rivetcode.com

RivetTracker version 0.9 has been released. This version has many security enhancements, code optimizations, RSS feeds, and an improved installer. Because of changes in the database, previous users of RivetTracker will have to perform a complete reinstall. This is the last version before the 1.0 release and it will be considered off beta status.

If you have any suggestions or bug reports please let me know. I want this to be polished and ready to go for the next release. Thanks.

http://www.rivetcode.com/software/rivettracker/

Hi,

I was looking for a BitTorrent Tracker to share large files with my friends easily, and I came across RivetTracker 0.99. Here's some feedback:

Bug: It doesn't handle files (either torrents, or torrents referring to files) with an ' in them. This might just be because I was using linux as my server.

Bug: (probably closely related to the previous bug) threw off file not found errors into the html when it hit that error. Might have thrown errors into html page when NAT was not set properly as well.

Bug: in the title, when I put an apostrophe ( '), I get \\\' in the edit line, and \' in the displayed html. so I type SongLifter's and it shows up as SongLifter\'s in the title.

Bug?: I wanted to run this application on a Virtual Machine, behind a NATed firewall at home. I have a domain aliased to that virtual machine, which acts as my home web server. (which works very well for some things). I can reach the web page just fine (http:someaddress.no-ip.org/tracker/index.php), and I list the tracker as http://someaddress.no-ip.org/tracker/tracker.php however, this gives the error:

Error: The tracker announce URL does not match this:
http://someaddress.no-ip.org/tracker/tr ... racker.php
Please re-create and re-upload the torrent

Its not clear to me whether the error is yours or mine, but it appears that I have it properly configured based on the fact that it seems to match the internet-hosted version.
Bug:
Documentation wasn't verbose enough for me to understand how to fill in the optional parameters of the http torrent -- specifically if I'm uploading a torrent with in c:\blah\x, with torrent in directory c:
blah, it appears that the directory info should be ./x (I would have thought it was ./

The documentation was also not clear enough for me to immediately understand what /tracker.php was for, and I still don't understand what /scrape.php is for.

when displaying the torrent, you display the file name. I suggest that if its not blank, you should display the comment as well as the file name.

I suggest that if its easy, "Fill in fields below automatically using data from the torrent file." option is checked, that the stuff below it should be blacked out, or actually filled in (so you can see it).

I suggest that after adding a torrent, I have the option to go straight to the stats page.

Wish: I really want to set up a private tracker. however, if that's not on your list, it would be pretty easy to provide an obsfucated tracker. This would be everything I need if one of the options was to not show anything but a login if not logged in, and to optionally have no RSS feed (I think I got an error when I didn't have the rss feed filled in properly). (thus, the torrents are only protected via the .htaccess, but no one can see them unless they are logged in). (this is the thing I most want that this doesn't do).

thanks for your strong efforts on this. If I can help further, please let me know.

SongLifter

Hello again.

I'd also like to suggest that:
- there be some sort of ability to post a notice upon logon/up/download. In my case, I'd like to post the Use policy and terms of service ("don't do bad stuff").
- there should be some way for users to see what is actually in the .torrent. This info is shown when I upload the file, and you parse it to be sure that its a valid file. I might suggest that you provide that info by clicking on the name of the torrent in the left-most column.
- As i mentioned in my previous post, when you post the name, you don't post the name of the torrent, nor the comments, but the name of the directory/file. In my experience, the directory name is not as descriptive as the names of the torrent/comments.

Update: I'd also like to ask that you allow the user to enter a prefix for the MYSQL tables, as is done with other web hosting apps (e.g. WordPress, Gallery). This makes it easier for users to use a database for multiple functions on a web site. On the other hand, I was surprised that I could just copy the whole directory structure to a new site, and it worked completely.

Update:

Bug: your tracker address looks at the domain name in the tracker, and considers different capitalizations as different trackers. Thus: http://songlifter.com/tracker.php NotEqual http://SongLifter.com/tracker.php.

Suggestion: when adding a torrent, the program shows the torrent information, and below it, it shows the links for add another and return to (admin) page. I suggest that these links be at the top of the page, rather than the bottom, and that return to Stats (home) page also be a link.

Question: It looks like my torrents are published elsewhere (since people started pulling down my torrents shortly after I published a few). Does this application publish the info to other tracker/aggregation sites by default?

