Transmission on ATV2?

Hey everyone;

Just wondering if anyone has tried a torrenting app on the ATV2 through XBMC yet? I haven't yet, but am wondering if anyone has any experience with it.

Thanks

I'm also curious about it. But since the ATV only has 8GB of storage, it would be better if the files were stored in a remote drive and I don't know if that is possible...

nmat Wrote:I'm also curious about it. But since the ATV only has 8GB of storage, it would be better if the files were stored in a remote drive and I don't know if that is possible...

it would be possible if correctly mapped (and if there's an arm version)...was doing it on atv1!
btw, some hard disk boxes do offer torrent functionality, and all consumer nas.
So I don't see the point of Trasmission on an atv2

melagodo

That's true. My router mounts USB hard drives as SMB shares, but unfortunately it doesn't provide FTP access, nor a torrents client. Stupid thing... =P

I guess I'll buy a NAS someday. Or a better router.

Enhanced cTorrent, a command line torrent client, does work on the ATV2. I was able to install it using the NitoTV interface and searching for Torrent, but this command should also work:


userguide:
http://www.rahul.net/dholmes/ctorrent/userguide.html

You have to SSH the .torrent file onto the ATV2, but it does work.

While the ATV2 has limited internal space, I could see this being used for files one or a few at a time, then transferring them to a NAS or computer after you're done seeding. Using only the ATV2 for the actual torrenting means you're using a lot less power than keeping your computer on.

What would be great is if there was a way to execute the commands from within XBMC. Maybe even make some kind of ctorrent GUI as an XBMC add-on (but that would be farther down the road). I know you can use Launcher to execute shell scripts on a PC, but it doesn't seem to work on ATV2 (unless I'm just doing it wrong).

Oh, and this also works on the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch. If you install it through cydia you should be able to use the Safari download plugin to load torrents directly through the browser instead of having to SSH them in. There's even a GUI for it called Torrentula (doesn't have all the options the CLI does. Sometimes you have to manually select a tracker for a multi-tracker .torrent if the first tracker is dead, or nothing happens) Great for when you're in a pinch and what you need is only available as a torrent.

Ned Scott Wrote:While the ATV2 has limited internal space, I could see this being used for files one or a few at a time, then transferring them to a NAS or computer after you're done seeding.

Thanks a lot for the information. So, this may be a dumb question, but if I have a shared SMB drive, how can I access it from the Apple TV? I can see it through XBMC, but where are the the SMB mounts in the filesystem?

nmat Wrote:Thanks a lot for the information. So, this may be a dumb question, but if I have a shared SMB drive, how can I access it from the Apple TV? I can see it through XBMC, but where are the the SMB mounts in the filesystem?

I've been looking up how to actually mount SMB shares on a system level (XBMC accesses SMB directly, so it's not something iOS natively accesses) and haven't had much luck. There is *nix software to do it, but it doesn't look like anyone has tried it on iOS. I only know very basic stuff when it comes to the terminal, but I might give it a shot over the weekend.

For now it looks like you have to SSH/SFTP into the ATV to get anything in and out. However, there is AFP support (Apple's file sharing protocol). I haven't had time to try that out, but it might be an option for some. Could be useful for those with an Apple Airport basestation and want to torrent files directly off of a networked drive connected to it without a computer involved. I don't know if there are any other stand-alone devices that use AFP.

Ned Scott Wrote:I've been looking up how to actually mount SMB shares on a system level (XBMC accesses SMB directly, so it's not something iOS natively accesses) and haven't had much luck. There is *nix software to do it, but it doesn't look like anyone has tried it on iOS. I only know very basic stuff when it comes to the terminal, but I might give it a shot over the weekend.

Again, this has been covered several times. You need a kext to get native mounting working. Even if you could compile a kext to iOS, kextload support is missing from the iOS kernel so there's no way to kextload.

davilla Wrote:Again, this has been covered several times. You need a kext to get native mounting working. Even if you could compile a kext to iOS, kextload support is missing from the iOS kernel so there's no way to kextload.

Yeah, but for this situation native mounting is not necessary. It would be great if it was there, but I would be happy with a system that just copied the file over an smb client once the torrent was done and/or reached a certain seed ratio.



Getting back on topic with XBMC, an XBMC add-on that acted as a GUI for Enhanced cTorrent would be awesome. It could even be used on the Live version and on OS X as well.

imho this would be a RAPE of the atv2 ... better get a router with usb port for doing such things ... but of course its up to everyones opinion