Seedbox Hosting

UPDATE: Beta Testing is complete. Read this.

Time to test new servers and software configurations. We have a bunch of new hardware and we are experimenting with different ways to put it to use. We need to test it under heavy load.

We are currently not selling any new seedboxes, but you can test one out if you like. You will get the box for 3 days. Plenty of time to give your ratio a little boost. After three days you will have to give up the seedbox and any files on it. (Unfortunately you wont be able to keep the same box this time.) You will have an opportunity to get your own permanent box shortly thereafter.

This is first come first serve. If you already sent us an email and didn’t get in last time, you are first in line this time.

So, if you want free bandwidth for 3 days - send us an email with the words “TEST SERVER” in the subject and we will get you a test server.

UPDATE: Please note that we are giving out test servers so that we can find any problems with them and test our new bandwidth before selling the servers. This is NOT ‘try before you buy’.

Our current production servers work well - these test servers are experimental. Send us an email if you have any questions.

As of June 5th at about 10am EST, we have a limited number of seedboxes available. We are still testing on yet more servers and will make those available in the near future as well.

We have also upgraded our Big Seedbox Server to include a second Virtual CPU. This helps with server load and increases the number of torrents you can run at the same time.

All of our new seedboxes come with Superadmin access in the web interface, so now you have complete control, including the ability to repair broken or stuck torrents. To get to this area, click “admin” and then “superadmin”.

If anyone using an existing seedbox would like an upgrade, send us an email and we will get that going for you.

To get a seedbox go here:
http://accounts.seedboxhosting.com/account/

Thanks for everyone’s help with testing and making this work - you are all wonderful.

//Seedbox Hosting Team//

UPDATE: We currently have enough testers. Thank you to all those who have helped so far and to those who will be getting a test box shortly. We are not taking any more new test requests. We will post on this blog again when we need more testers. Thank you.

We have another new shipment of servers and are testing out new seedbox configurations. Our new seedboxes have:

The new 64bit Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 operating system

The latest Transmission 1.21 - This is the bittorrent client you want to be using - it uses considerably less resources than the others.

We are experimenting with a number of other changes under the hood as well and we need to test out this hardware under real load.

If you want to help out by testing and reporting any problems, you can get a free seedbox for at least 3 days, compare it to your other seedbox. If you want to keep it or upgrade from a previous seedbox that option will be available as well.

Send us an email if you are interested: info at seedboxhosting dot com

// Note: creating torrents on your seedbox uses much of your seedbox resources. If you create a lot of torrents, it would be better for you to create them locally on your computer and upload them to your seedbox. //

Ok, you’ve uploaded the file you want to seed via sftp or ftp. You’ve created your torrent from this file using the torrent creation process outlined in Part I. You downloaded the torrent file you made onto your home computer. You’re ready for the next step in uploading, creating, and seeding your torrent.

So now we need to get you seeding on your tracker.

Go back and click on the “Upload” link in the main menu of the tracker where you’ll be seeding this file. After clicking the upload link, you’ll see an empty field where you’ll need to tell your tracker what torrent file you want to upload. Click the “Browse” button to browse to the torrent file stored on your computer – the one you just downloaded from your seedbox. Doing this will tell your tracker to grab the torrent you just created.

You’ll probably need to define what kind of torrent you’re uploading here, and give a description of it for the other members of your tracker to read before they download the file you’re seeding to them. Treat this description as a headline of sorts; it is the first thing members of the tracker will read about your torrent, and it will help them decide whether or not to download it.

Always be honest about what is in the file you are seeding. Read your tracker’s rules surrounding the upload process; they can vary slightly from tracker to tracker.

After you’ve filled out these fields, click the button at the bottom to upload your torrent file to your tracker. The upload button often says “Do it!”

So go ahead and upload your torrent file. You’re really getting very close to seeding it.

When you upload your torrent file to your tracker, the tracker will usually need to append your ID to the torrent, so that your account will get ratio credit for the uploading that you’re doing. Because your ID is appended to the torrent file you upload, the tracker makes a slight change to the makeup of your torrent file.

