Should RKO bring back the torrents?

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Once in a while I get a request to bring back the RKO torrents. It's not often, but it happens - and the last one got me thinking.

Unfortunately the combination of the server that ran the bittorrent-tracker keeling over a while back and Misser no longer being with us (he maintained, seeded and updated the torrents), means that the archive is effectively offline for good unless some of you are still seeding the torrents, and can help rebuild the swarms by switching to another tracker - thus saving current seeders the bother of having to redownload the approx. 14 gigs worth of mp3 files.

Then again, if no one is currently seeding the old archive it might just be easier to create an entirely new bittorrent mirror from scratch.

Of course, everyone is welcome to join in and help seed, but for starters I need someone to create the yearly archives, both for the content added over the previous years (providing we can't resurrect the old torrents) and going forward - and sharing them with the rest of us. So If you know your way around creating and sharing torrents and you''re up for contributing some hard drive space and bandwidth for an official RKO mirror, let me know and we'll sort something out to get it off the ground. Only serious enquiries though - so no asking me to FTP you a complete mirror if you're not interested in helping out.

[Commie_User]

Wow, that sounds a mammoth task.

And nobody kept an archive? I've been almost OCD in keeping backups of what I thought important of my own recordings and software, so I suppose somebody may have. I thought that was Rule 1 anyway.

[pepak]

I do have an almost complete archive (3456 files, 19.4 GB). Several files missing, because their download failed. So if you can send me filelists for individual years, I could put them up (though I would need some help with setting up the initial seed),

[Analog-X64]

My Collection in 16.4 GB but goes up to RKO-2009 Q3 and that includes Not on RKO Anymore. I can help seed for a while.

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Don't worry, there's backups - I download weekly backups of the website, which in turn are backed up to two external harddrives, one of which is always stored away from home. And I've got an external drive that OS X refreshes hourly. I lost a huge collection of photos around 2005, and decided to go all-in on precaution from then on.

The torrents however, were never an official RKO thing, so I had nothing to do with them. Except for linking to the tracker and spreading the word, of course. Going forward I still don't have the bandwidth capacity to run a seedbox from home and I'm pretty sure it would violate every rule in the book if I ran one at work, so we need someone responsible to host the initial seeds - and hope that the community will support the effort.

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Good news, Everyone.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine[1] I've managed to secure a copy of the yearly torrent files for 2000-2012 and the "Lost Files" one.

Since the "Lost Files" would probably be the hardest one to rebuild if truly lost (get it?) I decided to focus on it, by replacing the now defunct tracker.slayradio.org with another tracker. So I fired up Transmission[2] and fed it the "Lost Files" torrent, thinking that I'd need to add additional trackers, then ask people like Analog-X to add the same trackers, allowing our computers to connect and start the exchange, and wait. But much to my surprise it's started downloading almost straight away, without me doing anything. So 22 minutes later, I had a complete copy. Yah!

After the initial reaction (equal parts joy and how-is-this-possible) had settled, I started getting rational about it. The answer being that even though the tracker had keeled over many moons ago, the metadata had been pushed into the cloud by way of DHT (Distributed Hash Tables), thus allowing myself and others to connect to people still seedling the files. Also, while the Wayback Machine didn't have a copy of the 2013 torrent, I was able to grab a magnet link from a DHT search engine.

So, long story short - my bandwidth is currently being choked by Transmission downloading everything for safe keeping. Once that's done with I'll look into adding some 'proper' trackers (publicbt, openbittorrent and CCC.de spring to mind) and add links to the updated .torrent files on RKO.

Anyway, apologies for going on a bit there. I just wanted to give you a little insight into the restoration process.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130703032 ... radio.org/
[2] https://www.transmissionbt.com/

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Quick update: I've now secured copies of all the yearly torrents plus the "Lost Files" one mentioned earlier (21.5 Gb in total) thanks to the advent of Distributed Hash Tables making bittorrent resilient to server outtages.

Isn't technology awesome?

[Cactus]

You don't even need a tracker anymore. Just create a new torrent without a tracker, grab the magnet link off it and post that on your site. Bob is then, as they say, your uncle.

Like this: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:E7DF09BCF6902B2CF08DC0158A9E2371BB742BD2&dn=Commoflage%20jingel.mp3

(apparantly phpBB won't let you make links of them though)

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

You don't even need a tracker anymore. Just create a new torrent without a tracker, grab the magnet link off it and post that on your site. Bob is then, as they say, your uncle.

Like this: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:E7DF09BCF6902B2CF08DC0158A9E2371BB742BD2&dn=Commoflage%20jingel.mp3

Good point. I haven't toyed with Bittorrent for ages, and never from the sharing side of the equation. But yes, DHT+Magnet FTW.

I have created a VERY basic page here: http://remix.kwed.org/torrents/rko-bitt ... chive.html - if anyone wants to test it before it gets added to the main page later on, so don't nobody link to it. Also, I was too lazy to create new torrents, and just grabbed the magnet links for everything off btdigg, even though they also point to the now defunct tracker.slayradio.org. Which was how I got hold of the 2013 archive myself. This has the added bonus of existing seeds not having to update the old torrents with new trackers, or having to grab new torrents and verify them against already downloaded MP3s. Everyone wins!

[Darn]

I have kept, and seeded, everything except 2013-Q4, in the hopes of the tracker getting back online, and someone continuing the tremendous work Misser did. Thanks to this, I can get the missing Q4, and will continue to seed until I cant do so anymore
Thanks

[Cactus]

There is one problem with magnet links I've noticed. I can't open them in µtorrent and point to an existing folder to seed from. Still requires a torrent file.

"But YOU'RE the one who suggested!!!" etc etc

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Right! I have updated the temporary page and moved it to http://remix.kwed.org/torrents/rko-bitt ... chive.html

It now contains both modern-day magnet links and oldskool torrent ones - both using new trackers, just in case someone doesn't have a DHT/PEX enabled client. If you're already seeding, you don't need to grab anything over again, as long as you add these trackers (and remove the tracker.slayradio.org one while you're at it):

udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce
udp://tracker.publicbt.com:80

If your torrent software doesn't allow you to do that, you can click the torrent-links on the new archive page and have your software point to an existing folder to continue seeding. (Cactus, could you please test that it works? )

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Anyone managed to test the new torrent/magnet links? (or adding the trackers if you're already seeding the old torrents)

[quapil]

Aaah, very nice.

I was desperate for the 2013 torrent and wondered why it was offline for some time now. So glad to seen them back!

Although I do have the old ones here at home until 2012-complete I*m downloading them one by one now at my work, as I have way better up- and download sped there. Will keep them there seeding to.

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Yah! Transmission is now showing additional seeds for the torrents, so I've moved the links to the RKO main page and retired the temporary URL.

@quapil: Thanks for helping to seed. Hopefully I'll find someone to create an archive of the tracks added during 2014 soon. If not I might just have to do it myself.