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I would like to help spread some legal content via torrents, to maintain its availability and help people find it if it will be deleted elsewhere.

I need help understanding what kind of software do I need for this (e.g. tracker itself is only part of what I need)

Is this Server Fault the right place to ask such questions from the topical and ethical point of view?

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  • Does anyone by chance know the other place where I could ask such questions? Mar 30, 2014 at 15:34
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    1. Don't setup a tracker, just use one of the publicly available ones (see publicbt.com). 2. Transmission BitTorrent Client, works great as a server and runs on just about anything (also in the FreeBSD ports tree - just a guess by your avatar).
    – Chris S
    Mar 31, 2014 at 0:06
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    I give you a hearty Bravo for coming here to ask a clarifying question about the scope of Serverfault. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You can't imagine how many people we have that come here, asking questions about anything and everything, feeling entitled to an answer regardless if the topic is completely out-of-scope for the site. Thank you again.
    – EEAA
    Mar 31, 2014 at 3:04
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    There's nothing "unethical" about a protocol. I've periodically run a private bittorrent tracker in my K12 education Customer's LAN to speed up deployment of new disk images out to client computers. (We write the WIM file out to a secondary partition and image from there via PXE boot.) The bittorrent protocol can be used for perfectly legal and "ethical" purposes. Mar 31, 2014 at 4:16
  • @Evan I heartily agree that there can't be anything "unethical" about a protocol. I cribbed this wording wrom an earlier question, which was the only one I could find on StackExchange that was relatively on-topic. By the way, my latest question on this topic is at SuperUser, per Iain's recommendation. Mar 31, 2014 at 15:38
  • @ChrisS 12 'questions' none about the BSDs.
    – user9517
    Mar 31, 2014 at 20:22
  • @josten: The question isn't about the legality of the tools it's about which tools to use and how to set them up. Which tools to use falls under shopping how to set them up falls under too broad. We expect questions to be specific and answerable within a reasonable length. You'll note that my answer is not directed at the torrent server aspect of the OPs question and would be equally applicable in many scenarios.
    – user9517
    Apr 7, 2014 at 7:28

1 Answer 1

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Probably not as it would likely fail several tests;

I need help understanding what kind of software do I need for this

the Product and Service topicality test.

Questions seeking product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic because they tend to become obsolete quickly. Instead, describe your situation and the specific problem you're trying to solve.

The minimal understanding test - whilst you have an idea you don't know how to implement it.

Questions must demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved. Try including attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See How can I ask better questions on Server Fault? for further guidanceenter link description here

You'll probably also want capacity planning advice too, which again isn't a great fit for Server Fault.

So all in all we're probably looking at too broad too,

There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.

I'm sure though, that if you had specific questions about installation/configuration/troubleshooting parts of your implementation they would be on topic.

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    Damn it! You hit exactly the same points in exactly the same order I was typing them up... Mar 30, 2014 at 15:02
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    Tough but fair. I guess until I have specific questions I should ask them elsewhere, on some kind of forum? Do you by chance know another place where I could ask such questions? Mar 30, 2014 at 15:33
  • @NickolaiLeschov Probably Super User. Mar 30, 2014 at 15:53
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    +1 - for @Ward. :)
    – TheCleaner
    Mar 31, 2014 at 13:07

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