SYNOPSIS

btdownloadheadless [ option ... ] URL
btdownloadheadless [ option ... ] filename
btdownloadcurses [ option ... ] URL
btdownloadcurses [ option ... ] filename
btdownloadgui [ option ... ] URL
btdownloadgui [ option ... ] filename

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the btdownloadheadless, btdownloadcurses, and btdownloadgui commands. This manual page was written for the Debian distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.

These are all programs that allow a user to download files using bittorrent, a peer to peer, scatter-gather network protocol. They all have the same options.

OPTIONS

These programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below.

--responsefile filename

treat filename as a file which the server reponse was stored in. If this option is used, no filename or URL should be present on the command line.

--url url

retrieve the torrent info file from url. If this option is used, no filename or URL should be present on the command line.

-i ip | --ip ip

report ip as your IP to the tracker

--bind ip

bind to ip instead of the default

--minport portnum

set portnum as the minimum port to listen on, counts up if unavailable (default 6881)

--maxport portnum

set portnum as the maximum port to listen on (default 6889)

--saveas filename

store the downloaded file to filename, instead of querying user (gui) or using the filename stored in the torrent info file

--max_uploads num

Only allow num uploads at once (default 4)

--max_upload_rate kbytes

maximum rate to upload at in kilobytes, 0 means no limit (default 0)

--keepalive_interval secs

pause secs seconds between sending keepalives (default 120.0)

--download_slice_size bytes

query for bytes bytes per request (default 32768)

--request_backlog num

keep num requests in a single pipe at once (default 5)

--max_message_length bytes

set bytes to the maximum length prefix encoding you'll accept over the wire - larger values get the connection dropped (default 8388608)

--timeout secs

wait secs before closing sockets which nothing has been recieved on (default 300.0)

--timeout_check_interval secs

check whether connections have timed out every secs seconds (default 60.0)

--max_slice_length bytes

requests from peers larger than bytes bytes are ignored (default 131072)

--max_rate_recalculate_interval secs

connections that pause longer than secs seconds are given reduced rate (default 15.0)

--max_rate_period secs

set secs to the maximum amount of time to guess the current rate estimate represents (default 20.0)

--upload_rate_fudge secs

set the time equivalent of writing to kernel-level TCP buffer to secs (default 5.0)

--display_interval secs

update displayed information every secs seconds (default 0.1)

--rerequest_interval secs

request more peers every secs seconds (default 300)

--min_peers num

do not rerequest if we have num peers already (default 20)

--http_timeout secs

wait secs seconds before assuming a http connection has timed out (default 60)

--snub_time secs

wait secs seconds for data to come in over a connection before assuming it's semi-permanently choked (default 30.0)

--spew 1 | 0

whether to display diagnostic info to stdout. This option is not useful when using btdownloadcurses or btdownloadgui. (default 0)

--max_initiate num

stop initiating new connections when we have num peers (default 40)

--check_hashes 1 | 0

whether to check hashes on disk (defaults to 1)

--report_hash_failures 1 | 0

whether to report to the user that hash failuers occur (non-fatal, common error) (default 0)

--rarest_first_priority_cutoff num

the number of peers which need to have a piece before other partials take priority over rarest first (default 3)

RELATED TO btdownloadheadless.bittorrent…

bttrack(1), btmakemetafile(1), btlaunchmany(1).

More information on the BitTorrent protocol used for distributing files is available at http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/protocol.html

You will also find a full description on the advantages of the protocol in the academic paper Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent available at http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/bittorrentecon.pdf

AUTHOR

This manual page was written by Michael Janssen <[email protected]>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).