Using Linux how to resume a torrent download started on Windows?

Question

Maybe some torrent client for Linux can understand the metadata generated by a Windows client. Or maybe there is a Web/Desktop client that works in both systems. Is there any way to do that?

I use uTorrent for Windows, and I haven't used any torrent client on my Ubuntu 11.04 yet. But if the solution uses other client for Windows, it will work for me.

Answer 1

Usually it's enough to just add the exact same .torrent file and point it to the partial files (after stripping off any .!ut suffixes). The new BitTorrent client will verify the downloaded data against information in .torrent and will only download the needed blocks.

Answer 2

While there is a uTorrent server build for Linux, the easiest way to resume a torrent from Windows is to copy over your resume.dat file along with the data, run the Windows client under Wine, and force a re-check of the data. Once it is all checked and matches the progress you had under Windows, begin downloading once again.

There are scripts available to convert your resume.dat for compatibility with the Linux build, but they do not always work and it's usually faster to just use the Wine approach.

If the torrent isn't very big, you can always just use Windows for a few hours while the download completes.