Hi all,

I have a jailbroken 2.1 iPhone and am trying to work out how to have it automatically send .torrent files that I download, home to my server to begin leeching.

I am currently exploring two possibilities:

1) (Easiest?) Set up some kind of crontab entry, which checks in my Safari downloads directory every 5 minutes for .torrent files, scp's them home to my server, and then moves them into some kind of "Old Torrents" folder.

2) Somehow hook in to the iPhone file system, in order to watch for new files in a given directory. When a .torrent file is added, copy home and move as above.

I have set up similar things on several other machines, and am an experienced unix developer, so I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, but I have a few questions:

- Are there any file system watching apps available for iPhone? I've looked and haven't found any, but I haven't checked in all of the repositories.

- What's the preferred way of scheduling processes on the iPhone? It looks like cron is no longer included with iPhone OS 2, but I've read about two apps, "Launchd" and "Schedule", which sound like the do a similar thing.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Jon

Solved my own problem! :hack: here is what I came up with.

1) Install the Safari downloader hack, which allows download of files to /var/mobile/Library/Downloads.

2) Set up a launchd plist file at /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.automation.torrentmover.plist

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.automation.torrentmover</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/var/mobile/torrentmover.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/var/mobile/Library/Downloads</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>onDemand</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

3) Create the script /var/mobile/torrentmover.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash

/bin/echo "START" >> /var/log/torrentmover
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
LOG=/var/log/torrentmover
DEST=username@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/TORRENTDROP/iPhone_`date +%Y%m%d_%H:%M:%S`.torrent
DIR=/var/mobile/Library/Downloads/

FILELIST=`/bin/ls $DIR`

/bin/echo "Change detected in $DIR" >> $LOG

for f in $FILELIST
do
	echo "	Checking $DIR/$f" >> $LOG
	file $DIR/$f | grep -i bittorrent 2>&1 > /dev/null
	IS_TORRENT=$?
	SUCCESS=-1
	if [ $IS_TORRENT -eq 0 ]; then
		echo "	Torrent file detected" >> $LOG
		scp $DIR/$f $DEST 2>&1 >> $LOG
		SUCCESS=$?
	fi
	if [ $SUCCESS -eq 0 ]; then
		echo "	File sent, removing" >> $LOG
		rm $DIR/$f
	fi
done

exit

Make that script executable with chmod +x. I have this file owned by root, I don't think it worked when owned by mobile.

4) Install the launchd job:

Code:

launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.automation.torrentmover.plist

Now try downloading a .torrent file from mobile Safari, and it should get sent to the destination folder on your server, where you have Transmission or some other torrent client watching the dir for new torrents.

NB I rename the files to iPhone_<date>.torrent because on some torrent sites I would end up with a file called torrent.php. That's why I use 'file' to determine if a file is BitTorrent.

Hope this helps someone else, please let me know your thoughts.

Jon