BtMon - a BTPD monitor tool

I've enjoyed using btpd, a light-weight bittorrent client daemon for a long time. However, I've found the text-only output of the command line tool a bit cumbersome to read, especially if you are waiting for a bittorent to finish, or just want to see how your torrents are doing in general.

Therefor I wrote a small PHP script that displays the statistics of the BTPD daemon in a nicely formatted HTML page. In addition, it color-codes certain characteristics of your torrents like the upload speed and ratio. The torrents are also ordered alphabetically, which makes it easier to find a certain torrent.

Here's a snapshot (click on the image to get a full-size view):

(You'll excuse me that I don't show the torrent names, of course...)

Features

Shows alphabetical list of active torrents
Shows status, completed percentage, upload speed and ratio, number of clients for torrents
Color-codes upload speed; higher speeds get darker shades
Color-codes the upload ratio (= number of times the torrents has been uploaded)

Note: the script is only for monitoring your torrents. It does not allow you to stop, start or upload new torrents in any way. The simple reason for this is security.

Download

You can download version 0.1 here. (MD5: 29cbb27af1338c83d73683eaa22b9c8d)

Installation

The tarball contains a README.txt with details on installation. If you want to view the HTML page remotely you'll need a webserver and some way to access the server.

You will have to modify a few variables in the PHP script to match your upload speed and location of the BTPD command line tools.

Workings

The function of the script is simple; it takes the output of 'btcli stat', parses this and generates a HTML page. This page can then be viewed with any webbrowser, either locally or remotely if you make the HTML page accessible through a webserver.

Most of the output is a table with the following fields from 'btcli':

Torrent name
BTPD torrent number
Status
Percentage available
Amount uploaded
Upload speed
Upload ratio
Number of connection
Number of errors

The cell with the upload speed is colored in a shade of orange; the higher the upload speed, the darker the shade. This way you can quickly see which torrents take up most bandwidth. The shading is not linear, but changes stepwise at 12.5%, 25%, 50%. and 95% of your maximum upload speed. Torrents below < 1 kbyte/sec are never colored, though.

The upload ratio is also color coded; this is handy for torrents that employ a credit system. By looking at the color of the ratio box you can determine if a torrent has earned you enough credits and you may decicde to replace with a new torrent. The colors I choose for the ratio are as follows:

< 1.0: red
1.0 < 5.0: yellow
5.0 < 10.0: green
>= 10.0: blue(ish)

Note: if you want to change the colors, upload speed shades or upload ratios, you are free to change the PHP script of course.

Feedback

Comments are welcome at nemosoft@smcc.demon.nl

Nemosoft Unv - 20090128