Hi people! I have been pirating for myself for over 30 years now, and with the ever growing size of warez and the laughable upstream limit my ISP has, i have come to the point where it's not practical to maintain a 1:1 ratio for all torrents anymore - my active torrent list keeps growing beyond practical limits, and i'm someone who wants to keep sharing things for the people after me, esp. torrents with low amounts of seeds.

I'm pretty sure that i know more than i think i do, but i would be happy about a few pointers to get started with a seedbox. i have beginner linux skills, advanced user skills, and not shy of reading manuals on how to get things to work. i have not tinkered with docker much yet, but i'm willing to learn.

Edit: From what i've learned and seen i tend towards an dedicated server since i might want to host other services for myself too, so suggestions for what hoster to look at are welcome!

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[–] skankhunt42@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you're paying for a seedbox you can either get a vps (Linux VM) and do it yourself or just pay for the rutorrent web interface. I use to use dediseedbox.com awhile ago and had no complaints. My suggestion is to just have whatever provider host it so you don't have to use docker or anything.

If you want to do it yourself, then docker is the way to go and you should probably get a VPN on top of that so your traffic is mixed with other people. A dedicated server or VPS means you get your own IP and it can be linked to you.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

thanks for the info! I'm already covered on the VPN front incl port forwarding at least, opsec is a thing for me since the music industry started sending out love letters to napster users in europe :-)

i'd rather do it myself, since i want to learn as much as possible, including setting up an -arr stack. what hoster is performant and not too expensive?

[–] skankhunt42@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I selfhost everything I use, including the *arr stack. I do have a VPS with hetzner.com and they're pretty good but I wouldn't personally host torrent or *arr with them. If you want someone else to host I'd suggest doing the research and finding something that works for you. My only experience is 5+ years ago with dediseedbox.com so YMMV if you choose them. They do have a cheap-ish VPS.

I think Docker is the way to go either on a VPS or on your own box. If you like a webUI for it use https://www.portainer.io/.

If you do go with docker be very careful about what ports you expose, you can easily open up everything publicly so be sure to double check and bind almost everything to 127.0.0.1.

If you have any specific questions I'd be happy to help.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

thanks, when the time comes i will do so if i'm stuck :-)

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I'm interested in the VPN you use

[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

A few good ones are AirVPN, ProtonVPN, Njalla, ~~IVPN~~.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I didn't think most of them allow port-forwarding

[–] swab148@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

Proton for sure does allow port forwarding

[–] thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe 2 points 1 week ago

2 of those def do port forwarding (airvpn & proton) dunno about the other 2

[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You're right, IVPN does not support port forwarding. The other three do.

Edit: IVPN seems to have removed port forwarding at the same time Mullvad did.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

protonvpn does portforward, i am currently using it that way

[–] skankhunt42@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

https://www.ovpn.com/en

BUT, I'm not sure how well it works.... While rutorrent says port forwarding is working, and It seems to be from my tests.... Checking randomly the only peers I see that connect to me also have ovpn IPs so I'm not sure if I'm actually accessible or not.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I use protonvpn, which has a very nice windows client and a not so nice, but functional Linux client (don't know about MacOS). Port forwarding works either way, and you have the option of using wireguard or OpenVPN. Their website has a lot of tutorials.

I liked mullvad too, and they are cheaper, but I switched a few months ago because I got a deal for protonvpn and wanted to check out if port forwarding makes any difference for getting my share ratio back in order (and with a seedbox already in mind)

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You can seed public torrents with Proton? I thought they did something to curb that a few years back.

What is your opinion on Windscribe and PIA?

[–] irmadlad@lemmyis.fun 1 points 6 days ago

I've been using PIA for many years now, and I find it quite capable. I don't torrent, or self host the arr stack, but PIA is quite capable. There are quite a few court cases where the logs issue has been laid to rest. PIA has proven itself not to keep logs. They aren't the only ones tho. Apparently, PIA runs it's services in RAM. Make sure you set it up correctly. Always do a DNS Leaktest before you download any cool, new, Linux ISOs. Make use of the multi-hop socks proxy feature.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

I don't have any opinion on them regarding their performance. with proton there exist case files which show that they do not keep logs when not court ordered to do so (in the case i know about, they had to be court ordered to activate logs for login attempts to a specific mailbox). I haven't heard anything bad about Mullvad either.

Windscribe seems to be fine, but they had at least one big misstep where a private key for OpenVPN was saved locally on a server that then was seized by authorities. PIA, on the other hand, had no issues hiring a criminally convicted CTO and merged with Kape Technologies, which was in the business of creating browser toolbars containing potientially unwanted programs.They have been audited in 2022 tho, so maybe they are alright now..

[–] florencia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

https://whatbox.ca/ has been decent for me so far.

They have wiki guides for everything.

[–] pirat@lemmy.studio 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

whatbox is awesome and their support team is top notch.

lots you can do with their system.

[–] florencia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Like fuck me but I was on the fence until I saw they had step by step guides for literally everything. How dare you accuse me of being a geriatric incompetent apple fan, now shut up and take my money.

AND THEIR GUIDES ARE DYNAMIC: "look for server input box on the FTP client. Here is your specific server ip that you'll want to put in"

[–] pirat@lemmy.studio 2 points 6 days ago

100% they're awesome - and you can install your own apps on the instance, probably could use it for hosting a site if wanted.

I set up a foundry instance on mine.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks, I will take a look in the morning!

[–] SaltySalamander@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Been with them on-and-off for nearly 10 years. Second to none, imo.

[–] TammyTobacco@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I use ultraseedbox, and it's very user friendly. It has a portal where you can install a few different kinds of software and torrent clients to your server. I use deluge with them, and have it tied to Medusa so it downloads all my shows automatically.

Edit, it also has many/most of the *arr programs if you're looking to set that up

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

thanks for the suggestion, i will take a look at it!

[–] dumblederp@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago

Consider splitting the cost with some friends like I do with ultraseedbox. There's way more capacity than any one of us needs.