hey all,<p>Maybe I'm getting old, but I still use torrents a lot. It started when I was in college, I liked having all content I could imaging for free. After that I was mostly annoyed by having to many dvd-boxes and books on the shelves so torrents where a practical solution in the spatial domain.<p>Despite all streaming services available, torrents still have a function. There is no censorship, and as long as people want to share something valuable no corporate directive can make something obsolete.<p>I notice torrents are in strong decline, for lots of content only a few seeds are available.<p>So, let's keep independent content available for all free spirits, and let's create an always-on torrentbox!<p>There are some tutorials online, but most of them are hard to configure setups with customized Linux and Transmission, so lets make it easy.<p>You need:<p>- Raspberry PI (3 is good enough, and uses less energie than 4)<p>- external drive<p>Installation:<p>- Just use the standard Raspberry OS<p>- Install VPN client if your government thinks the world would be a better place without your public available harddrive.<p>- Install qBittorrent > sudo apt install qbittorrent<p>thats it!<p>If you want to run headless, install VNC. Want to have you files available on Windows network? Install Samba.<p>Now share your intellectual valuables!
One thing to bear in mind that the issue with running a seedbox at home is that most people don't have symmetric upload/download speeds, so you will be out-seeded by those who rent dedicated seedboxes. Still a great home project though.
A good setup is using namespaces with VPN. See one guide here: <a href="https://balaskas.gr/blog/2020/05/09/network-namespaces-part-one/" rel="nofollow">https://balaskas.gr/blog/2020/05/09/network-namespaces-part-...</a>
As soon as I could watch things on the platform I wanted I stopped torrenting the movies/tv that I bought or would soon to be bought. Still, I watched so many shows and movies I never would through torrents, that at this point I don’t see how independent movies/shows didn’t make money from me/friends/family.
If you want a headless server, you can use transmission-daemon. There are several clients available: CLI (transmission-remote), a web interface, and a desktop GUI application (transmission-remote-gtk).