Description

This application helps you to use Telegram bot with your computer as storage, e.g. home media server.

Requirements

• Docker installed. Find it here

Install

• Download me: git clone https://github.com/fedifazzy/tracker-worker.git
• Set your Telegram username in .env file as TG_USERNAME value
• Run docker-compose build

Start

• Run docker-compose up
• Chat with Telegram bot

Extended configuration (optional)

• You can change download directory in docker-compose.yml at source
• You can set autoupload you downloads to S3 storage. Just set S3_BUCKET, S3_ACCESS_KEY, S3_SECRET and S3_REGION variables in .env. Uploaded files will be deleted from local computer

Choosing a torrent client (optional)

The image carries both Transmission and qBittorrent. Transmission is used unless you set TORRENT_CLIENT=qbittorrent in .env, and switching back is the same one line.

qBittorrent is what makes it possible to watch a torrent before it has finished: Debian ships Transmission 3.00, which fetches pieces rarest-first, while qBittorrent downloads in order and grabs the first and last pieces early. Set SEQUENTIAL_DOWNLOAD=false if you would rather have the ordinary behaviour.

With qBittorrent selected, its web interface is on port 8080. Set QBT_PASSWORD (and QBT_USERNAME if you want something other than admin) — the version in this image ships with a default password that everybody knows, and the port is published to your network. The worker applies the password itself on startup.

Casting to a television (optional)

With STREAM_HOST, STREAM_PORT and DLNA_RENDERER_URL set, the bot can tell the worker to start a torrent playing on a UPnP renderer on your network. The worker hands the television a URL on its own stream server and the television pulls the bytes itself.

STREAM_HOST is the address your television should dial — your machine's address on the local network. It cannot be worked out automatically: inside a container the worker only sees its own address, which is not one anything else can reach.

DLNA_RENDERER_URL is the renderer's device description, something like http://192.168.0.23:16150/. It is configured rather than discovered because discovery is multicast and would not leave a bridged container. If your television stops answering there after a reboot, it has probably picked a new port.

If you build your own image, keep LANG set to a UTF-8 locale. qBittorrent is a Qt application and runs file paths through the locale's codec, so without one it writes non-ASCII names as punctuation and then cannot find the files it just wrote.

Streaming to a player on your network (optional)

Set STREAM_PORT in .env — say 8765 — and the worker serves the files of any torrent it holds over plain HTTP, at http://<worker>:8765/t/<torrent-hash>/<file-index>. Open that in VLC, Kodi or any DLNA renderer on the same network.

A torrent that is still downloading works too: the final size comes from the torrent's metadata, so a player treats it as an ordinary file it can seek around in, and a read that reaches bytes which have not arrived yet waits for them instead of being served as zeros. Reading straight off disk cannot do this — the file is preallocated, so the gaps read back as silent zeros rather than as end-of-file.

Two things worth knowing before turning it on:

• There is no authentication. Keep the port on your LAN.
• Playback from an unfinished torrent only really works with the pieces arriving in order. Transmission gained sequential download in 4.1; on an older build, expect to stream only what has already finished.

(not so) important notice

• I wouldn't mind being invited for a beer