND DNS server the records that needs to be added to the respective domain zone file are:
_xmpp-client._tcp 900 IN SRV 5 0 5222 jabber.myserver-host.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp 900 IN SRV 5 0 5269 jabber.myserver-host.com.
_jabber._tcp 900 IN SRV 5 0 5269 jabber.myserver-host.com.
8. Testing if the SRV dns records for domain are correct
debian:~$ nslookup
> set type=SRV
> jabber.myserver-host.com
...
> myserver-host.com
If all is fine above nslookup request should return the requested domain SRV records.
You might be wondering what is the purpose of setting DNS SRV records at all, well if your jabber server has to communicate with the other jabber servers on the internet using the DNS SRV record is the way your server will found the other ones and vice versa.
DNS records can also be checked with dig for example
$ dig SRV _xmpp-server._tcp.mydomain.net
[…]
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;_xmpp-server._tcp.mydomain.net. IN SRV
;; ANSWER SECTION:
_xmpp-server._tcp.mydomain.net. 259200 IN SRV 5 0 5269 jabber.mydomain.net.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
jabber.mydomain.net. 259200 IN A 11.22.33.44
;; Query time: 109 msec
;; SERVER: 212.27.40.241#53(212.27.40.241)
;; WHEN: Sat Aug 14 14:14:22 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 111
9. Debugging issues with ejabberd
Ejabberd log files are located in /var/log/ejabberd , you will have to check the logs in case of any issues with the jabber XMPP server. Here is the three files which log messages from ejabberd:
debian:~$ ls -1 /var/log/ejabberd/
ejabberd.log
erl_crash.dump
sasl.log
I will not get into details on the logs as the best way to find out about them is to read them 😉
10. Testing ejabberd server with Pidgin
To test if my Jabber server works properly I used Pidgin universal chat client . However there are plenty of other multiplatform jabber clients out there e.g.: Psi , Spark , Gajim etc.
Here is a screenshot of my (Accounts -> Manage Accounts -> Add) XMPP protocol configuration
Tags: admin, apache, best free software, brute force, cfg, com, configure, custom, default hostname, default settings, DNS, doesn, dport, ejabberd, ejabberdctl, exact steps, file, GNU, goodies, hostname, hosts, init, INPUT, Install, installation, Jabber, Linux, Lists, mypasswd, necessery, override, ports, ppl, programming language, Protocol, quot, quot quot, rich documentation, server, servers, software, tcp, transports, uncomment, User, xmpp
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