Formatting table in BTQueue

BTQueue 0.0.18 allows all you to specify your own table layout very easy. Basically, BTQueue has 3 tables for displaying brief information of torrents, connected peers, and all possible peers. The last table of all peers is introduced in version 0.0.18 to help you to verify the tracker action. This post aims to give you an overview to modify these format to meet your need. First, you have to know the basic. A table consists of a set of columns. What you can do is to rearrange column order, hide some of them, justify alignment, and cut too long text. Technically, a column can be represent by its alignment, optional maximum length, and its column name in form cd,ssss or c,ssss. c represents alignment where l and r stands for left and right, respectively. d is an optional number to limit maximum length of this column. In case of a column is longer than the limit, it will be cut off. The next field, ssss, is the column name.

Torrent Table

Name	Description
id	Identification Number
title	Torrent name. Usually, the first file or directory
progress	Progress in percentile
dlsize	Downloaded size
ulsize	Uploaded size
totalsize	Total size
eta	Estimated remaining time
dlspeed	Download rate
ulspeed	Upload rate
seeds	Number of seeders in bracket and number of connected seeders outside
peers	Number of leechers in bracket and number of connected leechers outside
btstatus	State
ratio	Shared ratio
activity	Current activity

Spew Table

Name	Description
ip	IP address
rport	Remote port
cc	Country code
direction	Connect direction
uprate	Upload rate
downlrate	Download rate
dtotal	Downloaded size
utotal	Uploaded size
completed	Progress
client	Client
netname	Network name

Peer Table

Name	Description
ip	IP address
rport	Remote port
cc	Country code
client	Client
netname	Network name

Using file selector to download individual files in a pack

Oftenly, a torrent consists of lots of files but you just want to download only few of them. This feature is requested by many users especially low-bandwidth users who don't want to waste their bandwidth. According to BitTornado, it has supported this feature since last version. In BTQueue, it is enabled for easier use since 0.0.18. Actually, file selector in BTQueue is just to assign priority to each files in a torrent. There are 4 possible priorities from -1 until 2. -1 means to disable downloading this file. 0 is the highest priority while 2 is the lowest priority. In conclusion, BTQueue does not download files with priority -1 and it will download files with priority 0 prior to priority 2. There are 2 scenarios to specify priorities to each torrent. For newly added torrent, you can specify its priority directly as an option to add command. For example, a torrent consists of 2 files.

add -p -1,0 http://abc.com/abc.torrent

In other case, a torrent has been added and you want to specify its priorities. At this point, lset command can be used.

pause 1
lset 1 priorities -1,0
resume 1

ports/74883: Python 2.4 upgrade breaks port net/py-bittorrent [fix included] - news.gw.com

ports/74883: Python 2.4 upgrade breaks port net/py-bittorrent [fix included] - news.gw.com: "After upgrading the port lang/python to version 2.4, the port net/py-bittorrent is broken. This appears to be an incompatibility in bittorrent's zurllib.py file; the patch below has also been sent to the bittorrent development list. This problem, and the same solution, appears to also apply to the port net/bittornado." I have applied this patch.

New features of BTQueue

BTQueue 0.0.18 will be released very soon! I have fixed many bugs and make it restart itself if something goes wrong. In addition, some of you may want to download only some files. This feature has been implemented in BitTornado since last two version and now it is configurable in BTQueue now. Directory should be created correctly now. If you have a time to test it, please get it from CVS.

BTQFox

BTQFox - The BTQueue Interface: I have just started trying to develop gui for BTQueue using XUL based on MAB. It is not usable yet but pretty cool!

Exeem

Slyck Forums: "Exeem is a new file-sharing application being developed by the folks at SuprNova.org. Exeem is a decentralized BitTorrent network that basically makes everyone a Tracker. Individuals will share Torrents, and seed shared files to the network. At this time, details and the full potential of this project are being kept very quiet. However it appears this P2P application will completely replace SuprNova.org; no more web mirrors, no more bottle necks and no more slow downs. Exeem will marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. Currently, the network is in beta testing and already has 5,000 users (the beta testing is closed.) Once this program goes public, its potential is enormous."

Exeem

Slyck Forums: "Exeem is a new file-sharing application being developed by the folks at SuprNova.org. Exeem is a decentralized BitTorrent network that basically makes everyone a Tracker. Individuals will share Torrents, and seed shared files to the network. At this time, details and the full potential of this project are being kept very quiet. However it appears this P2P application will completely replace SuprNova.org; no more web mirrors, no more bottle necks and no more slow downs. Exeem will marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. Currently, the network is in beta testing and already has 5,000 users (the beta testing is closed.) Once this program goes public, its potential is enormous."

Multiple commands in a single line

I have just modified BTQueue to allow specifying multiple commands in a single line separated by semicolon (;). This feature is also available in alias so you can write simple procedure by yourself. Note that you have to quote semicolon if you want it being interpreted as normal character like before. For example, see below alias.

alias -s super_detail "detail %(arg1)s;spew %(arg1)s"

super_detail will call detail followed by spew.

Access Control List in BTQueue

Since 0.0.15, BTQueue allows us to limit access of incoming and outgoing connection at real-time with powerful user interface at least for me. Its idea is based on access control list in routers, firewalls, and programs, e.g. apache. Basically, there are only 2 access control lists available in BTQueue; allow and deny. Each access control list is a list of individual IP, IP range by prefix, IP range by netmask, country code, or network name separated by comma. See some samples below.

TH,200.2.1.3,202.17.20.0/24,202.17.19.0/255.255.255.0,INET-TH

There are 2 special keywords to represent all IPs and none IP, ALL and NONE, respectively. What you can do to limit access from someone is to choose the order of allow and deny depending on your requirement. One may want to allow some IPs and deny other ones. One may want to deny some IPs and allow other ones. In order to specify ACL in BTQueue, you need to modify 3 options; order_acl, allow_acl, and deny_acl. By default, these options are defined as below.

order_acl = allow,deny
allow_acl = ALL
deny_acl = NONE

If you want to ban all connections from Singapore, these options should be set as below.

order_acl = deny,allow
allow_acl = ALL
deny_acl = SG

In order to allow local connections only in Singapore, the options should be set as below.

order_acl = allow,deny
allow_acl = SG
deny_acl = ALL

For information about country code and network name, you should consule spew command or ip command.