TheHub

Introduction

If you are already an expert in DC++ then simply connect to the following address..if not keep reading: sp-hub.dyndns.org:1979

This is a guide for how to get to The Smashing Pumpkins lossless hub. The Smashing Pumpkins hub is a Direct Connect (DC++) Hub which is used to share Lossless Audio of Live Smashing Pumpkins, Zwan and Billy Corgan shows. It is also a great place to share and download live Smashing Pumpkins related video.

Feel free to check it out.

Download the DC++ program found @ http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/ and connect to the following address: sp-hub.dyndns.org:1979

Any questions or queries just ask in the Hub and hopefully someone can help you use it.

Enjoy sharing Live SP today.

If you are still stuck, below are a few additional bits of information to follow:

Windows

Here you have a plethora of clients, including the dreaded, official NeoModus Direct Client (NMDC) client. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIECE OF JUNK. As such, it is highly recommended for Windows users to grab a copy of DC++ (named after the C++ code employed) or one of its variants.

DC++

1) Get DC++ or some variant. This guide will assume you are using DC++ which can be found here. It is recommended that you obtain the latest version and occasionally check for updates as security vulnerabilities are patched and improvements implemented freqently.

2) Install DC++ from the installer or the ZIP file. Accept the License Agreement and select the components to install, as well as the directory to which DC++ will reside.

3) Run DC++, from the Start Menu or other shortcut.

Configuring Your Client

Upon running DC++ for the first time, the Settings menu will pop up. In the first Personal information, the only piece of information that is required here is "Nick". This is the username you will be using. You may also want to select a connections type, which will be publicly available to others.

Connection Settings

The next sub-menu below Personal information is Connection settings. Here, things can get a little tricky depending on your internet connection (ie. your use of a router, operating system, firewall, ISP). "Active" mode is selected by default, but this may require some configuring (refer to the Go Active section below). For further reference, you may want to read the "Help" file by clicking on the bottom right hand button. It is greatly advantageous to you and other fellow users if you are able to run in "Active" mode as you will then be able to connect to all other users, while "Passive" users can only connect to "Active" users.

Downloading Folder

In the Settings menu, the sub-menu Downloads should now be filled out. Default download directory will hold finished downloads upon completion. If left blank, this will default to a folder called "Downloads" in the directory where DC++ was initially installed.

Unfinished downloads directory contains incomplete files as they are downloading. Once they are finished, they will automatically be moved to the folder specified in the Default download directory box. Again, if left blank, unfinished files will reside in a folder named Incomplete in the DC++ installation folder.

In recent versions of the DC++ client, downloading limits were implemented such that you can control how many downloads you permit simultaneously, as well as a cumulative speed (ie. some Internet connections, when saturated with downloading, may hinder your uploading/outbound bandwidth). These boxes are voluntary.

Sharing

I don't have anything to share?!
-Dont sweat it. There is no minimum share in the hub, but please try to share what you have downloaded upon completion.

If you do have files to share (Great!), click on Sharing sub-menu in Settings and click on the "Add folder" button button. Here you can add one or multiple directories as you choose. Again, to reiterate, do not share:

• MP3s. EVER.
• ANY copyrighted material
• The directory you download to
• Incomplete shows
• Commercial programs (Photoshop, etc.)
• Porn
• The shows as listed above in the Rules

Below the folders shared, select a number of slots for sharing (from which other fellow users can download). While everyone's upload bandwidth, number of hubs connected to, etc. vary, at least 2 slots is recommended.

Appearance, Advanced Settings, etc.

The sub-menus below Sharing such as Appearance, Logs, and Advanced in the Settings menu are optional, but a few suggestions can be made to optimize your DC++ experience.

In sub-menu Appearance, Show timestamps in chat be default may be checked so you can keep track of when comments and messages are made.

In sub-menu Advanced, Automatically search for alternative download locations may be activated so your DC++ client will by default search other users for the files you are trying to download, thereby speeding up your cumulative download progress. This is most advantageous under "Active" mode, since you would be able to connect to all fellow users, and not being limited to only "Active" users while you are "Passive".

Also in Advanced, you may choose to enable Automatically disconnect users who leave the hub. This allows users who are downloading from you to retain their connections to you even when you become disconnected from the Hub, or when the Hub goes offline momentarily. This can be mutually beneficial if the user from whom you are downloading also enables this option and becomes disconnected.

You may want to take some time reading through the very detailed "Help" files for further information on these sub-menu options and whether you want to enable/disable some of them per your liking.

Connecting to The Smashing Pumpkins Hub

The hub address is: sp-hub.dyndns.org:1979

Assuming the above configurations have been made, select View>Favorite Hubs or click the yellow star in the top menu. Here you will add The Smashing Pumpkins Hub to your list of favorites and allow you to connect to it. Select New... towards the bottom of the screen and a small box pops-up entitled "Favorite Hub Properties". Enter a "Name" such as The Smashing Pumpkins Hub and then the address without the ()'s (sp-hub.dyndns.org:1979) into the second box. The Description, Nick, and below boxes are all optional. If you do not select a Nick, the default one which you entered in the intial configurations will be used. Select OK to add the Hub to your list of Favorites. To connect, simply double click on this newly added entry or select Connect towards the bottom of the window.

Using the Hub

Once you connect to the Hub, you should see a chat window with a list of usernames to the right. Double click a username to get that user's file list (ie his or her shared folders).

