The second part of this week’s 2-Bullet Tuesday! See the first part here.
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Tutorial

Make an Omega BitTorrent Machine

This week, we’re combining the featured project and tip of the week into a tutorial that you can follow to setup your Omega to be a dedicated BitTorrent Machine using Transmission. Just be aware that Onion does not condone illegal downloading, you should only download content that is legally distributable! Onion is not responsible for any repercussions due to downloading copyrighted or illegal content.

Before you start, make sure your Omega is connected to a WiFi network and that it has internet access. Network connectivity is essential since we’ll be controlling torrent downloads using the browser on your computer!

Ok, to store the downloaded content, you’ll need to use USB storage or an SD card. If you’re using the Omega2, you might find it necessary to extend the Omega’s available memory with a swap file, the Omega2+ should have enough on-board memory to run Transmission.

Now, install Transmission:

opkg update
opkg install transmission-daemon-openssl transmission-web

Let’s create the directories that will hold our downloads on the external storage:

mkdir -p /tmp/mounts/USB-A1/downloads/incomplete

Now to configure Transmission:

uci set transmission.@transmission[0].enabled='1'
uci set transmission.@transmission[0].config_dir='/etc/transmission'
uci set transmission.@transmission[0].download_dir='/tmp/mounts/USB-A1/downloads'
uci set transmission.@transmission[0].download_dir='/tmp/mounts/USB-A1/downloads/incomplete'
uci set transmission.@transmission[0].rpc_whitelist_enabled='false'

Save the changes to the configuration:

uci commit transmission

Enable the daemon to start when the Omega boots and start it up right now with:

/etc/init.d/transmission enable
/etc/init.d/transmission start

To access the Transmission web interface, open your browser and navigate to http://omega-ABCD.local:9091/ where ABCD are the last four bolded digits on the sticker on the front of your Omega.

And you’re all set to download using BitTorrent! Remember, Onion recommends using your powers for good, so make sure the content you’re downloading is legally distributable!

And that’s it for this week!

Let us know what kind of stuff you would like to see featured on 2-Bullet Tuesday! Send a tweet to @OnionIoT with your suggestions!

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

P.S. — The Omega2 Project Book is now available!

P.P.S. — We’re still shipping crowd-funded packages on a daily basis! If you haven’t gotten yours yet, sit tight!