How to help Gentoo: Seeding ISO images

Long time no blog.

So - you've always wanted to help out Gentoo? A common way to help is by providing a mirror - either distfiles or rsync. We have a good list of mirrors, both rsync and distfiles. Setting up a mirror is a huge commitment and my thanks go out to all those who do.

Due to the large requirements for diskspace, bandwith and cpu power, this is usually not an option for individuals.

However, Gentoo releases are also distributed using BitTorrent.

A good way to help gentoo is to

• use bittorrent to download releases.
• keep seeding after the download has finished.
• seed the other isos and stages as well.

There is a large number of bittorrent clients available for linux and many of them are available in portage. On my desktop I use ktorrent which works really well.

However, since my uplink to the internet is quite limited, it occurred to me, to run a bittorrent client on my Virtual Private Server (VPS).

Looking for an CLI bittorrent client I found rtorrent. Here is how to get started:

• Install rtorrent

  Most distributions have rtorrent packages - so does Gentoo :-)

  $ emerge -av rtorrent

• Start screen

  You will want to have rtorrent running also when you disconnect from your VPS. screen allows you to do that.

  $ screen

• Configure rtorrent

  Here we disable up- and download throttling - YMMV.

  $ cat > ~/.rtorrent.rc
  download_rate = 0
  upload_rate = 0
  ^D

• Start rtorrent

  
$ rtorrent


• Download torrents

  Press backslashbackspace and paste a URL to a torrent from torrents.gentoo.org. Hit enter. Continue adding all the torrents you want to help with - the more the merrier.

• Wait

  rtorrent will now download the isos. At the same time it will start seeding. You can now detach from screen - press CTRL-a + d

• Watch

  Reconnect to your running rtorrent using screen:

  $ screen -r

  You will be able to see how much traffic you already have seeded. Press right to see details of the individual torrents.

• That's it.

Click to enlarge.

In the past week the rtorrent on my VPS seeded roughly 13 GB. The VPS has a big pipe, so most likely this has speed up some peoples download of gentoo release isos and stages.

Warning: If your VPS plan does not have a lot of traffic included, you may want to keep an eye on the traffic counter. There is also the possibility of configuring upload throttling, which limits the amount of bandwith rtorrent will use.

Check out the rtorrent man page for a more detailed look on how to use and configure rtorrent.

Happy Seeding.