bittoorrent - is getting me down.

[Paul Howarth]

akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> I know pwoplw use bittorrent so there must be somewhere that explains
> how to use it clearly enough for someone starting out to understand ,
> but I can't find it.
> 
> The rpm README.txt says there is a INSTALL.unix.txt that explains
> things but no file with that name exists. The bittorent home site is
> really aimes at Windows user. Every time I read the README.txt file I
> almost see the picture but then I loose it.
> oTwo strting questions which bug me:
> 1. metainfo files seem to be created using btmakemetafile.py and these
> create .torrent files tha have meta information on another file. Is
> tha right? What kind of files are metainfo files made on? 
> 2. How do you find where the other trackers are?
> 
> Maybe these answers are obvious but not to me at this point.

I have BitTorrent packages for Fedora at:
http://www.city-fan.org/ftp/contrib/bittorrent/

If you install the BitTorrent package you'll find the INSTALL.unix.txt file at 
/usr/share/doc/BitTorrent-3.4.2/INSTALL.unix.txt. However, it only really 
gives information about setting up the client rather than the tracker.

See http://dessent.net/btfaq/#tracker for more on setting up a tracker (and 
other BitTorrent info).

You find out about where other trackers are using google, word of mouth etc. 
BT isn't the usual peer-to-peer system with tools for finding specific files 
etc., it's a highly optimised way of organising downloads of large, popular 
files, and that's all. Finding the files is not within the scope of the client.

Paul.