gui-free torrent

[Randy Bush]

>> but putting just a client on a headless at the westin makes
>> no sense, as i'll still have to slurp the data over the dsl
>> to get it on the laptoy.
>> 
>> it's the server that will be a win over in the land of
>> bandwidth.
> 
> OK, what are you actually asking for..the above didn't make
> any sense to me :-)

my office is my laptop.  everything is on it, compilers and
tools, research data and code, mail back to the late '70s, ...
hard disk is cheap.  i wander around with my laptop, but it is
usually in low-bandwidth environments, e.g.  my home dsl, a
meeting wifi, t-mo at a fourbucks or untied red rug, ...

i want to fetch data to it that is available as a torrent.  i
feel obliged to also serve what i eat (the opposite of eating
our own dog food?:-).  i.e. i feel socially responsible to let
the stuff i download be uploaded as well.  to do this today, i
run azureus on my laptop.

this is not a polite thing to do on a home dsl line, a wifi
meeting, ... where bandwidth is shared and not plentiful.

i also have a bunch of servers in a rack in seattle's carrier
hotel (the westin building (not westin hotel), 33 floors of
racks and screaming fans), and about 450mb of bandwidth to
that rack (yes, half a gig).

it seems to me that the best operating mode would be to have a
torrent client/server in the rack.  then, when i want some new
file, i can ask the torrent client in the rack to fetch (and
subsequently serve) it.  when it has been fetched, i can rsync
it to my laptop, burning the scarce bandwidth only once.

for that, a pretty simple gui-free client/server would seem
appropriate.  rtorrent looks a fit, but i am having my usual 
'the moon is in klutz' problems.

make sense yet?  you asked.  bet you'll never do that again.
:-)

randy