[obsolete] Notes on configuring MLDonkey for seeding torrents

Note: This documentation is obsolete. As of v14.0 the TurnKey Torrentserver appliance now uses rTorrent on the backend and ruTorrent as the WebUI.

The Torrent Server appliance comes with MLDonkey pre-configured. To review its settings, head to its Advanced interface from the Control Panel. Now click 'Help+ > Sysinfo' to bring up the configuration information.

MLDonkey can also be controlled via its own set of commands, so you can also access the configuration option simply by entering 'sysinfo' in the text box in the main interface.

The default directories are listed at the bottom of the page. MLDonkey is installed under /var/lib/mldonkey. That directory houses all the configuration files for all the different protocols. So for example, bittorrent.ini houses all the config options for MLDonkey's BitTorrent client.

Seeding torrents

With MLDonkey you can seed either individual files (like some-distro.iso) or a group of files housed under a directory (like the_best_distros/). To seed individual files, keep them under the /var/lib/ mldonkey/incoming/files directory. Similarly, seeded directories must be placed under /var/lib/mldonkey/ incoming/directories.

You can move or copy the files from their original location to these directories in several ways. You can upload them to the remote server using the browser-based file manager, or by accessing it via Samba.

To move the files around in the remote server you can either use the web shell, or you can log into the remote server via ssh using the command ssh root@<server- IP-address>.
 
Before you can seed the local files you need to create a .torrent file. To create a .torrent file, you need a tracker that will announce its presence to other peers. By default, MLDonkey will use the IP address of the server it's running on to track torrents within the local network.
 
To use an external tracker, you'll have to modify MLDonkey's configuration. The simplest way to do this is to head to 'Client settings' in the basic interface and look for the 'bt-default_tracker' entry. By default it's empty, which means it'll use the local tracker.
 
To point it to an external tracker, enter its location in the space provided – for example, http://linuxtracker.org:2710/announce, which is the tracker for LinuxTracker.org. Now use the compute_ torrent command to point to the files you need to seed.

For example, compute_torrent/srv/storage/incoming/files/some-distro.iso will generate its .torrent file with the tracker information you've specified in the configuration file. The generated .torrent file is kept under the /var/lib/mldonkey/torrents/seeded directory.
 
You can confirm that your torrents are being seeded by going to 'Transfers > Uploads'. To view more details about a torrent, click the 'Details' link under the Status column.  

Borrowed from a step-by-step illustrated guide to setting up the Torrent Server appliance at:
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/how-to-set-up-a-torrent-server-10...