Because of this change, you will need to download the torrent from your tracker after you have uploaded it. To be clear here – the torrent you just uploaded to your tracker – you need to download the newly modified torrent (with your ID appended) to your home computer. You can do this immediately after you upload the torrent – usually you’ll get a message from your tracker after uploading saying something to the effect of “Upload Succeeded. You Can Begin Seeding Your Torrent.” On this same screen, you can download the updated torrent file – so go ahead and do that.

We’re almost there. This is like riding a bike – after you learn, you’ll never forget.

Now go back to the home page on your seedbox. You’ll want to delete the torrent file you created at the beginning of this process from your home directory, because you’ve got an updated version of that same torrent with your ID appended to it, courtesy of your tracker.

After you delete this original torrent file, upload the modified torrent.

You’re really almost there now. So close.

After upload, click the green arrow to the right of the torrent file on your seedbox home page. Start the torrent file, and seed away.

You’re done. Now sit back and watch your ratio head north.

This is an easy, fast process – especially after you do it once or twice.

Have fun with it. As always, if you have any questions:

info [at] seedboxhosting [dot] com

// Note: creating torrents on your seedbox uses much of your seedbox resources. If you create a lot of torrents, it would be better for you to create them locally on your computer and upload them to your seedbox. //

Creating, seeding, and uploading torrents - this is what it’s all about, right? Right! Ok - let’s do it.

After you decide what file you want to seed, you’ll need to sftp or ftp the file you want to seed onto your seedbox server. After you’ve uploaded your file to your seedbox, click on the “Directory” link at the top right of your seedbox home page.

You’ll see a list of all the files on your seedbox, including the file you just uploaded. To the right of each file name, you’ll see four icons. The second-from-the-left icon (the one with the blue arrow pointing down) is the one you’ll want to click on to create a torrent for the file you just uploaded. So, click that icon.

Now you’ll notice a small window appear. This is where you’ll enter the information for the torrent you’re going to create. What you need to do now is to log into the tracker that you’re going to be seeding this file on. Log into your tracker and click on the “upload” link in the main menu of options. You’ll see an “announce URL” that is specific to your tracker. Highlight this address and copy it.

Now go back to the small window to finish creating your torrent. Type in the filename you’ve chosen for your torrent, and then paste the URL you just copied from your tracker into the “Announcement URL” field. You can leave all the other fields alone.

Click the “Create” button and your torrent will be created. Depending on the size of the file you are creating the torrent for, this might take a few minutes. Be patient - you’ll see a notification of completion in this window when your torrent is done being created. After it is done, you’ll be able to see it on your seedbox homepage. When the torrent has been created, you’ll be asked if you want to download it - this request will appear in the small window where you entered the creation information. Download the torrent to your desktop or anywhere else on your computer. Just remember where it has been downloaded on your computer.

Excellent.

You’ve completed Part I of the seeding process. Nice work.

Ready to move on to Part II of uploading, creating, and seeding your torrents?

All new virtual private seedboxes are now built using our new software stack. There are many changes and upgrades that we have been testing over the last few weeks. (Thanks you for all your help.)

Major changes:

• We replaced the memory leaking Lighttpd webserver with the high performance Nginx webserver from Russia (with love).
• Each server has SFTP by default and all Torrenflux users can upload and download from the same location.
• Proxy software for the purpose of authenticating your seedbox to some trackers has been installed. Just go to http://Your.ServerName.com/proxy/ and log in to your tracker. Your tracker will now recognize your seedbox. Wahoo.
• IP Blocking software is installed on all servers. The default www.bluetack.co.uk/config/nipfilter.dat.gz list is used, but if you want other lists just let us know. More info about this here: http://moblock-deb.sourceforge.net/
• Rsync is installed and available now on all seedboxes. This is the best way we know of to transfer files to and from the box if you have Mac OSX or a yummy linux flavor like Ubuntu. If you want to learn more about rsync you can check out a tutorial or just read more about why you would want to use it.

