The trials and tribulations of a linux dummy installing ktorrent.

I'm running Feisty Ubuntu

I get the package installed fine (2.2.1) and decide to start with the help files. No dice. As I'm running Gnome, I don't have khelpcenter installed. Synaptic fixes that no problem. The search index doesn't exist, so I try to build one, but I'm missing the Application Manuals database. KT will be the first entry, I guess. That goes without a hitch. Maybe not... "There is no documentation available for /ktorrent/index.html." Seems there isn't a handbook yet. http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=516 Whatever, who needs a manual anyway?

First up, I dive into the basic setup stuff. I'm pretty experienced with bt clients, used azureus and utorrent on xp and am running tf-b4rt now. It's actually the utorrent functionality that I'm looking for.

Settings - Configure KTorrent. Later I guess I'll see what I can do about scheduling the speed limits so it doesn't interfere with my wife's critical activities (surfing ebay). Or maybe I'll just get around to doing the packet shaping on dd-wrt that I've been avoiding for a while. I limit the maximum downloads to 6

Anyway, random.org serves me up three lucky port numbers for the main TCP port, the UDP port and the DHT port. I open them up in dd-wrt and in the download and general configuration tabs. I notice in the general tab that there's an encryption option, but I can only see the top of the frame. I'm using a ssh/vnc terminal into the linux box. I can't tab around or scroll down to see the rest of the window as it somehow doesn't fit in the frame. I also can't see below "max seed time" in the preferences-downloads tab. Hope there's nothing too important there.

I set up the directories the way I like them, but hopefully they'll be configurable later. Most of the files I download I just want to end up in a dump directory, but there are some things, like TV shows, that I always want to end up in a directory on another drive. I set up DHT on a separate port from the TCP and UDP ports. I change nothing in the Advanced tab for now.

Most of the plugins look like things I'll need, so for the hell of it I load them all, rather than just figuring out which ones I won't need. I fiddle around with the scheduler a little to slow down downloads during the hours my wife is most likely online (see above).

I use the peerguardian filter. Not that I'm doing anything anyone should care about, but on principle. The conversion does indeed take a while. While I'm waiting, I come across this thread: http://ktorrent.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1554 and realize that the half hour I've sat at 0%, while productive for browsing other threads, indicates that I'm probably never going to see 1%. I install the kde-base and kioslaves packages and all the dependencies. I cancel out of the peerguardian and exit out of KT. At this point I'm wondering if I wouldn't have been better off just starting with kubuntu... I promptly proceed to 1% and am on my way. It actually takes less about a minute, so I feel pretty stupid for waiting 30 before.

All the rest of the widgets seem to install without an issue. I guess we'll see how they run.

RSS is the key for me, really. I was never happy with how torrentflux or tf-b4rt handled my feeds. I'd get tons of dupes, it wouldn't recognize the same file with different trackers, I couldn't set rules to save shows to different directories (unless I set up a new user for every show). So this is the important part for me. I set up the eztvefnet feed and tested it with American Chopper (because I always forget to tivo it). Not sure what "Treat as Series" does, but I clicked it and left everything at 0. My regexp works on the test, so I activated it and the feed. I hit "Process" and it worked like a charm. I now see what the "Treat as Series" probably means, as the filter match caught the season and episode. It also automagically started the download. It's "stalled" right now, but I'll give it a minute to get going.

Moving my taskbar to the right also let me see the data that appears below the "Log Viewer" tabs. Unfortunately, I'm still missing data, for example when I check the trackers. I'll have to figure out something with VNC Viewer, I guess.

Turns out, closing the preferences window doesn't save the changes. Sigh. I can't see the "apply" or "save" or "close" or whatever button for some reason, so I have to re-enter everything.

That was annoying, but I had some torrents sitting in my temporary directory and KT picked them up and started. I'm getting decent speeds, but I don't know how well seeded they are. 133k on the daily show is pretty good. However, the RSS torrent never got going. It's stalled out. I'll add another tracker and see if that gets it going. While I was testing another filter, I somehow picked up 96k of the show, so I guess (hope) it's a tracker issue. I'm getting some good speeds and some stalls, so I'll let it run for a while longer.

Up next: the web interface. I can't vnc into my server from work, so I'd really like to be able to waste time with the web app. That's what got me started on torrentflux in the first place. Hitting port 8080 worked fine. I just hope the 8080s aren't blocked from work (although I doubt they are, that's a pretty common alternate port). Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of administration controls from here. I'll have to look into that later.

Anyway, there are the ramblings of a moron trying to set this thing up. Hopefully, that provides the developers (who, from what I've seen, have done a great job) with some insight into the first hour of a new user's experience.