Since Linode does this kinda thing, I thought I would ask.

I want to put togeather a little package containing:

* tiny linux distro
* multiple file bittorrent server
* a mirror script system
* an update system

I will be hosting huge files for a project that I'm doing, and I'd like to make a "do it yourself mirror kit" that runs in a virtual machine, downloads the files to be mirrored, and "connects" to the bittorrent tracker to become part of the mirror swarm.

But I also wanted to make it so that anyone who up and decides to become a mirror can download one program, set a few settings, then leave it to run, taking care of itself.

No offence to my market, but I don't really want to try to explain how to set up a mirror to any of them. I've tried before, and the best way to describe it is PAIN! LOTS OF PAIN!

I got this idea from the Sourceforge Enterprise Edition Free Demo kit. It's one installer that you run that installs VMWare Player and the Sourceforge Image. The sourceforge image has CentOS, Subversion, CVS, the Sourceforge server, HTTP server, whole thing.

On "first boot" it splashed up a config screen, let me set some preferences, then it just runs itself on the virtual machine. I didn't have to do any configuration or anything. Click, set, run.

I'd like to put something like that togeather, hoepfully with open source stuffs. And any pointers would be much appreciated...

...I've never tried virtualisation before.

EDIT:

I'm also trying to find a very small Linux distro (I originally wanted to use Debian, but at 100+ MB for the "mirco install..."). As this will be running a Bittorrent seed in a virtual machine, I want all the "hard drive space" set aside in the VM's "hard drive" to be Seeder Space. I'd like to have a 500MB and 1GB "space" version of the Mirror System, neither being too big. I mean, the "small" Debian really isn't Bad, per se...

Just something that might be worth thinking of while ur planning this idea. When i run more then 2 bit torrent downloads on my linode and they start picking up speed (about 200kbs each) my io_tokens start hitting the ground. Becuase there is a lot of read/write with Bittorrent you may find that this may be a limitation.

Though i just read ur post again, and maybe i misunderstood. do u want the linode to just host the files/tracker for the mirrors? or are u intending your linode be one of ur nodes as well

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ServerAdmin - www.our-lan.com
"Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy whilst looking for a really big stick"
"In my experiece, any attempt to make any system idiot proof will only challenge God to make a better idiot"

Indeed! I know your pain. Here are two things that help keep me from completely hosing my io_tokens:

• Put the torrent seeds on an ext2 filesystem, not ext3
• If you're going to seed an existing torrent, configure your BT client to preallocate disk space

Preallocating will hit your io_tokens up front - but it will be less painful when your seed is nearly complete.

Note that I tend to seed existing torrents. I've found that I generally don't get dangerously low on io_tokens (but I've come close on occasion). I typically use BitTornado's "T3" setting for seeding; 500KiB/s upload with 40 uploads.

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Bus error (passengers dumped)

I'm not really going to run Bittorrent on my linode. I was just asking the question here because I know that Linode uses virtualisation to allow 40 hosts on one machine.

My linode would be used as the "sync" server that would keep track of all the "mirrors" in the network. Making sure that, in the pool of seeders theres at least one seed out there, if that makes sense. But it wouldn't be doing any of the real heavy lifting on the bittorrent network.

I'm just trying to understand the whole "virtualisation" thing.