Building a bittorrent box

Ross explains how to setup a bittorrent box which remotely downloads the files and serves it to ones local machine. This quite exhaustive article explores how to do it using a combination of a headless PC (ie a computer without a monitor) running Ubuntu, OpenSSH (openssh-server), a vnc server (tightvnc-server) , a VPN client, Samba and of course a bittorrent client.

The bittorrent client he has used to download the files to his headless server from the internet is Azureus which is a java based client and so I suppose you also have to install Java runtime environment in Ubuntu.

He also explains how to setup autofs to configure the machine so that drives or partitions can be mounted on the fly by Ubuntu when you try to connect to that partition from your laptop or another machine on your network.

As to why he has written this tutorial, this is what he has to say (and I quote) ...

While most of our time on the Internet is spent IM’ing, e-mail, or just browsing the Web, you may run in to situations when you need to do some powerful file transfers. If you use a laptop, you’re use to getting up, suspending your laptop, and running out the door all of the time. But, sometimes you know you just need something dedicated to get work done. You’ll need a solution to retrieve files and serve data when you need it.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to set a small headless Ubuntu server used to retrieve BitTorrent files, while even saving them to a external USB hard drive that can be disconnected on the go. You even discover how to remotely administer your server from the Web using SSH, VNC, and an inuitive HTML UI, while being able to retrieve files while you’re away from home.

This tutorial takes for granted you have a spare computer laying around. Building a computer is out of the scope of this article.

Do read this very informative article written by Ross to understand how to build a bittorrent box.