term% cat index.txt TORRENT(1) General Commands Manual TORRENT(1)
NAME
torrent - bittorrent client
SYNOPSIS
ip/torrent [ -d ] [ -v ] [ -p ] [ -m mtpt ] [ -t tracker-url ] [ -w
webseed-url ] [ -s ] [ -c ] [ -i peer-id ] [ -A user-agent ] [ file ]
DESCRIPTION
BitTorrent is a protocol for efficient file distribution over the in‐
ternet. Files are split into small pieces that are then downloaded by
clients in random order. As soon as a client completes a piece, it
makes the piece available for others to download.
To find other clients (peers), a tracker-server is contacted.
Before files can be transmitted, a torrent-file needs to be created de‐
scribing the pieces of the files and other meta-data like network ad‐
dresses of the trackers.
This is done with the -c option. If provided, torrent reads the file
given at the final file argument (or standard-input when omitted) and
writes a torrent file to standard-output and exits. A tracker-url
should be given with the -t option in that case. A list of trackers can
be obtained on the web, see the examples below.
If the files in the torrent are also available from a url, a webseed-
url can be passed with the -w option. If webseed-url ends with a slash,
the filename, from the torrent, concatenated with the url forms the
target url.
Without the -c option, torrent downloads the files that are described
in the torrent-file given by the file argument to the current working
directory. If no file is given, the torrent is read from standard-in‐
put.
Normally, the program exits immediately after all pieces have been com‐
pleted. The -s option causes it to keep running and serve the remain‐
ing clients (also known as seeding).
Trackers use a subset of the HTTP protocol, so an alternative webfs(4)
mountpoint can be given with the -m option (defaults to /mnt/web).
The -v option causes torrent to list the files in the torrent-file be‐
fore downloading.
The -d option produces verbose debug output to standard-error.
To monitor the download progress, the -p option can be given to cause
the completed and total number of pieces written as a line of text to
standard-output in one second intervals.
The -i option allows you to set the 20-byte peer-id that is sent to
trackers and peers. If less than 20 bytes, the peer-id will be padded
on the right with random ASCII numbers. The -A option allows setting
the http user-agent string that is used to contact the tracker. These
options are useful to fool trackers that filter clients based on the
peer-id or user-agent
EXAMPLES
Create new torrent file
ip/torrent -t http://exodus.desync.com/announce \
-c 9atom.iso >9atom.torrent
Download the latest iso file of the distribution
cd /tmp
hget http://r-36.net/9front/9front.iso.bz2.torrent | \
ip/torrent -pv | \
aux/statusbar 'download...'
Get list of public alive trackers to choose from
hget http://www.trackon.org/api/live
SOURCE
/sys/src/cmd/ip/torrent.c
SEE ALSO
hget(1), webfs(4)
HISTORY
Torrent first appeared in 9front (October, 2011).
TORRENT(1)