BitTornado is a fork of the original Python BitTorrent distribution, made by John Hoffman to add some experimental features, most (if not all) of which are now standard in other clients and trackers. The last official release was made in 2006, and thus many newer features are missing, but BitTornado is also an accessible Python library, and has several simple tools for editing torrent files.
After several years of intermittent modifications, cleanups, modernization, and porting to Python 3.4, I have begun assigning version numbers. I have done my best to ensure that tagged versions and python-labelled branches (see below) work at least as well as they did in version 0.3.18. Since 0.4.0, the library components have been substantially reorganized, so expect dependent applications to break on upgrade.
Further development will be done in Python 3, although patches to the other branches may be accepted.
- v0.3.18: Original import
- legacy: Library structure unchanged, some fixes/cleanups made
- python2.6: Python 2.6 compatibility maintained (legacy)
- v0.4.0: Major restructuring, breaking depending applications
- python2.7: Python 2.7 compatibility maintained (library structure updated)
- master: Python 3
A single file can be downloaded with any of the following commands:
btdownloadheadless.py myfile.torrent
btdownloadcurses.py myfile.torrent
A directory of files can be downloaded with any of the following commands:
btlaunchmany.py mydir
btlaunchmanycurses.py mydir
Attempting to download an already downloaded file will seed it.
First, you need a tracker. If you're on a dynamic IP or otherwise unreliable connection, you should find someone else's tracker and use that. Otherwise, follow the rest of this step.
Trackers refer downloaders to each other. The load on the tracker is very small, so you only need one for all your files.
To run a tracker, execute the command bttrack.py Here is an example -
bttrack.py --port 6969 --dfile dstate
--dfile is where persistent information is kept on the tracker across
invocations. It makes everything start working again immediately if
you restart the tracker. A new one will be created if it doesn't exist
already.
The tracker must be on a net-addressible box, and you must know the ip number or dns name of it.
The tracker outputs web logs to standard out. You can get information about the files it's currently serving by getting its index page.
btmakemetafile.py http://my.tracker:6969/announce myfile.ext
This will generate a file called myfile.ext.torrent
Make sure to include the port number in the tracker url if it isn't 80.
This command may take a while to scan over the whole file hashing it.
The /announce path is special and hard-coded into the tracker.
Make sure to give the domain or ip your tracker is on instead of
my.tracker.
You can use either a dns name or an IP address in the tracker url.
btcompletedir.py http://my.tracker:6969/announce mydir
This will generate a torrent file for each file in mydir.
To view metadata encoded in the torrent file:
btshowmetainfo.py myfile.torrent
To set the announce tracker of a torrent file:
btreannounce.py http://mytracker.com:6969/announce myfile.torrent
To copy the announce information from one file to another:
btcopyannounce.py source.torrent destination.torrent
To set the default download name:
btrename.py myfile.torrent targetFileName.ext
To set HTTP seeds:
btsethttpseeds http://example.net/myfile myfile.torrent
To remove HTTP seeds:
btsethttpseeds 0 myfile.torrent