NOTE: I attempted to use .htaccess to limit access to the torrents I published, but (a) this disabled the tracker update capabilities (though it didn't harm the download capability), and (b) this is why I thought perhaps you are publishing the torrents elsewhere -- since I tried to keep them from prying eyes...

Thanks again.

Hi,

Thank you very much for the detailed bug reports, that is EXCELLENT! Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner but I was on holiday break and didn't notice this til now. As to your question:

The program does not publish the information anyplace else. The only thing I could think of was they automatically found the RSS feed and grabbed information from that. The torrents are saved in the torrents folder so if you go in there you can delete them but you're right, there should be an option to add a torrent to the database without actually making it available for download.

Thanks again for the feedback, I will try to start working on some updates and fixes here and release another version however it may take some time as I have less free time. If you have any more suggestions at all please let me know. I want to get this as stable and feature rich as possible before the 1.0 release. Then hopefully I can create a .deb package for the Ubuntu and Debian repositories, as well as spread the word.

The tracker announce URL problem you are having is in regard to the torrent file. You are trying to upload a torrent file that is pointing to a different or incorrect tracker. When you go in to create a torrent when you specify the announce URL for the tracker, make sure you are putting in the full URL link that you listed not something else. Does this make sense?

I was able to fit in almost everything you wanted. I didn't include the prefix option for MySQL because it's really better practice to create a separate database for different applications. Plus it would have been quite a bit of work to implement. Please test and let me know what you think. Here is a list of the changelog:

Changes:

---Version 0.995---

-Fixed bug in namemap table where MySQL size variable INT type was being used, changed it to BIGINT
-Fixed bug where single quotes were not being checked in torrent file, filenames, title, RSS description, and RSS title
-Changed funcsv2.php and added in the clean() and addquotes() functions
-Added REPAIR MySQL command to sanity.php and sanity_no_output.php (to fix table crashes, sometimes it happens, dunno why)
-Fixed bug where null entry for filename search caused error
-Added scrape option in config.php file, changed tracker to check for this before doling out scrape information to client
-Changed location of announce URL to announce.php in order to enable support for scraping
-Added display of files inside torrent via [+] button on index.php page
-Added ability to disable RSS feed
-Peercaching is now on by default, slightly more diskspace needed for this but it's worth it because of the lessened strain on database
-Added ability to have a hiddentracker, this is not a private tracker, but hidden enough so that it requires a login, .htaccess or something
similar will be needed to secure the "torrents" folder, also all BT clients can connect to the tracker still, there is no username authentication there
-Added dltorrent.php that is used when in hiddentracker mode, no direct linking to .torrent file on main page
-Removed updatePeer(), the function was emtpy so not a big deal...
-Added ability to have legal terms and a policy agreement before logging in, if you want this create a file called legalterms.txt with the info in it
-Changed edit database script so that you click on a file to edit it instead of displaying too much information on one screen
-Various minor display improvements
-Checked IE and Firefox for display issues
-Updated documentation with some minor additions

You can download the new version here:

http://www.rivetcode.com/software/rivettracker/

I haven't Successfully installed th 0.995 yet, but I have some responses to yours above.

- the others using my torrent tracker was user error. In talking to the other person using the tracker, he had been bringing it down on two separate networks simultaneously...

- While I understand that its better practice to have a separate dbase for each item, there are two reasons I don't always do this (though for now I did have it in its own database).
-- my host server, GoDaddy (cheap, not as fast as I'd like), only gives me 25 databases, and I find I need to economize that.
-- if I combine it with another database (e.g. Wordpress) I can set it up to automatically back up both databases at once.

I attempted to upgrade by just copying over everything and hoping it would work (w/o reading the documentation). I had some issues that were self-inflicted, but here are the issues I had with that approach:

- "* Number of peers to send in one request. " seems to have previously been set to True, and now requires that I set a number.
- * For HTTP seeding, this is the maximum total upload rate per second in kilobytes, for example 100 would be 100 KB/s
was a text field '+0000'

- after fixing those, I got "rss_generator.php on line 13" error. ... Cannot connect to database.
Although the username/password were correct in the config panel.

Hopefully when I clean out the database and reinstall, It will be right.

Ahh yes, I should have mentioned that. The config.php file that holds all the settings has new information in it. Also, I believe I made one change to the database so you might try reinstalling and see if that fixes it. I will put table prefixes on the list of things to add for the 1.0 release.