Recent linux versions (yes, I’m talking kernel here – linux is not an operating system) introduce new IDE drivers. It implies a device naming convention change. Instead of hda, hdb, etc, you get sda, sdb, etc, just like SCSI drives.
I have three hard disks on my main workstation – plenty of partitions. So in my case, it makes sense to use a unique identifier for each partition so nothing breaks up whenever I add/remove a drive or boot on an older kernel with the previous IDE drivers.
There are already uniques ids for each partition available using the command blkid. It returns unbearables and meaningless, but very uniques, ids like af8485cf-de97-4daa-b3d9-d23aff685638.
So it is best, for me at least, to label partitions properly according to their content and physical disposition, which makes for uniques id too in the end.
Finally, grub (or any other boot loader) config should be updated to reflect that. However, unless I’m mistaken, with grub2 as shipped by debian, everything is generated usings scripts that does not seem to handle labels 😦
Not quite AJAXWhile current trends in music/movie industry will surely encourage development of a new generation of peer-to-peer softwares, the same way they made CD-burners cheap in a less than a decade, I’m still quite happy with BitTorrent.
I used torrentflux for quite some time. Shipped with Debian, installed on my local home server, accessible to any box on the network over https, even if it’s interface is not exactly eye candy, it works. I just had to configure web browsers to access http://server/torrentflux/index.php?url_upload=$ each time they hit a .torrent file. But even if web interface may be powerful, user-friendly, I resent torrentflux for having me to click plenty of time (at least two times just to start a download), after login in.
I took a look at rTorrent. It works by looking into a directory for new .torrent then load them automatically. Wonderful. Sadly, you have to log in over SSH and then manually select over a text user interface which download you want to actually start.
I liked the idea of dragging’n’dropping .torrent in one directory. It can be done over NFS or Samba, with no additional login. I have those already set up on my server. Next step is to handle queue management with the same directory.
I came up with the idea of using a command line BitTorrent client through a script that would watch the damn NFS/Samba directory. It would :
– notice and register new .torrents dropped
– allow to forcefully pause/remove any designated torrent
– allow to forcefully pause all downloads
– warn by mail whenever a download is completed and unregister the relevant torrent
So I wrote such script so it would handle transmission daemon as shipped by debian stable. It looks for file in a given directory named after the following syntax:
– $file.torrent = torrent to be added
– $realfile.hash = torrent being processed (delete it to remove the torrent)
– $realfile.hash- = torrent paused
– $realfile.hash+ = torrent (supposedly) completed and already removed
– all- = pause all
Edit /etc/exports to set up NFS access (this assumes your NFS server is already set up), add:
# every box on the network get rw access to rtorrent
/home/torrent/download 192.168.1.1/24(rw,sync,all_squash,anonuid=1003,anongid=1003)
/home/torrent/watch 192.168.1.1/24(rw,sync,all_squash,anonuid=1003,anongid=1003)
On each NFS client, add in /etc/fstab (you must create mount points):
Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to set up Samba access (this assumes your Samba server is already set up, add:
[Download]
path = /home/torrent/download
browseable = yes
public = yes
valid users = youruser
force user = torrent
force group = torrent
writable = yes
[Watch]
path = /home/torrent/watch
browseable = yes
public = yes
valid users = youruser
force user = torrent
force group = torrent
writable = yes
Restart NFS/Samba servers, mount networked file system on the clients.
Add a startup script for transmission-daemon, edit it if need be (daemon configuration is done here), fire it up:
# cd /scratch 