Quickstart Guide to TorrentFlux
Adding & Managing Torrents
The entire premise of setting up a seedbox is to upload, or seed. Which is probably why they don’t call them leechboxes. In this tutorial we’ll explain the basics on how to add torrents, start-stop jobs and run transfers, and change (tweak) your seedbox settings to maximize performance. If you’ve figured out the general ins-and-outs of a BitTorrent client such as µTorrent or Azureus, then the transition to the TorrentFlux interface is simplistic.
Log in to your Account
After signing up, you’ll receive an email with the URL of the seedbox, plus a username and password to access your account. Click the link, and log into your account:
Download .torrents
Find and Download Your Torrents:
The easiest method for manually adding torrents to your seedbox is to download them to your PC’s hard drive first (only the .torrent file, not the entire release); and then add them from there. This will ensure that your ‘passkey’ is directly associated with the torrent so you’ll be sure to get the stats counted towards your private tracker account. (This can also be done through the ‘Cookie Management’ feature in your Profile - we’ll get to this later).
When browsing torrents on your private tracker, you won’t be able to use the ‘quicklink’ feature (often represented by a green ‘down’ arrow or “DL” link) to download the torrent. This will only launch the BitTorrent client on your PC, which has nothing to do with your seedbox. So, you’ll need to manually save the actual *.torrent file. To do this, click on a desired torrent to get into the “details” page - you’ll see the proper title of the torrent:
Now that you’re in the details of the torrent, right-click the torrent title, and (in Firefox) select “Save Link As…”. The torrent is now saved to your hard drive. It’s important to know where you’re saving them, as you’ll need to ‘browse’ to them later on.
NOTE: We probably don’t need to say this, but don’t use public torrents on a seedbox. Aside from it being incredibly useless to your ratio and a waste of precious bandwidth; some seedbox hosts don’t allow it in their ToS. This also goes for using a private torrent with public trackers listed in the torrent: Be sure to only use torrents that you’ve downloaded from your private tracker account.
Adding .torrents to your seedbox (The TorrentFlux Interface)
Login to your seedbox account - you’ll be presented with the home page of your account - this is the TorrentFlux interface. To some, this may appear intimidating at first - not to worry, this is all very simple.
(Note that screenshots may in some cases be from an older version but its very similar)
To add a torrent, click on the “Browse” button where it says “Select a Torrent for upload…”.
Browse to your torrent file - select ‘OPEN’ once found:
The path (and title) of the torrent should now be displayed in the TorrentFlux GUI - see below:
Starting the .torrent
Now that the torrent is added, you’ll need to start it. Click on the “Upload” button - you should now notice that the torrent has been added to your list of Transfers.
The torrent is now being processed:
By default, the torrent won’t actually “run” (that is, download or upload) - it remains in a paused state.
1. Run Torrent:
If you want to just start the torrent into its downloading frenzy, click on the “Run Torrent” button:
Changing the settings
The torrent’s ‘Transfer Stats‘ window will launch in a popup, without the torrent starting. Here you’ll be able to make a number of key changes. You are free to alter whatever you wish, provided that you abide by your ToS. Other than that, feel free to modify the settings.
Here are some “key” settings that can be controlled.
— Max Upload Rate: 0 is unlimited.
— Max Download Rate: 0 is unlimited (the default is 0 on most webhosts). This can be tweaked to a lower number (to remain in the swarm longer) although it won’t matter too much with smaller torrents (1.38 GB and down).
— Max Uploads: How many uploads are allowed before the torrent stops? You can leave this at default if you like.
— Completion Activity: This is important! If you wish to seed after finishing the download (and who doesn’t??) you’ll need to change this option to “Keep Seeding“.
— Percentage When Seeding Should Stop: If you want to do some heavy seeding to buffer those private accounts, 100% will NOT be enough. For example, if you set this to 900%, in theory you should be able to get a 9:1 sharing ratio on the torrent.
— Run Torrent: Once you have made your settings click Run Torrents.
This should now start the torrent. The stats will be updated periodically in the main Firefox window, and also in the smaller “Transfer Stats” window (click on the torrents status).
Downloading Files
What else is a seedbox good for besides seeding your torrents to build obnoxiously high sharing ratios? Well, for starters, you can also download the finished files to your PC. The bandwidth you consume during this transfer will not be counted against your account, so feel free to actually use what you’ve been happily seeding.
Downloading Your Finished Files
In this tutorial we explore two ways to get those finished torrents to your PC - via HTTP & FTP. A great thing about a seedbox is that when files are downloaded to your computer, the traffic is not classified as "P2P Traffic" by your evil traffic-shaping ISP. Download rates are hampered only by your (maxxed out) Internet connection and by the seedbox provider’s throughput itself.
HTTP ‘Browser’ Downloading
HTTP method for downloading the files back to your PC.
This is the easiest method - albeit not necessarily the fastest.
Follow these steps to download via HTTP:
1. In the main TorrentFlux window, click on the "Directory" link at the top:
2. You’ll now be inside your directory on the server. Click the folder title (your username) to enter. If you are not admin you will reach your personal folder directly and can skip this step and go to 3.
3. You’ll be presented with a list of folders that contain the files from the finished torrents. To download the entire folder with all of the contained files, click on the "download" icon next to the desired folder. If you prefer, you can enter the folder and select only certain files to download from the completed torrent’s directory.
The transfer will now begin. In all likelihood the transfer to your computer may be much slower than the original downloading speed of the torrent. This is to be expected unless you have an equally fast downlink.
By default, the file (folder) is saved as a *.zip file (which is similar to a *.rar or *.tar file). Use WinRAR or the freeware 7-Zip to extract the files once downloaded.
FTP Downloading
For those of you who are familiar with FTP will probably find this method superior to HTTP downloading. Simply connect to your account (using your username & password) through an FTP program and download files from there.
