The Love Shack

Note: Before you go looking for “Server-based Azureus, Part 1″, know that it’s not there. It’s one of those things I meant to write but never quite got around to.

I’ve been using Azureus as my BitTorrent client of choice for a number of years. Since my primary desktop PC is a dual-boot machine running Azureus on it just wasn’t feasible anymore since I would have to keep restarting torrents. (Not to mention having a shared download directory and all that other mess.) So, instead, I set up a headless Azureus instance on a “server” (just a headless commodity PC) and I’ve been happily using it for a while.

I started out by using the the Swing Web UI but after having some Java-related problems (thanks Sun, for getting us that 64-bit Java plugin… oh, wait… nevermind! see note below) I decided to switch to using the HTML Web UI instead. I then just set up an autostart directory that’s accessible over the network and went to work. This has been working wonderfully for over a year now.

But earlier today, completely by accident, I stumped upon AzSMRC. AzSMRC is what I’ve always wanted to do with Azureus, but have never been able to. It creates an (almost) proper client-server setup with Azureus. You run the server wherever you want with the AzSMRC plugin, and then you use the AzSMRC client on any machine you happen to be using to connect to it. Best of all, the UI is almost as full-featured as the full-blown Azureus GUI. And, while this would have been much more useful about a year ago in my case, it allows a multi-user setup, where each user has his or her own autostart and incoming directories, thereby keeping everyone’s torrents separate.

There’s a great HOWTO on the Azureus Wiki that got me up and running in a matter of a few minutes. I’ve already tested the client on both a Windows and a Linux box and it works beautifully. Now I’ll finally be ready to set up part 1 of my “holy grail” of torrents on my desktop PC: a file type association with .torrent files that automatically adds them to the server. (Part 2, in case anyone has any ideas, is to automatically change the download directory for a torrent based on its category. I don’t believe this is possible yet, but I could be wrong.)

Java Note: Just in case you ended up here by Googling for 64-bit Java Linux Plugin or some such, there used to be an alternative. Blackdown Java had a 1.4 plugin that worked with 64-bit browsers. Unfortunately, it seems that they’ve retired. I’ve sent an email to the primary contact to see if it will still be possible to get the packages somewhere. If not, I will try to dig up my copy and make it available here for those who might need it.