Uploading Question

[mark davies]

Hi,

I am new to torrenting and biotorrent, so please be kind.

We have a number of data sets we would like to make available on
biotorrent, which users can currently access on an ftp site. I have
downloaded the upload_to_biotorrents_as_xxxx.pl and would like to know
what happen if the script is run on the files in there current
location on the ftp site. Will the files be uploaded and available to
other biotorrent users? As far as I can tell, there would be no client
seeding the files, so I would guess not.

Thanks in advance for any help and advice provided,

Mark

[Morgan Langille]

Thanks for your question. That is what the mailing list is for.

The upload script is convenient when the files you want to share are on
a remote server. It is convenient because it does the uploading of the
torrent for you so you don't have to manually visit the BioTorrents
upload page. The script does two things. First, it creates the torrent
file using mktorrent (you need to install this first). Second, it
uploads the torrent to BioTorrents. Since BioTorrents needs a
description, category, and license type for each torrent these need to
be specified on the command line. The description is taken from a text
file that you specify on the command line or it will automatically take
if from a file called "README" within the directory of the dataset you
are sharing.

The script does not look after seeding (uploading) the torrent for you.
You need to have a BitTorrent client (I would highly recommend "Deluge")
installed to do the seeding. The torrent file that is created by the
upload script can be used by the BitTorrent client to start doing the
seeding.

The upload script only uploads one torrent at a time, so you would have
to write another little script to wrap it to do multiple times (or you
can just manually type the command for each file....depends on how many
datasets you have).
However, I think I will add an option that would allow "batch" mode in
the future.

Hopefully, this information helps you out. If something is still not
clear let me know. Also, if you need some hands on help we could set a
time and we could contact over skype (morgan_langille)

Morgan

[Morgan Langille]

I have updated the upload_to_biotorrents_as_xxxx.pl script to add some new functionality. This should hopefully make adding datasets that are already on an FTP or HTTP to BioTorrents much easier.

Dataset can be files or directories
Previously, the upload script required that the dataset be in a uncompressed directory with a README file. This option still works, but you can now also specify a compressed archive (.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .zip). The script looks for a README (any or no extension will work) file within the archive and uses its contents for the torrent description. Otherwise, you will need to explicitly specify the file that contains the description using the -d option.

Web Seed
Many BitTorrent clients can obtain not only from other peers, but from http or ftp links. In order for this to work, the file location url must be given when the torrent is created. You can specify a weeb seed with the upload_to_biotorrents script by using the -w option.

Multiple Datasets
More than one file or directory can be specified at a time on the command line, therefore allowing many datasets to be uploaded in a single command.

Please re-download and replace your script with the one on the BioTorrents links page (http://www.biotorrents.net/links.php).

I have tested this somewhat, but if you find any bugs please let me know.


Morgan

[mark davies]

Hi Morgan,

Many thanks for the detailed response and update to the upload_to_biotorrents_as_xxxx.pl script. I will be testing out later today and let you know if I have any further questions.

Mark