Install BitCannon for Personal KickAssTorrents on Windows

Stephen304 recently created a small program named BitCannon which gives you your own personal torrent site which is a backup of KickAssTorrents. You can search in it, download torrent files just like on KickAssTorrents but from your own machine. The idea is that even if torrent sites continue to be attacked, it will be easy for users to continue using the torrent database even if the host site is down. BitCannon comes in 32 and 64 bit versions and can autoupdate with an hourly torrent database dump. I also show you how to import the entire KickAssTorrents archive. This guide is for Windows only but I plan to create one for Mac and Linux as well. Do torrent safely with a VPN service like Private Internet Access or PureVPN and consider reading Comparing Usenet vs Torrents – Which is Better?

Create a Personal KickAssTorrents Backup

You need a few simple components for your personal KickAssTorrents backup

• Mongo Database to store the torrent files you import
• BitCannon which imports the torrent database and gives you a web interface to search for torrents
• A dump of KickAssTorrents if you want the entire database (around 600 MB in size)

Install Mongo Database

Download Mongo msi from here – you can choose the combined 64 and 32-bit version by choosing the 64-bit msi. Guide adapted from here

Install to c:\MongoDB

Run a command prompt as an Administrator

mkdir c:\MongoDB\data\db

Create the Mongo log directory

mkdir c:\MongoDB\log

Create the Mongo configuration file in c:\MongoDB\mongod.cfg

Paste this configuration and save the file

systemLog:
  destination: file
  path: C:\MongoDB\log\mongo.log
net:
  bindIp: 127.0.0.1
  port: 27017
storage:
  dbPath: C:\MongoDB\data\db
  directoryPerDB: true

Install the Mongo Windows service so it autostarts on boot

sc create MongoDB binPath= "C:\MongoDB\bin\mongod.exe --config=C:\MongoDB\mongod.cfg --service" displayname= "MongoDB 2.6 Standard Server" start= auto

Now you can start the Mongo service

net start MongoDB

You should see

The MongoDB 2.6 Standard Server service was started successfully.

Stop the Mongo service with this command

net stop MongoDB

Install BitCannon

Download BitCannon, the latest release from Stephen304's page

You will be taken to a Mega page, click the BC_Windows version e.g. BC_Windows_v0.0.5.zip.
Click the Download arrow at the top and choose Download as ZIP – this prevents a ‘This file may harm your computer' error which I got in Google Chrome.

Unpack the ZIP file such that the BitCannon folder is in c:\ making the whole path c:\bitcannon and not c:\bitcannon\bitcannon

To use KAT you will need to sign up for an API and replace $USERHASH with your API key. Changing verified=1 to verified=0 will get you non-verified torrents.

{
  "mongo": "127.0.0.1",
  "bitcannonPort": "1337",
  "trackers": [
    "udp://tracker.istole.it:80",
    "udp://open.demonii.com:1337",
    "udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80",
    "udp://tracker.publicbt.com:80"
  ],
  "archives": [{
    "name": "KickAssTorrents",
    "url": "https://kat.cr/api/get_dump/hourly/?userhash=$USERHASH&verified=1",
    "frequency": 3600
  }, {
    "name": "Demonoid",
    "url": "http://www.demonoid.pw/api/demonoid24h.txt.gz",
    "frequency": 43200
  }]
}

Browse to c:\bitcannon and choose the correct executable for your operating system

64-bit version – bitcannon_windows_amd64.exe

32-bit version – bitcannon_windows_386.exe

Now open up a browser and point it to http://ip.address:1337 or http://localhost:1337 if you're on the same machine you just installed bitcannon to.

You should see this interface and can browse the last hour's torrents from KickAssTorrents. You can now Browse and search your own personal KickAssTorrents backup.

If you want to import the whole KickAssTorrents database you will need an API key from KAT and the download will then be something like this

https://kat.cr/api/get_dump/hourly/?userhash=APIKEY

Stephen304 advises against importing the daily dump but but you are welcome to try it anyway.

Place it in the c:\bitcannon folder

Run a command prompt as an Administrator

Go into the bitcannon folder

c:
cd c:\bitcannon

Import the database, it is roughly 600MB so it will take some time, possibly several hours

For 64-bit

bitcannon_windows_amd64.exe dailydump.txt.gz

32-bit

bitcannon_windows_386.exe dailydump.txt.gz

Make BitCannon Autostart on Windows

The final step is if you want it to run in the background without showing the command prompt, we do that with a vbs script

In c:\bitcannon create a file bitcannon.vbs in Notepad or Notepad++

Paste this code to make BitCannon autostart, adjust the executable name for the 32-bit or 64-bit version

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run chr(34) & "C:\bitcannon\bitcannon_windows_amd64.exe" & Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

Create a shortcut and drag it to your Windows Startup folder for BitCannon to autostart on boot.

Reboot your machine and try and go to http://ip.address:1337 and if you see the bitcannon interface you have succeeded. You may see the warning screen, uncheck Always ask before opening this file or you will see this message upon every boot.

BitCannon will update from the KickAssTorrents database every hour so it will stay updated – this feature is now live. All you will have to do is update the BitCannon version.