this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024

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Best way to create my seedbox? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey guys, i want to ask you all how you seed your torrents. I’m considering either using proxmox to create a seedbox or to build a dedicated machine with a vpn that will seedbox.

What VPN do you also use to seed? I have mullvad, for personal use but for seeding it doesn’t have port forwarding.

Thanks! :

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So… and this is probably debatable, the point of a dedicated seed box is that there are a metric-shitton of other seed boxes on the local network (at the datacenter).

I’d argue the point of self hosting is to be able to set it up however you please. It sounds like you know what to do to be safe.

I use Mulvad for general VPN duty, though I can’t personally speak to its torrent support/speed I do see many recommend it in combination with a wireguard supporting container image. Spin a few up and let us know which ones you like and why.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I will definitely document it when I reach a decision about it all. That will hopefully help lots of people too later on, but at least i’ve already decided on the client and everything is configured there so that’s half the battle. I just wonder about recommendations around here, and absolutey i would self host it all!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Currently using qBittorrent with Gluetun and Airvpn all in docker on my home server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I read a bit about gluetun, why did you pick it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I also use Gluetun. I consider it more or less mandatory for container--based torrent client setups. The idea is that you run your torrent client in a docker container and you run your VPN in a Gluetun docker container. Instead of opening up your torrent client ports directly for internet access, you make it a "service" of the Gluetun container. When your VPN drops connection, the Gluetun container loses connection, which means that your torrent client is also blocked. So, this setup provides a "fool proof" kill switch that prevents your torrent client from accessing the internet except through your VPN. This is as opposed to the kill switch built in to your VPN client, which tends not to be fool proof, particularly when using containers. I found this out the hard way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Very good to know as i wanted a killswitch too when i go off vpn somehow! I saved that comment :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Here is the guide I used to understand and setup Gluetun. Enjoy!

https://www.smarthomebeginner.com/gluetun-docker-guide/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Thanks a bunch!! :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Was the best option that I found :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

For a VPN I picked privateinternetaccess (PIA) because it has port forwarding and I got a deal on a 5 year subscription for a one-time payment of $75.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Same here, I like it so far. Also has an option to sign up without using your email if you want full privacy. Also has a working Linux GUI client for your desktop

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

qBittorrent and Proton VPN has worked well for me

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What do you use in terms of hardware?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

an old LGA2011 xeon workstation. It is wild overkill (and not very power efficient) but it isn’t only a seedbox and it has as much PCIe expansion as I could ever want.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

https://swizzin.ltd/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Thanks!! Will take a look :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I am by no means an expert, but my current solution is a spare raspberry pi running a docker container with qBitTorrent+VPN that sits plugged into my router. I like to think of it as my first step towards getting my shit together to building a full ARR stack

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I love that solution! Do you hit decent download and upload speeds on that?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Definitely does the job... I have a Plex server that a lot of family and quite a few friends use. It used to be that every time someone had a request, I would walk over to my desktop, find a torrent, wait for it to finish, copy it over the LAN to my NAS running Plex, and there might be days between me remembering to fulfill their requests. Now I get a message, and immediately from my cellphone pull up the qBitTorrent web UI, paste whatever they asked into the built-in search, click add, and reply "will be in Plex in 10-15 minutes".

Now I want a fully automated ARR stack with one of those tools that allows people to make their own requests and it have it autopirate... So instead of them sending me request messages, I will be opening my Plex to watch TV, see something I never heard of on the "recently added", and then guess who requested that and text them "hey was that you? Thanks for the new movie/TV show, I love it"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

PS.: if you're new to this and muddling through, I am happy to send you my notes and the docker compose file. The only thing I had to do outside of that was to mount a network folder so that it was downloading straight into my server and not locally on the Pi

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I’d love that. I have a raspberry pi sitting on my desk in front of me :) its not doing anything so i could try it there

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh I think I misunderstood you - do you want me to PM the docker compose and notes on the setup?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Sure! If you have discord i could add you there too

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Got so carried away I didn't answer your actual question. Yes, good speeds but then again the sucker is hooked up to gigabit fiber. But also, my speed is usually not the bottleneck anyway, I think

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Haha i actually like that you got carried away. You have a nice system :) i definitely want to have something similar. With gigabit fiber yeah you will hit whatever cap is on the pi board then and its still plenty

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

There is no need fire up a dedicated machine to do this. Use your router/ap running openwrt and connect a hdd via usb. The machine needs at least 128 Mb RAM (256 mb would be better). Install the transmission package, set it up, add a gig of swap space on the hdd and you are good to go. The AP runs 24/7 anyways so there will be very few extra power consumption. Vpns often don't allow port forwarding (mullvad has stopped support recently if I remember correctly). You can just be a passive node and not often ports, that should work good enough. Consider seeding parts of sci-hub. it's a project worth supporting imho.

You can just download once of the parts below with less than 12 seeds and set it to host without ratio:

https://phillm.net/torrent-health-frontend/stats-filtered-table.php?propname%5B%5D=seeders&comp%5B%5D=%3C&value%5B%5D=12&propname%5B%5D=type&comp%5B%5D===&value%5B%5D=scimag

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

That makes sense too. And maybe is the most logical answer. When i get my desired router i will set this up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I moved from mullvad to airvpn for that reason and its lovely with my *arr stack. Next level torrenting

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Its 5 devices too so with mullvad id get 10 devices… would be nice that i have another vpn that can do lots of devices maybe 50… but airvpn looks banger for torrenting :) (id need only one pc in airvpn)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Love airvpn, it unfortunately trips captchas a lot, and some sites outright block you. If you're seeing this up on a router, make a wifi network that's unprotected just for the sake of convenience.

But torrenting and everything critical, rocksteady.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I have PIA VPN + Transmission in docker and added my nas to the container via nfs. PIA is great because of port forwarding, however you cannot choose the port, so I made a little docker container which gets the port in PIA and sets it in transmission. It also stops the container if it disconnects, but that happens rarely. Also, all traffic from transmission goes through the PIA container. If you need more info you can dm me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thanks :) why pia over say airvpn? Almost everyone here recommended Air so i am curious about your choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

TBH i don't know anything about airvpn, but a got a good deal on pia vpn for a few years and it has port forwarding which is good for torrenting. Their servers locations are also close to me so i get good latency and speed. And that's pretty much it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
AP	WiFi Access Point
NAS	Network-Attached Storage
PCIe	Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
PIA	Private Internet Access brand of VPN
Plex	Brand of media server package
VPN	Virtual Private Network

6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 3 acronyms.

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