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I have a rather large file (~100GB) on my Ubuntu Server that I would like to share with a few different people. I could tar it and give people a direct download link, but I thought it would be better to turn it in to a torrent file for sharing.

What's the best way of doing this on Ubuntu?

I have little experience of creating and sharing my own torrents. Ideally I'd like to create a torrent of this file, and be able to give people a link so that they can download it from me.

Any advice would be appreciated.

EDIT: I am not looking for torrent client recommendations. I am interested in how I can use my server to share a torrent file.

inersha
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    Possible duplicate of List of GUI Based Torrent clients – dessert Oct 10 '17 at 13:43
  • Maybe also helpful: Torrent client for the command-line? – dessert Oct 10 '17 at 13:44
  • Thanks. However, I have already set up a torrent client. I am now interested in the process of creating a torrent file and setting up a tracker server on my server. – inersha Oct 10 '17 at 13:55
  • most torrent clients can create a torrent. Unless you are sharing with a lot of people a torrent won't give much of an advantage until they have a significant portion of the file downloaded – ravery Oct 10 '17 at 14:01
  • @ravery Thanks. So after creating the .torrent file, I can just send people a link to it and they can start downloading the torrent? – inersha Oct 10 '17 at 14:02
  • @inersha - yes. I'm not familiar with the tracking but I think the clients will discover each other. – ravery Oct 10 '17 at 14:07
  • As @ravery notes, almost all Torrent clients are also "servers": when you're downloading a torrent's contents, you're also sharing that torrent's (and all other torrents) content with others. When you're "seeding" in a torrent client, you are literally acting as a server only for that torrent. There is at least one malicious torrent client that never acts as a server, but most do. –  Oct 10 '17 at 14:37

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Creating torrent

A good tutorial for creating with transmission is available here, the basic steps are:

  • Click File > Create New Torrent...
  • Choose the files to include
  • Choose the trackers and files

You will need to seed the file at least until there is 1 complete copy on other clients, and if there is ever less that that amount download will become impossible until you seed to fill in the gaps.

Seeding with server

You will want to run Transmission and add the torrent to seed, either from the command line, or starting it with the web interface enabled.

jrtapsell
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