Instead of running your computer day and night to download GBs of torrents, we are going to use Raspberry Pi as a always on TorrentBox.
We are going to use Ubuntu Mate on our Pi. You can download your Pi image from https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/ .
After the installation we'll proceed to our next step.
We'll give a static IP to our Pi. ie, 192.168.1.150 in my case.
First check the list of all the devices, copy the name of whatever device you are using.
nmcli con show
or
ifconfig
If you are using wifi then check if your wifi reachable to Pi.
nmcli device wifi rescan
nmcli device wifi list
Disable NetworkManager because it's absolutely crap when it comes to static IP.
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager.service
sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager.service
sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces
make new entries similar to this:
auto wlxc4e984141270 iface wlxc4e984141270 inet static
address 192.168.1.150
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
wpa-ssid Nitish_Home_Wifi
wpa-psk 25a1b8455f312e2e5d76139553fb10472fbe2b9efbcb487c957ca13efd8e5ae5d
Replace "wlxc4e984141270" with your own network interface name, which you got earlier using nmcli.
To generate wpa-psk hash, visit http://jorisvr.nl/wpapsk.html and generate the hash using your SSID and password.
auto enxb827eba27ec7 iface enxb827eba27ec7 inet static
address 192.168.1.150
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
Replace "enxb827eba27ec7" with your own network interface name, which you got earlier using nmcli.
sudo systemctl restart networking.service
sudo ifdown wlxc4e984141270
sudo ifup wlxc4e984141270
check if internet is working fine.
ping 8.8.8.8
Just to make sure that everything is perfect even after a restart.
sudo reboot
Attach your pendrive/HDD in your Pi. I'll be using a 1TB HDD.
Check device name of your HDD:
sudo lsblk
Generally pendrive is automatically mounted when inserted so we'll unmount it first.
mount
Check where your HDD is mounted and unmount it.
sudo umount /media/nitish/newHDD
We'll mount our HDD on /mnt/hdd
sudo mkdir /mnt/hdd
I had been having various permission related issues while mounting HDD so I'll use chown to avoid any further problems regarding permission.
sudo chown -R nitish:nitish /mnt/
Use your raspberry pi username instead of "nitish"
Now, this is most important part of the tutorial, if you mess up this step you might not be able to boot your pi.
We'll mount our HDD using /etc/fstab file. But before that let's grab our HDD's UUID.
sudo blkid
copy your pendrive's UUID.
sudo vim /etc/fstab
At the end of fstab file add the following line.
UUID=5161561B41165 /mnt/hdd ntfs auto,rw,umask=0000 0 0
Note: Each entry is separated by tab. UUID is unique to every device
so replace it with whatever UUID you got from blkid step. Your
pendrive/HDD might have difference file format so like vfat, ext4 so
replace ntfs with suitable format.
Mount the HDD now.
sudo mount -a
There shouldn't be any errors.
Run sudo mount to check if your HDD is mounted correctly or not.
Move to our HDD and try to create a file.
cd /mnt/hdd
touch hello
ls
if you can see the hello file listed then congratulations our most difficult step is over. Reset of the tutorial is just a piece of cake. (Read: copy paste.)
We'll be using deluge as our torrent client.
sudo apt-get install deluged -y
sudo apt-get install deluged-console -y
start deluge
sudo deluged
Since all the config files are created, now kill deluge and edit the config files.
sudo pkill deluged
Backup config file
cp ~/.config/deluge/auth ~/.config/deluge/auth.old
vim ~/.config/deluge/auth
Add this entry to the file
nitish:password:10
Replace the following entry with yours. nitish: your pi username password: your password
Now we'll install deluge web client so that we can access our torrent client from anywhere in the network.
sudo apt-get install python-mako
sudo apt-get install deluge-web
sudo deluge-web
sudo pkill deluge-web
vim ~/.config/deluge/web.conf
You can edit the port number you want your deluge client to be running on. I'll leave it default at 8112.
By create deluge service, you don't have to again and again login and restart deluge when power goes off.
sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/deluge-web.service
Make following entries.
[Unit]
Description=Deluge Bittorrent Client Web Interface
Documentation=man:deluge-web
After=network-online.target
#Wants=deluged.service
[Service]
Type=simple
User=nitish
Group=nitish
UMask=000
#This 5 second delay is necessary on some systems to ensure deluged has been fully started
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 5
ExecStart=/usr/bin/deluge-web
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Enable the service
sudo systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/deluged.service
sudo systemctl start deluged
Check if service is working or not.
sudo systemctl status deluged
Do similar steps for deluge-web service
sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/deluge-web.service
Entries:
[Unit]
Description=Deluge Bittorrent Client Web Interface
Documentation=man:deluge-web
After=network-online.target
#Wants=deluged.service
[Service]
Type=simple
User=nitish
Group=nitish
UMask=000#This 5 second delay is necessary on some systems to ensure deluged has been fully started
#ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 5
ExecStart=/usr/bin/deluge-web
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
sudo systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/deluge-web.service
sudo systemctl start deluge-web
sudo systemctl status deluge-web
Reboot and from another machine check if WebUI is available or not.
Accessing downloaded files in Rasp from Windows
For this we need to install samba server.
sudo apt-get install samba
sudo apt-get install samba-common-bin
Back up config files
sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.old
sudo vim /etc/samba/smb.conf
Append this config file and add the following lines:
[hdd]
comment = 1TB shared HDD
path = /mnt/hdd
writeable = Yes
browsable = Yes
public = Yes
force user = nitish
Note: Using above settings, anyone in your network can access your Raspberry Pi download folder.
Now go to your windows machine and create a shortcut and add the following as the target.
\\192.168.1.150\hdd
Now you can access your HDD and copy all the downloaded content.
Access the WebUI using the password we set in step 4 while installing deluge-web.
Go to preferences on the upper right portion. You can set directory to which you want to download your torrent to.
set your hdd as your download location /mnt/hdd
We don't need Ubuntu Mate GUI anymore. Since everything is accessible through SSH and WebUI, we'll disable GUI to reduce overall memory usage and system load.
sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh
sudo systemctl enable multi-user.target
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
sudo reboot
Now after the reboot you'll see a black screen which asks you to login, but you don't need to login anymore. Disconnect keyboard, mouse and HDMI but keep Ethernet/Wifi adapter and power intact.
And that's it! In 7 simple steps we can setup a Always on TorrentBox. I've tried and tested this method and it works flawlessly.
I've always had problems maintaining ratios on private tracker, raspberry helped me a lot in maintaining ratios and saving power.
If unfortunately there happens to be a power cut, the raspberry resumes it's work when electricity is back.
© Nitish Jadia, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nitish Jadia with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
"Using Raspberry Pi as Torrentbox" by Nitish Jadia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
