doc/bittorrent.txt

   1 ELinks BitTorrent Client
   2 ------------------------
   3
   4 This chapter provides a small manual for using the implemented
   5 BitTorrent client. The BitTorrent client is provided as an optional
   6 add-on for ELinks, and needs to be enabled at compile time.  To build
   7 ELinks with BitTorrent support be sure to either pass
   8 `--enable-bittorrent` to `./configure` or change the value of
   9 `CONFIG_BITTORRENT` to `yes` in `features.conf`.
  10
  11 Using the BitTorrent Client
  12 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  13
  14 To start the client, first go to a site which offers metainfo files. In
  15 the following, we will use the site link:http://www.legaltorrents.com/[].
  16 Direct ELinks to this site by issuing the command:
  17
  18         $ elinks http://www.legaltorrents.com/
  19
  20 Use the arrow keys to move between links on the page. Find a link,
  21 which points to a metainfo file (a file having the extension
  22 `.torrent`). This is indicated in the status bar in the bottom line.
  23 Once a metainfo file has been located, press the Return key. This
  24 should present you with the following dialog, querying whether the
  25 client should start to download the torrent:
  26
  27         +--------------------------- What to do? ----------------------------+
  28         |                                                                    |
  29         |  What would you like to do with the file 'go-open-vol-2.torrent'?  |
  30         |  Information about the torrent:                                    |
  31         |  Size: 739 MiB (2959 * 262144 + 161542)                            |
  32         |  Info hash: d85ef7b05288dc49203a7de97545e6c132834011               |
  33         |  Announce URI: http://www.legaltorrents.com:7070/announce          |
  34         |  Creation date: Jun 26 08:04                                       |
  35         |  Directory: go-open-vol-2                                          |
  36         |                                                                    |
  37         |  [X] 105 MiB go-open-episode-07.mp4                                |
  38         |  [X] 105 MiB go-open-episode-08.mp4                                |
  39         |  [X] 105 MiB go-open-episode-09.mp4                                |
  40         |  [X] 104 MiB go-open-episode-10.mp4                                |
  41         |  [X] 105 MiB go-open-episode-11.mp4                                |
  42         |  [X] 107 MiB go-open-episode-12.mp4                                |
  43         |  [X] 106 MiB go-open-episode-13.mp4                                |
  44         |  [X]  22 KiB go-open-vol-2.txt                                     |
  45         |                                                                    |
  46         |  [ Download ]  [ Save ]  [ Display ]  [ Show header ]  [ Cancel ]  |
  47         +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
  48
  49 Press the `[ Download ]` button to open the download dialog and start
  50 downloading.
  51
  52 Downloaded files can be found in the directory specified by the option
  53 `document.download.directory`.  There is currently no way to change
  54 that.
  55
  56 The Resume Dialog
  57 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  58
  59 If you start downloading a torrent which was previously active, the
  60 client will first try to resume downloaded data from the disk. The
  61 resume progress is shown in the resume dialog, depicted below:
  62
  63         +--------------------------------------- Download ---------------------------------------+
  64         |                                                                                        |
  65         | bittorrent:http://www.legaltorrents.com/bit/blue-a-short-film.torrent                  |
  66         |                                                                                        |
  67         | [||||||||||||||||||||||||||               26%                                        ] |
  68         |                                                                                        |
  69         | Resuming                                                                               |
  70         |                                                                                        |
  71         | [ Background ] [ Background with notify ] [ Info ] [ Abort ] [ Abort and delete file ] |
  72         +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  73
  74 Wait until the resume completes. It will automatically launch the
  75 download dialog.
  76
  77 The Download Dialog
  78 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  79
  80 The download dialog gives an overview of the state of the download,
  81 such as progress, and a summary of which places in the torrent pieces
  82 have been downloaded from. A view of the download dialog along with
  83 highlights of the most important parts of the dialog is given below:
  84
  85         +--------------------------------------- Download ---------------------------------------+
  86         |                                                                                        |
  87         |  bittorrent:http://www.legaltorrents.com/bit/best-of-webbed-hand-vol-1.torrent         |
  88         |                                                                                        |
  89         |  [|||||||||                                9%                                       ]  |
  90         |                                                                                        |
  91         |  [| |||||||||||||||||||  |  |                                                    |  ]  |
  92         |                                                                                        |
  93         |  Received 65 MiB of 681 MiB                                                            |
  94         |  Average speed 269 KiB/s, current speed 291 KiB/s                                      |
  95         |  Elapsed time 4:08, estimated time 38:58                                               |
  96         |                                                                                        |
  97         |  Status: downloading (rarest first)                                                    |
  98         |  Peers: 7 connections, 5 seeders, 0 available                                          |
  99         |  Upload: 816 KiB, 3.2 KiB/s, 3.2 KiB/s average, 1:1 in 5:36:06                         |
 100         |  Sharing: 0.012 (816 KiB uploaded / 65 MiB downloaded)                                 |
 101         |  Pieces: 242 completed, 22 in progress, 2485 remaining                                 |
 102         |  Statistics: 9 in memory                                                               |
 103         |                                                                                        |
 104         | [ Background ] [ Background with notify ] [ Info ] [ Abort ] [ Abort and delete file ] |
 105         +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 106
 107 The first bar shows the overall progress of the download along with a
 108 percentage of how much data has been downloaded. The second bar
 109 provides an overview of the piece completion progress, such as where
 110 in the torrent pieces has been downloaded from.
 111
 112 Below the information about download speed and time estimations,
 113 several lines about the internal state of the client and its view of
 114 the swarm is displayed. For example the `Status` line shows which
 115 connection mode the client has entered along with the piece selection
 116 strategy if any. Here you will also find information about upload
 117 speed and sharing rates. Finally, the `Pieces` and `Statistics` lines
 118 display information from the piece cache. This includes the number of
 119 pieces which are currently held in memory, and the number of pieces
 120 currently being downloaded.