Creating Torrents

The desktop can make a .torrent file from a file or a folder on your computer. The web interface and the terminal client cannot.

Opening the dialog

Desktop: click the button with the plus sign at the top left of the tab area and choose Create a torrent. The dialog Create a torrent opens.

The dialog

Data (a single file or a directory)

What the torrent will contain. Type the path, or click F to browse for a file or D to browse for a directory.

Piece size

A torrent is cut into pieces, and the torrent file holds a checksum for each piece. A smaller piece size makes a bigger torrent file. Choose a larger piece size for a large file or folder, and a smaller one for a few megabytes of data. The choices go from 64 KB to 8.0 MB, and the default is 512 KB.

Comment

Text stored in the torrent file. Other people see it when they open the torrent.

Private torrent (disable DHT)

Marks the torrent as private. BitTorrent programs then find peers only through the trackers, never through DHT. Some private torrent sites require this.

Below these are three tabs. A right-click in the list of the Trackers tab opens a menu with Add, Edit and Delete, and Add known, which offers a list of public trackers shipped with FatRat (some may be out of date). The DHT nodes and Web seeds tabs have the same menu.

Trackers

The tracker addresses ("announce URLs") of the torrent. Each address must start with http:// or udp://; FatRat leaves out the others. A private torrent needs at least one tracker. If you publish the torrent on a torrent site, the site tells you its announce URL.

DHT nodes

Addresses of DHT nodes that programs can ask for peers, in the form address:port. FatRat leaves out entries in any other form. These are stored in the torrent only when Private torrent (disable DHT) is not ticked: a private torrent has no DHT nodes.

Web seeds

Web addresses of copies of the data, which downloaders can fetch pieces from. Each address must start with http:// or https://; FatRat leaves out the others.

Creating the file

Click Create. FatRat reads all the data to compute the checksums, which takes a while for large data; a progress bar shows how far it is. Then FatRat asks where to save the .torrent file. The dialog closes after the file is written. If you cancel the save dialog, the Create a torrent dialog stays open, and you can click Create again. FatRat then reads all the data again. If the data path is not valid, FatRat says "The data path is invalid." and nothing is created.

Sharing the torrent

Making the file does not add it to FatRat. To seed your data, add the new .torrent file as a transfer, and set the destination to the directory that contains your file or folder, not the folder itself. FatRat checks the data it finds there and then seeds it. See BitTorrent Support for the seeding limits.

To let other people download it, give them the .torrent file, or upload it to a torrent site.