.TH TORRENT 1
.SH NAME
torrent \- bittorrent client
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B ip/torrent
[
.B -d
]
[
.B -v
]
[
.B -p
]
[
.B -m
.I mtpt
]
[
.B -s
]
[
.I file
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
BitTorrent is a protocol for efficient file distribution
over the internet. Files are split into small pieces
that are then downloaded by clients in random order.
As soon as a client completes a piece, it makes the piece 
available for others to download.
.PP
To find find other clients (peers), a tracker-server is
contacted.
.PP
Before files can be transmitted, a torrent-file needs
to be created describing the pieces of the files and
other meta-data like network addresses of the trackers.
.PP
.I Torrent
downloads the files that are described in the torrent-file
given by the
.I file
argument to the current working directory. If no
.I file
is given, the torrent is read from standard-input.
.PP
Normally, the program exits immediately after all pieces
have been completed.
The
.B -s
option causes it to keep running and serve the remaining
clients (also known as seeding).
.PP
Trackers use a subset of the HTTP protocol, so an
alternative 
.IR webfs (4)
mountpoint can be given with the
.B -m
option (defaults to
.BR /mnt/web ).
.PP
The
.B -v
option causes
.I torrent
to list the files in the torrent-file before downloading.
.PP
The
.B -d
option produces verbose debug output to standard-error.
.PP
To monitor the download progress, the
.B -p
option can be given to cause the completed and total number of
pieces written as a line of text to standard-output in one
second intervals.
.SH EXAMPLE
Download the latest iso file of the distribution 
.EX
cd /tmp
hget http://r-36.net/9front/9front.iso.bz2.torrent | \\
	ip/torrent -pv | \\
	aux/statusbar 'download...'
.EE
.SH SOURCE
.B /sys/src/cmd/ip/torrent.c
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.IR hget (1),
.IR webfs (4)