BitTorrent

BitTorrent is a form of peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P). With it, someone can distribute large files widely without the original distributor incurring the entire costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources. Instead, when a file is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, each downloader supplies pieces of the file to other people, with such benefits as:

• reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source
• providing redundancy against system problems
• reducing dependence on the original distributor.

For more on what BitTorrent is see the article at WikiPedia:BitTorrent∞

Downloading Files with Bittorrent

1. click on a Bittorrent link on a webpage

• Here's an example: Torrent link for Puppy Linux Manual 3.01 in English (11MB, PDF)∞

2. the .torrent will open in your Bittorrent program
3. Select a place to save the file
4. The file will begin to download.

Uploading Files with Bittorrent

1. Use a Bittorrent program to make a .torrent file for the file you want to upload
2. Upload that .torrent to a tracker site
3. Seed the file: click the .torrent and select the file you want to share as the Save location.
4. Give people a link either directly to the .torrent file or to a webpage where they can get the .torrent file.

Some trackers: The Pirate Bay∞, isoHunt∞, LinuxTracker∞. See their FAQ's for more on uploading a torrent to their trackers.

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Installing the Original Bittorrent Program

You can install and compile the original BitTorrent client∞ on recent versions of Puppy Linux with a bit of difficulty. BitTorrent requires Python 2.2.1 or greater. The GUI also requires Python 2.3, GTK 2.6 or greater, and pygtk 2.6 or greater. From edr4rd: Any version of BitTorrent "... higher than 4.3.3 requires a higher version of pygtk than 2.6.0, which requires a newer version of gLib than glib-2.6. The problem is while newer versions of gLib can be installed to puppy for some reason puppy will not recognize it and continue to only report the version it came with, which is 2.6." & "further complicating the issue is that the documentation in the install readme files of bittorrent client are not up to date" with its requirements.

• One would need to install the DotPup for the libstdc++.so.6∞ library file, because Python requires it.
• You could install the Python∞ & PyGtk∞ packages from Grafpup Linux∞ (Puppy-based) with the PupGet package manager using the install alien package option. It would probably work better if you compiled them yourself.
• To compile programs in Puppy Linux, you need to download the usr_devx.sfs∞ compiling support file to /mnt/home (if using a multisession CD/DVD or installed to a Linux partition then download it to /root; either way don't forget to verify with the MD5 checksum)

Once the above requirements are met, then follow the following instructions to compile and install BitTorrent:

• Download the BitTorrent source tarball∞
• Reboot Puppy Linux
• Extract the tarball to somewhere like /root/my-documents/tmp
• Go to console (via rxvt); type, for example, cd /root/my-documents/tmp/BitTorrent-4.2.2; then type python setup.py install; then type bittorrent to run it the first time and change the settings as you like them.

To put an icon on the desktop: open Rox-Filer then navigate to /usr/bin/ then drag the bittorrent script to the desktop then right click on the file to add the BitTorrent icon from /usr/(?)/X11/pixmaps. (Warning: you won't see any error messages via this method)
To set up Mozilla: open Mozilla; click on a .torrent file (below); then when prompted, Open With /usr/bin/bittorrent

Related links

BitTorrent requirements FAQ∞
PyGTK FAQ∞
Python FAQ∞

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