Can transmission auto start seeding when leeechers appear?

Discussion of Transmission that doesn't fit in the other categories
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rramstad
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:42 pm

Can transmission auto start seeding when leeechers appear?

Post by rramstad »

Hi, I am looking for a new BT solution and my main criterion is that I want to auto start seeding when leechers appear i.e.

I have several thousand torrents loaded in my client, they all scrape periodically, almost none of them is started (at the request of the tracker admin), and at least right now, for me to function, I periodically sort by leechers, and start all torrents manually that have leechers.

I also periodically manually stop all torrents that have no leechers.

Does transmission support this sort of behavior and/or can it be configured to do so and/or could a plugin be written to enable this behavior?

Basically the tracker admin asks that people not seed torrents if there are no leechers, and I'm trying to honor that request, while still doing what I can to help seed torrents.

Thanks in advance for any information that you can share.
rramstad
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:42 pm

Re: Can transmission auto start seeding when leeechers appear?

Post by rramstad »

OK, trying to think about this myself... as no one popped up with any indication that this is something that's supported directly.

Would I likely be able to write a Perl script to accomplish the above, using transmission-remote?

It seems that command has options for listing torrents (presumably including scrape data), and then I could parse it, looking for things I'm seeding to zero leechers (so I can stop seeding them) and looking for things with leechers that I am not seeding (so I can start seeding them).

Thoughts? Anyone done anything similar? Any examples of the output from the -l option?
killemov
Posts: 535
Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2010 5:04 pm

Re: Can transmission auto start seeding when leeechers appear?

Post by killemov »

Nope. It can not. You have to expose the torrenthash for other clients to connect to. You do this by seeding. But what is the use-case here? Reduce load?
rramstad
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:42 pm

Re: Can transmission auto start seeding when leeechers appear?

Post by rramstad »

killemov wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 11:07 am Nope. It can not. You have to expose the torrenthash for other clients to connect to. You do this by seeding. But what is the use-case here? Reduce load?
Yes, that's exactly the use case. The site in question has a policy of folks leeching when they want something, even if there are no seeders. It has a system in place that allows people to A) see on a web page all the things they've d/l which don't have seeds and B) broadcast private messages to everyone who completed a given torrent asking for seeders.

The intent is to reduce burden on the tracker by not seeding torrents that have no leechers, that's a site policy.

It's way down on my list of things to do but I suspect that I can write a script that will call the CLI, ask for status updates on all torrents, then stop seeding any torrent that has no leechers, and then start any torrent that has leechers and isn't currently started. Seems relatively straightforward.

I believe the server asks for scrapes no more often than every 30-60 minutes so if I run the script every couple of hours, it should be sufficient.
rramstad
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:42 pm

Re: Can transmission auto start seeding when leeechers appear?

Post by rramstad »

I guess what I'm driving at is that I don't run the tracker, it's not mine... and I understand that the other folks need to have a torrenthash and ping the tracker for them to show up as leechers on the tracker. I'm just looking for a clean way of seeding torrents for that tracker, as an individual, while being mindful of their site policies.

(To put it in perspective, just on my lonesome I have about 3,100 torrents in my current client for that tracker, and it's unusual for me to need to seed more than 20-30 of them at a time, so they have a point in terms of not wanting users to all seed all the torrents they have all the time.)
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