raspbian

Raspberry pi as network torrent downloader with Transmission

/ chirale / 27 Comments

I wrote an article about transforming Raspberry Pi into a NAS to share files on a local network with an external usb storage: see technical details there, for brevity here just suppose you’ve a Raspberry PI  on local network with a USB drive attached.

Since Raspberry PI has limited resources, my choice go to Transmission daemon. It’s a very light version of Transmission running as a service (daemon) in background. There are different client available, but I use the Web interface:

Web client

Using web client, I can start and stop and download torrents within the local network and, if you expose raspberry in the DMZ and use a static IP or a dyndns, from everywhere you are.

Let’s install! On root console, type:

# apt-get install transmission-daemon

Edit the configuration file according to your filesystem:

# nano /var/lib/transmission-daemon/info/settings.json

Change “download-dir” and “incomplete-dir” into different directories on your external usb device, something like /media/MYDRIVE/mydownloaddir and /media/MYDRIVE/myincompletedir.

I also changed:

  • “rpc-url”: “/mysecretpath/”
  • “rpc-username”: “mysecretuser”
  • “rpc-password”: “mypassword” note: this will be hashed at the transmission restart
  • “rpc-whitelist”: “127.0.0.1,192.168.*.*,*.*.*.*” warning: copy the *.*.*.* only if you want to expose your Raspberry PI publicly on the Internet.

I leave unchanged:

  • “rpc-port”: 9091

Before restarting transmission, copy the configuration file somewhere as a backup copy, because sometimes Transmission overwrite it badly.

Restart transmission:

# service transmission-daemon restart

Now you should reach web interface in this way:

http://RASPBERRY_PI_LOCAL_IP:rpc-port/rpc-url/

e.g.

http://192.168.0.5:9091/mysecretpath/

or using the host name, for raspbian “raspberrypi”:

http://raspberrypi:9091/mysecretpath/

Typing username and password you can start to add torrent using the first icon on the left (Open torrent):

upload

Uploading a file from your local filesystem or providing a torrent url from an external service.

Important note: please remember that Raspberry PI has limited resources. Do not start too many torrents at once because hash calculations are cpu intensive.

After you finished download, seed for a while and then clear the completed items (right click to show options) you’ve already downloaded to keep Transmission running smoothly.

See also

Turn Raspberry into a small NAS with samba

/ chirale / 13 Comments

I got a Raspberry Pi Model B. It’s cheap and I want to do some experiments for fun.

Experiment #1: I have a 1T external HDD (FAT) and I want to turn Raspberry into a very basic NAS.

I used:

  • 1 External USB HDD (with external power supply)
  • 1 ethernet cable CAT. 5 (10/100) or better
  • 1 HDMI cable and monitor / tv
  • 1 smartphone microusb battery charger
  • 1 SDHC (for the OS)
  • Raspbian “wheezy” (tested on 2012-08-16 release)
  • 1 modem router for connectivity (4 port)
  • 1 Windows PC plugged to the router

I flashed Raspbian into a class 10 SDHC, I follow this useful howto about to turn on HDMI instead of TV and voilà, I got a down-scaled debian system into a silent, little board that I charge with the smartphone charger via microusb (5V, 700mA).

I plug a wireless mouse and keyboard on the first USB port, and then I plug my external drive on the second. Debian read the FAT partition well (mounted on /media/MYDRIVE), but now I have to turn it into a wannabe-NAS.

Shall we dance? With Samba!

I plug the RJ-45 ethernet connector from my modem router into the Raspberry Pi and I follow this howto in Italian.

$ is a pi console (Start > Accessories > LXTerminal)
# is a root console (Start > Accessories > Root terminal)

# adduser guest --home=/home/public --shell=/bin/false --disabled-password
# sudo chmod -R 0700 /home/public
# chown -R guest.guest /home/public
$ sudo apt-get install samba smbfs

Then I have a new user “guest” with no password authentication. The howto covers the creation of a shared home (/home/public) but I do something slightly different (WORKGROUP is my local network name):

editing /etc/samba/smb.conf

## Browsing/Identification ###
# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of
   workgroup = WORKGROUP

####### Authentication #######
   security = share

   obey pam restrictions = yes
   guest account = guest
   invalid users = root

And now the most interesting part:

[MYDRIVE]
comment = Mydrive
read only = no
locking = no
path = /media/MYDRIVE
guest ok = yes
force user = pi

Where /media/MYDRIVE is the path to your external usb drive.

And then:

# /etc/init.d/samba restart

to apply.

As this howto explains, the “force user” allows a user (i.e. guest) to get the files from a device mounted by another user (i.e. pi, the default raspbian user).

Have fun

Now on the Windows machine on the Network panel I look for RASPBERRYPI and inside it I find the “mydrive” folder, with all the files from MYDRIVE within. I play a 720p video without slowdown. And so, the cheap NAS experiment is successfully completed.