Seedbox

From Bibliotheca Anonoma

Hard Drives[edit]

In order to store your torrents, you will need a large hard drive (1TB goes for $50-60 these days). You can either:

  • Buy a prebuilt external hard drive. - These come in aesthetically appealing cases with USB3.0 (2.0 compatible) output built-in. If you have a new
  • Grab a spare drive from a broken laptop/desktop and plug it into a SATA to USB (2.0/3.0) adapter. This is only worth it if you have a broken computer to spare.



  • USB 2.0 (480Mbps) - The Raspberry Pi, and most other ARM boards only support USB 2.0. Should have enough bandwidth for quite a few torrents.
  • USB 3.0 (5Gbps) - There are a few special boards that support USB 3.0, which runs at very high speed.
  • SATA III - Using a direct SATA connection reduces overhead. Only a very small number of ARM boards support it.

Filesystems to Use[edit]

  • EXT4 - The best filesystem, performance-wise, since it is native to Linux. If you are going to use FTP/SSH to remotely access your files, (or you primarily use Linux), use this filesystem.
  • NTFS - Windows and Mac OS X don't have very good support for EXT4, so if you are going to physically access your hard drive with a USB cable, use NTFS. Unfortunately, NTFS-3G on Linux adds extra processing overhead, slowing down the Pi, so be aware.

Automatically Mount Hard Drive[edit]

Note: If you will use more than 1 hard disk, follow these instructions instead.

If you have no other hard disks (such as on the Raspberry Pi), add something like the following to /etc/fstab to automatically mount your hard disk. (make sure to mkdir /mnt/usbdisk as root)

Note: Obviously, change ext4 to ntfs if your hard disk uses that filesystem.

   /dev/sda1    /mnt/usbdisk    ext4    rw,defaults 0   0

Note: /dev/sdX, where the X refers to the order the hard drive was detected (a-z). The number after represents the partition. Thus, /dev/sda1 means the first hard drive's first partition, so change it if necessary.

The /dev/sda1 style relative /etc/fstab entry has the added benefit of mounting whatever hard drive/USB disk is attached at boot. You're not limited to the original hard drive.

Raspberry Pi[edit]

The Raspberry Pi is a $35 computer that consumes less energy than a lightbulb. Great value for the small time torrenter.

  • rutorrent (Automatic Script) - A handy WebUI for rtorrent, the most efficient torrent client for weaker devices. This automated script sets up everything you need in a flash, even Nginx. Make sure to make the necessary config changes. (we should probably modify it to prompt the user for config changes...)
  • rutorrent (Manual Method) - Manual method if you want to set it up on your own, with Apache or something.

Downsides:

  • Weak CPU and low RAM - Obviously, we don't expect much from a motherboard designed to be used on a router. But it should be good enough for 10 concurrent torrents or so. Rtorrent is the most efficient client for weaker devices, so we recommend that.
  • Because of the Raspberry Pi's weak CPU, running a media server while torrenting is totally out of the question. If you want the ability to run both XBMC and a torrent client,
  • USB 2.0 Storage only - There is no option for high speed SATA or USB 3.0. Even the SDCard runs on a USB 2.0 Bus. If you only download a few torrents at a time, and at 1-5MB/s, this shouldn't be too problematic. But if you download a huge wave of torrents all at once, it might be better to look elsewhere.

Install Raspbian[edit]

Set up SSH[edit]

Chances are, you'd probably want to control and update your Raspberry Pi over the internet, instead of physically going to the Raspberry Pi and plugging in a keyboard and monitor.

SSH is an encrypted method of accessing your Linux server's console from anywhere in the world.

ODROID XU3 Lite[edit]

If you demand USB3.0, the ability to download huge waves of torrents, Quad-Core ARM CPU, all while running a streaming media server (like XBMC) at the same time; the ODROID XU3 Lite is for you.

It has the same Quad-Core Exynos processor as a Galaxy S4, but costs only $99.