How to Transfer Seeds from qBitTorrent to Transmission Macos (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I have a MacOs running as a sort of seedbox seeding 70ish torrents. But macos qbittorrent is buggy and means that for various reasons I have to restart the client every couple hours so or the connection breaks. Which is inconvenient.

Transmission macos doesn’t have this problem. So it’s much better long term. Tho I’m not sure how I can tranfer all the seeding files to transmission. Manually sounds like a nightmare, and even then, I tried one and for some reason it wouldn’t verify my downloaded files and insisted on redownloading the torrent from scratch. Even though I had made sure I was pointing to the correct directory. This may be because I’ve renamed files in the past (don’t really remember) but qbittorrent seems to have no issue with it.

This is complicated by the fact my torrents are in different directories or “nestled”. Like my directory looks kind of like

>TV Shows
>> Futurama 
>>> Futurama S01 [Torrent]
>>> Futurama S02 [Torrent]
>> Planet Earth III [Torrent]
> Movies
>> Up [Torrent]
>> Star Wars
>>> Phantom Menace [Torrent]

Edit: Thanks for the replies. Seems about what I figured. I guess every time i open my client I’ll have fun moving 2-3 torrents over.

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[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Last time I did something like this, I grabbed the .torrent file from the completed archive, told it to start downloading it again. It recreated the folder structure and names it expected, then I stopped it, and put the completed files back where it was expecting to see them with the names that it had just created. I started it again to let everything force check. Then I use the torrent client to move the files to where I wanted them.

I've honestly given up one having my torrent* client put the files in their ultimate locations. I just have it make copies of the completed files and leave the torrents the hell alone.

*edit: dictation shenanigans

[-] wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.uk 5 points 6 days ago

Even if you don't have the .torrent file (I use magnet links), most torrent clients should be able to generate them. I also used qbittorrent to move the files from my old HDD to the new one when I upgraded, if you do this before you add the torrents to Transmission OP it should work

[-] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 6 days ago

If you’ve moved or renamed files, it will break the seed; as far as the client is concerned, the file no longer exists. If the seeding app hasn’t noticed, it hasn’t done a check of the files and/or hasn’t tried seeding them. The other thing to try is to point it one level up or down from where you “think” the data is.

[-] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 days ago

This is a big misconception, modern torrent clients like qbittorrent offer renaming fuctionality without breaking the torrent. I do this all the time without any problem.

Click on a torrent in Qbit > Click Stop > go to the contents tab of that torrent > change the name of the files to the names you've changed inside your file explorer > Right click the torrent > Force recheck > It should be rechecked to 100% > now start seeding it.

I've done this with hundreds of torrents, I can create a video tutorial if anyone wants.

[-] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 days ago

Interesting; it should work that way because the hash should check out fine. But I’ve never tried.

[-] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

and even then, I tried one and for some reason it wouldn’t verify my downloaded files and insisted on redownloading the torrent from scratch. Even though I had made sure I was pointing to the correct directory. This may be because I’ve renamed files in the past

That should work fine.. I suspect that failed maybe because you renamed like you said. Make sure Transmission is adding torrents in paused mode, then do another test with a torrent you definitely didn't rename. Maybe just do a test download in qBittorrent and then attempt to add it into Transmission e.g. a Linux Mint torrent or similar is usually a safe test https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=319

Because of how you have your torrents organized it does sound like you'll need to tough it out and add each torrent and configure it manually.

It would be easier if you had all the torrent data saved in the same folder(s), in which case just configure Transmission to add torrents in pause mode, configure a watch folder, copy your qBittorrent's .torrent files into that watch folder, and finally do a re-check in Transmission and start all the torrents. Then just hardlink the torrent data out into your own nested folders how you want them set up, that way the same data exists and is linked in two places (torrent data folder and your own folders). Maybe it's something to consider for your future configuration but it's not going to help you much right now.

For now yeah, the best you could do is set Transmission to add torrents in paused mode, configure a watch folder, copy paste your current qBittorrent .torrent files, then afterwards in Transmission change each torrent's data location and re-check one-by-one. Not sure if it's any faster than just adding the torrents manually one-by-one :/

You should be able to find the current .torrent files wherever MacOS saves your qBittorrent files, look for a folder that looks like qBittorrent / BT_backup, all the .torrent files in BT_backup are your loaded torrents inside qBittorrent.

With some luck maybe you can find a tool that does qBittorrent --> Transmission migrations? I wasn't sure if any exist, all I can find are tools to do Transmission --> qBittorrent e.g. https://github.com/undertheironbridge/transmission2qbt

(note I'm not on MacOS so maybe someone else has more direct advice to offer)

[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

Found something that might work: https://github.com/sotiris-bos/qBittorrent_to_Transmission

@FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone

[-] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago

Ah yeah I saw that one but I don't think it does quite what OP wants. Seems more like it is designed to monitor a running qBittorrent client and then copy the .torrent file(s) to Transmission, with all torrent data in the same data folder. Might not help much for OP with all the different data folders they have in their current setup.

My concept is as such: have a shared folder where everything is moved after download. I call this /mnt/torrents.

The script provided that makes all of this happen is a python script. It queries the qBittorrent client for uploading or completed downloads, checks to see if they are private or public torrents, then copies the .torrent files to the respective "watched" directory of the public or private (transmission) client. It just copies the .torrent files to directories, so it should be usable with other torrent clients that have "watched" directories.

But either way nice effort! I'm kind of surprised at the lack of scripts to import torrents into Transmission. The only related script I could find is to do Transmission --> qBittorrent but it doesn't seem to do the reverse https://github.com/Mythologyli/transmission-to-qbittorrent