Distros : Prep - BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a protocol that enables fast downloading of large files using minimum Internet bandwidth
read the article How BitTorrent Works by Carmen Carmack on computer.howstuffworks.com.
Most Linux Distros offer the choice of using a BitTorrent Client to download their ISO's and provide a torrent file which contains metadata of that ISO.
There are many BitTorrent clients available, I did a quick internet search to find which one is best to use, I found this article and I settled on qBittorrent.
In the Download page there are versions for Windows and Apple. Most major Linux Distributions: Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch-Linux have qBittorrent available as a package, if all else fails you can use the Source Tarball to compile it your self. Installing it on Debian was easy PC..
$ sudo apt-get update Updating Debian's Package List $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade Updating Debian itself and installed applications $ sudo apt-get install qbittorrent Installing qbittorrent
Then on the Mate Desktop I Clicked on Applications » Internet » qBittorrent. The first time you start qBittorrent you get the legal notice below, for the purposes of downloading and sharing Linux installation ISO's running a torrent is completely legal. Linux Distro's actually prefer that you download their ISO's this way and then share it with other users, it can help the Distros save on bandwidth costs and speed up downloads, so just click I Agree to continue.
Now qBittorrent starts, the Status Bar on the left shows that there are no active downloads, you will see them displayed in the Top Pane.
Now to download an ISO, I am going for the latest version of Debian so I fired up Firefox (the best web browser in the world)
A Debian DVD is around 3GB in size and to make life easy I am going for the non-free 64bit Installation Image which has all those propriety drivers so everything should work first time. You can download it directly as an ISO: click on the iso-cd or iso-dvd links or use a BitTorrent Client such as qBittorrent: click on the bt-cd or bt-dvd link, below is the bt-dvd page.
The torrent file is only 75KB in size and clicking on one in your Web Browser may prompt you to Open with the installed BitTorrent Client (if it's listed.) or Save File.
Either choice will result in your Web Browser saving the File to your default Download Folder.
qBittorrent wasn't listed as an option so I chose to save it in my Download Folder. Now to bop back to qBittorrent and download that 3GB image.
It takes just 3 simple steps to get started
- Click on File » Add Torrent File... (Ctrl+O)
- In the Open Torrent Files window browse to that .torrent file, by default it will be in your Download folder and click on it.
- In the next window you can choose where to Save at by clicking on the Folder icon or leave it as the default location and then Click OK .
You can see the download listed in the top right pane, its size, progress made, its status and download speed.
To see more detail click on the download in the top pane and click on the General Tab.
Click on the Speed tab to get a nice graphical overview of current activity, you can change the period from 1 minute to 24 hours!!.
Clicking on the Peer tab gives more network details including the IP address and Country/Region of the BitTorrent Clients that you are downloading the file from. Transmission seems a very popular client with only two mentions of qBittorrent.
Wikipedia -Glossary of BitTorrent terms: A peer is one instance of a BitTorrent client running on a computer connected to the Internet to which other clients connect and transfer data more..
At any time you can pause the download by clicking Pause button File.
To restart the download click the Resume button.
To test qBittorrent during a download I X'ed the application, this only minimized it.
The qBittorrent icon was still visible between the Speaker and Network icons on the top bar. Clicking this icon toggles between showing and hiding qBittorrent on your current desktop.
Right Clicking the icon brings up a shortcut menu with an option to Exit, which I did.
Sometime later I restarted qBittorrent and straight away it resumed the download!!
To troubleshoot qBittorrent issues click on View » Log » Show (make sure all the boxes are ticked), this will open an Execution Log tab with errors printed in red, I seem to have trouble with Port Forwarding which may affect the download speed of the ISO, see here for more details
Click on the Spanner Icon, Tools » Preferences (Alt+O) to tweak qBittorrent, click on Connection to configure qBittorrent Network settings.
If qBittorrent is taking up too much of your bandwidth you can drop down to a lower speed by clicking on the Speedometer on the bottom of its window. Set these alternative speeds limits by clicking on Speed in Preferences. My Upload and Download speeds are set to toggle from no upper limit ∞ to 10KiB/s
You can see on the Speed Graph that I dropped down to 10KiB/s for a few minutes and then clicked it again to go back to 1.6MiB/s, like I don't have all day!!
In spite of all the error messages the download was successful with download speeds averaging 1.8 MB/s and took about 35 minutes.
When your download has completed is good etiquette to leave your BitTorrent client run for a while, you become a peer, to share (seed) that file, so giving others an opportunity to download it.