Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide

This section of the FAQ is in its own file so as not to clutter the main page. Click here to return to the main FAQ page.

What are the command line parameters for BitTorrent?

The command line arguments accepted by the Python client (and its derivatives) are as follows:

--max_uploads <arg>

the maximum number of uploads to allow at once. (defaults to 4) Note that this does not affect the number of connections, only the number of simultaneous unchoked uploads.

--keepalive_interval <arg>

number of seconds to pause between sending keepalives (defaults to 120.0)

--download_slice_size <arg>

How many bytes to query for per request. (defaults to 16384)

--request_backlog <arg>

how many requests to keep in a single pipe at once. (defaults to 5)

--max_message_length <arg>

maximum length prefix encoding you'll accept over the wire - larger values get the connection dropped. (defaults to 8388608)

--ip/-i <arg>

ip to report you have to the tracker. (defaults to '')

--minport <arg>

minimum port to listen on, counts up if unavailable (defaults to 6881)

--maxport <arg>

maximum port to listen on (defaults to 6999)

--responsefile <arg>

file the server response was stored in, alternative to url (defaults to '')

--url <arg>

url to get file from, alternative to responsefile (defaults to '')

--saveas <arg>

local file name to save the file as, null indicates query user (defaults to '')

--timeout <arg>

time to wait between closing sockets which nothing has been received on (defaults to 300.0)

--timeout_check_interval <arg>

time to wait between checking if any connections have timed out (defaults to 60.0)

--max_slice_length <arg>

maximum length slice to send to peers, larger requests are ignored (defaults to 131072)

--max_rate_period <arg>

maximum amount of time to guess the current rate estimate represents (defaults to 20.0)

--bind <arg>

ip to bind to locally (defaults to '')

--upload_rate_fudge <arg>

time equivalent of writing to kernel-level TCP buffer, for rate adjustment (defaults to 5.0)

--display_interval <arg>

time between updates of displayed information (defaults to 0.5)

--rerequest_interval <arg>

time to wait between requesting more peers (defaults to 300)

--min_peers <arg>

minimum number of peers to not do rerequesting (defaults to 20)

--http_timeout <arg>

number of seconds to wait before assuming that an http connection has timed out (defaults to 60)

--max_initiate <arg>

number of peers at which to stop initiating new connections (defaults to 40)

--check_hashes <arg>

whether to check hashes on disk (defaults to 1)

--max_upload_rate <arg>

maximum kB/s to upload at, 0 means no limit (defaults to 0)

--alloc_pause <arg>

seconds to wait before displaying allocation feedback (defaults to 3.0)

--snub_time <arg>

seconds to wait for data to come in over a connection before assuming it's semi-permanently choked (defaults to 60.0)

--spew <arg>

whether to display diagnostic info to stdout (defaults to 0)

The available arguments for the Python tracker (bttrack.py) are:

--port <arg>

port to listen on. (defaults to 80)

--dfile <arg>

file to store recent downloader info in (this is a REQUIRED parameter)

--bind <arg>

ip to bind to locally (defaults to '')

--socket_timeout <arg>

timeout for closing connections (defaults to 15)

--save_dfile_interval <arg>

seconds between saving dfile (defaults to 300)

--timeout_downloaders_interval <arg>

seconds between expiring downloaders (defaults to 2700)

--reannounce_interval <arg>

seconds downloaders should wait between reannouncements (defaults to 1800)

--response_size <arg>

number of peers to send in an info message (defaults to 50)

--timeout_check_interval <arg>

time to wait between checking if any connections have timed out (defaults to 5)

--nat_check <arg>

whether to check back and ban downloaders behind NAT (defaults to 1)

--min_time_between_log_flushes <arg>

minimum time it must have been since the last flush to do another one (defaults to 3.0)

--allowed_dir <arg>

only allow downloads for .torrents in this dir (defaults to '')

--parse_allowed_interval <arg>

minutes between reloading of allowed_dir (defaults to 15)

--show_names <arg>

whether to display names from allowed dir (defaults to 1)

--favicon <arg>

file containing x-icon data to return when browser requests favicon.ico (defaults to '')

--only_local_override_ip <arg>

ignore the ip GET parameter from machines which aren't on local network IPs (defaults to 1)

--logfile <arg>

file to write the tracker logs, use - for stdout (default) (defaults to '')

--allow_get <arg>

use with allowed_dir; adds a /file?hash={hash} url that allows users to download the torrent file (defaults to 0)

--keep_dead <arg>

keep dead torrents after they expire (so they still show up on your /scrape and web page) (defaults to 0)

--max_give <arg>

maximum number of peers to give with any one request (defaults to 200)

The rest of the FAQ is continued on the main page.