UTorrent on Windows Home Server

From WGSWiki

Well, now that you have a computer that will be always on, we might as well utilize that power and connection. Before we start, I recommend added a spare hard drive to the server but not adding it to the storage pool. A 80GB hard drive is good enough for this, even a 40GB would be fine. I personally use a 120GB hard drive, but I also have WSUS installed on that drive.

What you will need

• Remote Desktop Connection or Advanced Admin Console - so we can access WHS without connecting a keyboard and monitor, and for those who can't
• Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit - Needed for AnyService installer
• AnyService Installer - Installs any program as a service
• uTorrent Installer - Well, we need to install the program we're going to be using, right?
• uTorrent WebUI files - to ensure we can access uTorrent anywhere. Also it is used for the uTorrent addin (which frankly is horrible, IMAO)

What to Do

Before doing anything else, download all the files/installers that we will need to do this. Save them to the network, so we can easily access them once we start installing things. Now that that is done, log into the server, using Remote Desktop, or the WHS console (if you have Advanced Admin Console).

• Note: We are going to have to use the Home Server Console to add a directory, you might as well get the Advanced Admin Console. Besides, I recommend not using remote desktop to get into the server.

Shared folders

First thing to be done is to create a new shared folder. "Downloads" is what I use, but anything you want to use is fine. After creating the new shared folder, create the folder "torrents" which we will be using later on.

uTorrent

Go ahead and install uTorrent, but don't bother installing shortcuts to the desktop, start menu, and quick launch bar. They will not be necessary. Now that it is installed, we want to configure it fully before installing it as a service. Once it is done installing, it will load uTorrent for the first time and prompt you with a "Speed Guide". Go ahead and set this. I recommend enabling encryption also (especially if you have Comcast for an ISP). Click on "Use Selected Settings".

Now click on "Options" and the "Preferences".

General

Most of the settings here are not useful for us, but I recommend messing with them for when you may need to run uTorrent manually. Unclick "Close to tray", "Minimize to tray", and "Always show tray icon". This will prevent uTorrent from disappearing accidentally if you are using the console.

Also, make sure "Start uTorrent on system startup" is unchecked, as we do not want it loading on it's own!

In order to make sure it runs and terminates fine, uncheck "show confirmation dialog on exit" else every time you reboot or stop the service, it will have to check file integrity when it starts back up.

Downloads

First, check the "Put new downloads in:" box, uncheck "Always show dialog on manual add" and set the path to "D:\uTorrent\" or onto whatever drive you have. Having it on the "d:" drive will not cause corruption as long as it is not in d:\shares or d:\folders.

Now check "Move completed downloads to:" and set the value to "\\SERVER\Downloads\". This will move the files to the "downloads" folder when they are done, so you can sort them, and not worry about them getting corrupted.

Also, make sure "Don't start the download automatically", "Activate the program window" and "Show a window that displays the files inside the torrent" are all unchecked. This will make sure uTorrent doesn't hang because it is waiting for input.

I recommend pre-allocating files so that you don't unexpectedly run out of hard drive space during the middle of a download. Also, if you are going to put the incomplete files on the shares (only safe to do with PP1), I recommend setting the "Append .!ut to incomplete files" option so you don't try playing incomplete files.

Connection

The most important part here is limiting your upload rate. Remember, this is shared between uTorrent, and the website, and any other service that accesses your computer. The speed guide is a bit overgenerous about the amount of bandwidth it should have. It recommends 40k for upload for me, but I have it at 10k. If you are one of those people who are a consider seeder, I would recommend setting the download speed to about 2-3 times your upload. You can limit the amount of bandwidth uTorrent uses here, but be careful as this will effect your download speed and ratio of torrents.

Set the Port for uTorret to whatever you want. You will need to know this if you want to access the uTorrent web interface. That link will looks like "http://mysever.homeserver.com:portnumber/gui/".

To ensure maximum performance and compatibility with Windows Home Server and your router, make sure "Enable UPnP Mapping", "Enable NAT-PMP prot mapping", and "Add uTorrent to Windows Firewall exceptions (Windows XP SP2 or later only)" are checked. You can also manually select what port uTorrent uses here.

BitTorrent

Most of the settings here are tweaks for getting the most out of your torrent connections. But the default settings are just fine.

Additionally, if your ISP filters or shapes packets, you will want to enable "Protocol Encryption" and set it to "Enabled" or "Forced" so the packets won't be as likely to be intercepted.

Queuing

Again, I would recommend leaving the settings here alone. I recommend downloading and finishing one torrent at a time. You can enable more, but remember that overall download and upload speed will be split between each active torrent.

Scheduler

If you want to regulate uploaded/download speed depending on the time of the day, and which days, feel free play around with this. I don't because I never know when I am going to be online, or when other are going to be accessing my website.

Other

Now for the really important part. The only really important part here is the "Auto-Load Torrents" part. This part will allow you to save the torrent file to the share folder from anywhere and uTorrent will load it and start downloading immediately. No need to worry about it, no need to think about it til it shows up in the downloads folder.
Make sure you check "Automatically load .torrents in directory:" and set the value to "\\SERVER\Downloads\Torrents". I recommend unchecking "Delete .torrent instead of renaming, when loading", that way if something happens, the file is still very easy to access and you don't have to dig around.

Advanced

Open this up, and select "Web UI". Now check "Enable Web Interface". Set the username and password to anything you please. Remember these because they are needed to log into the server.

Also, if you don't want to memorize the listening port, you can check "Alternative listening port". But make sure you manually forward the port or configure WHS to automatically forward the port because uTorrent will forward the torrent port, but not the webGUI listening port if it is set to use an alternate listen port.

Install as Service

First, install the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. Just use the defaults for it. After installing it, download and run the AnyService Installer. Set the toolkit path to be "C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kit\Tools", the application to run as a service to "C:\Program Files\uTorrent\uTorrent.exe" and the service name to "uTorrent". Click the "Mode" menu and select "Advanced". Set the "User Name" to "Administrator" and the password to match your Home Server's password. Now click "Create" and this will install the service.

Web Interface

Now, open up the zipped file from the utorrent website for the WebUI. In the zip file there should be a file "webUI.zip". Copy this file into "c:\documents and settings\Administrator\Application Data\uTorrent". Now you should have a file named "webUI.zip" in that directory. It is important that you have the file in the directory, and do not open this file and extract it, as it will not work if you do that.

Now to test it, start the uTorrent service, or restart the computer, and navigate to "http://server:portnumber/gui/". This should load up the page after prompting you for username and password. Be warned, it has problems with IE6 and FireFox 3, but there are different versions of the webGUI file if you search for them.

Done

Now you are done. Time to start downloading! There are a couple things I have left out for a "perfect" uTorrent install. Namely the Add-in. I don't like the add in and it is not very well written. Not to mention hard to find and to set up. The other is ipfilters for utorrent, and as that walks on the very thin line of promoting piracy, it will not be posted here.

Credits

This page was original written by Drashna for We Got Served. And thanks to uTorrent for writing a very good torrent client, one that has a very low performance profile.