Installing DebTorrent Packages

DebTorrent is packaged in the following debian binary packages (.debs):

• debtorrent: the DebTorrent client and tracker
• apt-transport-debtorrent: an advanced communication protocol for communicating with APT

Both are available in the debian archive, so an apt-get install debtorrent apt-transport-debtorrent should be all you need to get started.

Configuring APT for DebTorrent

Once you have installed the debtorrent package, you need to update your /etc/apt/sources.list file to point APT towards DebTorrent. This is done by adding the host and port that DebTorrent is running on to the beginning of your hostanme. For example, if you had a line like this:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free

and the DebTorrent client is running on the same computer (localhost), using the default DebTorrent port (9988), then you would modify the line to become:

deb http://localhost:9988/ftp.us.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free

Additionally, if you installed the apt-transport-debtorrent package, you could change the method (http://) to use the faster debtorrent transport (debtorrent://), so the line would then be:

deb debtorrent://localhost:9988/ftp.us.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free

Do not modify any of your deb-src lines as DebTorrent currently doesn't work with source files.

Other Initial Setup

Before you start to use DebTorrent, you may want to check the client configuration file /etc/debtorrent/debtorrent-client to update it for your setup. In particular, you may want to configure a smaller port range using the min_port and max_port options, and then configure your router/NAT to forward those ports to your DebTorrent client machine (see the FAQ for more info).

If you do change anything in the config file, make sure to restart DebTorrent (/etc/init.d/debtorrent-client restart) so that it will reread the config file.

Using DebTorrent for the First Time

Before you can start downloading using DebTorrent, you need to update APT (apt-get update) so it sees the new debtorrent lines in the sources.list file. This will also start the torrents running for the lines that you added to your sources.list file.

Once the update is complete, you should be able to see the running torrents listed on the DebTorrent status page. Just point your web browser to

http://localhost:9988/

(replacing localhost and 9988 with the host name and port where DebTorrent is running).

DebTorrent is now ready to download packages for you. Any future requests to APT (e.g. via an apt-get install foo or apt-get dist-upgrade) will be downloaded by DebTorrent. You can monitor the download by going to the status page mentioned above.