Sometimes I see people run all their torrents at unlimited number of connections. I used to do the same at first - until i noticed that the upload and download speeds began dropping suddenly, and the Torrenflux web interface became nearly unresponsive - sometimes taking 2 or 3 minutes to load a single page.

What was happening? Other servers on the same network were running fine at high speeds, why was my server starting to suck?

Server Load.

Torrentflux shows you the load of your server, right on the front page. If this gets very high it generally means the server is overloaded. What causes this? More often than not it is a sign that all the ram on the server is being used up. When your server has used up all its physical ram and starts using virtual ram, your upload and download speeds will suddenly drop. The server still has the bandwidth available to it, but it just can’t put it to use.

Each server has 150Mb or 300Mb ram and 500Mb swap space (virtual ram). When a server uses up all its physical memory, it starts to use the hard drive instead - which is very slow. The server can quickly be brought to its knees this way.

One of the main causes of a server using up all its ram is too many connections. Try to keep your total connections down to around 40 or 50. (Twice as much if you have 300Mb ram.) To do this requires setting the Max Connections and/or Max Upload Connections settings for each torrent. The number of connections you need to set each torrent at depends on how many torrents you want to run at one time. Remember to restart each torrent after you change the Max Connections or the Max Upload Connection settings of that torrent.

Torrenflux is a powerful tool, and it takes some practice to pilot it at its full potential. If you invest the time to learn how to properly tune your seedbox, you will find your ratio will skyrocket and you will enjoy it much more.

 Update:

Setting the Max Connections only works for the Bittornado or the Mainline backend clients.  If you use the Transmission client, these settings will be ignored as this client doesn’t support that feature.  Transmission will connect to as many as it can and must be controlled by Max Upload Speed and Max Download Speed settings.   There are many advantages to using Transmission however, as it has a much smaller memory footprint and is written in C++ and therefore is lean and mean compared to Bittornado or Mainline which are written in Python. 

If you have a bunch of torrents that you want to remain active and available to seed, but are not seeding constantly, Transmission is probably a good choice as it uses much less memory.  However, if you need more control you will want to use one of the other two - probably Tornado - although you need to run a lot less of them. 

We’re plugging into a Gbit connection here at seedboxhosting. Exciting times indeed. It’s a shared connection, of course, as a dedicated Gbit connection would cost northwards of 30k per month. We’re looking to get sustained speeds of 50-100mbits though, and that is a great thought.

SFTP is coming to a seedbox near you very soon.

Got another box being delivered soon, that’ll be fun to set up. Next round of people on the waiting list will be receiving account instructions!

What do Radiohead, Prince, The Eagles, Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Ani Difranco, and others like them have in common? They’ve all recently left their major labels for greener pastures. Music Industry 1.0 has been slowly dying for some time, and these most recent defections are notable harbingers of things to come. Major labels seem to be technologically handicapped and unable to translate their business models to something as effective and efficient as what a twenty-something year old kid can do from an apartment in Middlesbrough. Time for change…

I hope Music Industry 2.0 is a little faster on its feet. I think it will be.

It’s been fun starting up this little seedbox service. It didn’t take too long for all of this to come together either. We bought a box, plugged it in, and set up torrentflux for ourselves as an experiment, just to see what it would be like. We were immediately hooked, and had huge amounts of fun with the software every day. Then we invited some friends to give it a try, and hooked them up with accounts on the box. They all loved it. We all used the seedbox very heavily, and had a great time doing it…the community aspect of sharing something like that with a bunch of friends was pretty cool.

We looked around one day to see who was selling these hosting accounts, since we set up our first box on our own - from buying it ourselves to plugging it in. We were just poking around to see who else was playing around with this stuff, and we were really surprised to find that not too many sites were offering seedboxes specifically.

So, we decided to register seedboxhosting.com and give it a shot. It’s been fun, and watching people sign up and enjoy it as much as we do is great too. Fun for the whole family.