How to get a torrent client running on my router?

[moeburn]

Okay, so I have a nice WNDR3700v2 router, with a 680mhz cpu and 64mb of RAM, and I have Gargoyle (frontend for OpenWRT) firmware installed on it.  It should be powerful enough (and user reports have confirmed this) to run Transmission bittorrent client, even without adding a SWAP partition.

 

So I found this guide:

http://www.howtogeek.com/100142/how-to-install-the-transmission-bitorrent-client-on-your-router-dd-wrt/

It's for DD-WRT, but it seems very similar to Open-WRT.  They both use the OPKG package manager.  

 

So I used OPKG to install transmission-daemon, ran it for 10 seconds, and then ctrl-c'd out of it, just like the instructions said.  But I'm stuck at the point where I'm supposed to point my attached USB-external-HDD to Transmission:

 

  Quote

 

Create the directories that will hold the torrent pointers, parts, configurations and downloads. For my setup this is:

mkdir -p /mnt/sda_part1/torrents/parts/

mkdir -p /mnt/sda_part1/torrents/config/

 

However, according to the Gargoyle web interface, my external USB-HDD is mounted at /dev/sda1, not /mnt/sda_part1.  I putty'd into the SSH server on the router, and cd'd to /mnt.  There's nothing in there.  I tried to cd /dev/sda1, but I can't get in there, I get the error "can't cd to sda1", but according to LS, the directory is there:

root@Gargoyle:~# cd /dev/sda1
-ash: cd: can't cd to /dev/sda1
root@Gargoyle:~# cd /dev
root@Gargoyle:/dev# ls
bus        mtd0       mtd3ro     mtdblock0  net        sda        zero
console    mtd0ro     mtd4       mtdblock1  null       sda1
full       mtd1       mtd4ro     mtdblock2  port       shm
fuse       mtd1ro     mtd5       mtdblock3  ppp        tty
kmsg       mtd2       mtd5ro     mtdblock4  ptmx       ttyS0
log        mtd2ro     mtd6       mtdblock5  pts        urandom
mem        mtd3       mtd6ro     mtdblock6  random     watchdog
root@Gargoyle:/dev#
root@Gargoyle:/dev# root@Gargoyle:~# cd /dev/sda1
-ash-ash: cd: can't cd to /dev/sda1

I'm a bit of a linux n00b, so I'm not sure what to do here.  I can't mkdir in sda1 if I can't even cd into it.  So I assume I need to do the CD command with root permissions?  I tried "sudo cd /dev/sda1", that's how I've learned to elevate a command on my linux laptop, but apparently there is no "sudo" in my router.  Or am I supposed to mount /dev/sda1 into the /mnt directory?

[+BudMan MVC]

Can you show this interface showing you your usb mounted?

Normally anything in dev is the actual device - you would not directly access it. You would mount that to some directory you would work with.. for example

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

now depending on what is in your fstab you might only need to do mount /dev/cdrom and it would mount it to the directory you have setup in fstab

the full mount command is normally

mount -t type dev directory

So if your usb is connected to /dev/sda1 then can create a directory where you want be it in /mnt or off / etc and then just

mount /dev/sda1 /dir

depending on the OS your using sda1 would normally point to first partition on that disk where sda2 would be second partition, etc.

Can you post the following output from

mount

and

df

this will tell us what you have mounted and different disks the OS is seeing.

[moeburn]

  On 28/08/2013 at 15:10, BudMan said:

Can you show this interface showing you your usb mounted?

Normally anything in dev is the actual device - you would not directly access it. You would mount that to some directory you would work with.. for example

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

now depending on what is in your fstab you might only need to do mount /dev/cdrom and it would mount it to the directory you have setup in fstab

the full mount command is normally

mount -t type dev directory

So if your usb is connected to /dev/sda1 then can create a directory where you want be it in /mnt or off / etc and then just

mount /dev/sda1 /dir

depending on the OS your using sda1 would normally point to first partition on that disk where sda2 would be second partition, etc.

Can you post the following output from

mount

and

df

this will tell us what you have mounted and different disks the OS is seeing.

root@Gargoyle:/dev# mount
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/root on /rom type squashfs (ro,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noatime)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,size=30876k)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,noatime,size=512k,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noatime,mode=600)
/dev/mtdblock4 on /overlay type jffs2 (rw,noatime)
overlayfs:/overlay on / type overlayfs (rw,noatime,lowerdir=/,upperdir=/overlay)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
none on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda1 on /tmp/usb_mount/6E9E-47D7 type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0000,dmask=0000,allow_utime=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
root@Gargoyle:/dev# df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                    9088       996      8092  11% /
/dev/root                 5888      5888         0 100% /rom
tmpfs                    30876      2484     28392   8% /tmp
tmpfs                      512         0       512   0% /dev
/dev/mtdblock4            9088       996      8092  11% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay        9088       996      8092  11% /
/dev/sda1             77853088  24878864  52974224  32% /tmp/usb_mount/6E9E-47D7

I should have figured to check /tmp/, my WDTV Live Plus media center box did the same thing with USB drives.  

 

Can I point Transmission directly to a folder in /tmp/usb_mount/XXXX-XXXX ?

[moeburn]

Alright, I pointed Transmission to /tmp/usb_mount/XXXX-XXXX, and it works great! Thanks for the pointer about running mount and df! I've got a very old WD 80GB hard drive plugged into it; figure I may as well get SOME use out of the ol clunker.  All the files I download onto it will be synced to my local drive anyway.  I also added a 250mb linux-SWAP partition at the beginning of the drive, and ran mkswap on the router.  It doesn't seem to even need it, but it's good to have it just in case.

 

I'm downloading a 500mb movie to the Transmission server on the router, while someone else is playing a Netflix movie in HD on a wired connection, and a couple of others are surfing and texting on wireless connections, and the router is still saying "Hey, got any more work for me to do?":

 

Gateway

Memory Usage:33.8MB / 60.3MB (56.1%)

Swap Memory Usage:1.7MB / 250.9MB (0.7%)

CPU Load Averages:1.47 / 1.02 / 0.52  (1/5/15 minutes)

 

 

The WNDR3700v2 is more than enough networking hardware than I could ever need, and Gargoyle's implementation of QoS is more than I ever expected.  It actually limits downloads too!  I'm pretty sure all other QoS implementations can only control upload.  And it works!  I've tested it and confirmed it, it only lets a tiny bit in at full speed for the first split second before it limits it successfully.

 

Man I love my new firmware on my router.