Viewing these folders is pretty self-explanatory for the most part, much like Windows Explorer. Frequently, you can see if the folder/show is of interest by expanding the folder then downloading the .txt file. This usually contains the recording information, setlist, venue, and other information, plus because the file is so small, even if the user has no free slots, you can still grab this file for preliminary information. Once you decide on which files you wish to download, either double-click on the filename (if it is only a single file) or right click a selection and choose Download.

What do the icons next to the user names mean?

• A key means that person is an Op (short for operator--similar to a moderator on a messageboard, the Op helps maintain the Hub from illegal files such as MP3s or mischievous behaviour such as advertising spam)
• A brick wall indicates the user is "Passive".
• If the user's icon is green, you have not tried to connect to them.
• If the user's icon is blue, you have successfully connected to them

What does "No slots available" mean?

• Remember how you set your client to have 2 slots during the initial configurations? That means 2 fellow Hub users can download from you at a time. No Slots Available means 2 people are already downloading from that user so you have to wait for a slot to open up (and oftentimes there is a waiting list of folks) before you can download. This waiting game can last from seconds to hours, depending on how great a demand there is for this user's shared files, as well as pure chance, as the process is "first-come, first-served".

Will I lose my slots/place in line if I log off?

• Yes, likely. You will lose your downloading slot if you close DC++. If the user from whom you are downloading did not enable the Automatically disconnect users who leave the hub (as recommended above your download should continue until that user either closes DC++ or manually disconnects you.

Feel free to ask questions in the chat window anytime that this HOW-TO does not address. The Hub members may take some time to respond, but are generally very helpful.

Linux

We don't discriminate, so we thought it would be useful for those Linux users out there to have a guide as well. Both DC++ and Valknut have their shortcomings, and I will discuss them here and then you can decide what you want to use.

Valknut (aka dcgui):

Website: [1] This was for some time the only Direct Connect client that wasn't banned from many hubs, but is slowly becoming banned as faking your share can be accomplished with this client (what people don't know is with the right knowlege of how to use Linux, a share fake is very easy to accomplish, but please don't do it or ask how to). Valknut supports the normal features of Direct Connect, but in a horrid way. The GUI is just clunky and up until the last major change, didn't have tabs and most of it still does not. A lot of times when downloading, I find that the files have errored, and most of the time I cannot even get a file list from fellow users (which makes it terribly painful to use). The transfer pane doesnt have a side scroll bar, so if the file you are getting has a long path, forget knowing what the file is called. There are only two nice things that I can say about Valknut, 1) it has the ability to limit your upload speed (but not your download speed (the download speed part is written in, it just doesnt work at all)), and 2) it rehashes files fast.

Pros & Cons of Valknut
Pros:

• Can limit the upload speed
• Hashes files rather quickly
• Sudo tab system is built in (rather bad implementation)

Cons:

• Files frequently error
• Tab system is terrible
• Gui is clunky
• No horizontal scroll bar in the transfer window
• Search doesn't show the speed of the person
• Banned from a lot of hubs

Final Verdict: gets the job done, but barely :(

DC++ for Linux

This is too buggy, don't waste your time with it at the current moment. It has done nothing for me other than error out GTK and kill when it tries to load my share. i wish it worked thought :(
That is right, DC++ for Linux is available and screen shots can be found here. If someone has used DC++ for Windows, then this should look very familiar. So what can I say about DC++ for Linux? Well, not much as I have not really used it to download any files yet (I am waiting for my queue to finish with Valknut first), but I can tell you that it is very slick. It currently has no files that are released, but that doesn't stop most people from using it as the CVS is open and it is very easy to get and compile. It is leaps and bounds better than Valknut in much the same way that DC++ is an advancement over NMDC (NeoModus Direct Connect, the official client). It has the nice tab system that is inherent in DC++ for Windows and it also has the horizontal scroll at the bottom of the transfers window (yay!!!). There are, however, a few problems with it. Upon hub entry you do not see the rule, this is a major problem since if you don't see the rules, you will get kicked (and possibly banned). The other problem is in the user list, you can't see if a user is Passive or Active (in their icon, it shows in their tag) until after you try to connect (this is really no biggie, because you can just look at their tag, but still an annoyance none the less). It downloaded every file list that I tried to get on the first try (amazing). The only really bad problem is that it takes a long time to hash a share (and I mean long, about 3 hours to hash my ~90 gig share) and tears up the performance of the machine. I feel that this is fine, as I only change my share once a week and I can rehash it when i go to bed.

Pros and Cons of DC++ for Linux
Pros:

• It is DC++ for Linux, do you need any more pros after this?
• Great tab system
• Horizontal scroll bar
• Uses TTH for real (at least I think it does, will look into that)?

Cons:

• Doesn't display the rules (this may actually be a setting that I missed)
• Hashing takes forever
• Can't see if someone is active or passive by their icon

Final Verdict: this client rocks, get it ASAP (or just to try since Valknut sucks)

Going the Valknut route

Though this isn't the best client, just to be fair, here is a guide.
1) Get Valknut. Use the normal means such as apt-get Valknut, urpmi Valknut, emerge Valknut, etc.

2) Once you have Valknut and it is installed, run the program and you will be presented with some options, they are blah blah blah (at work so i cant finish this as i dont have Valknut here)

Going the DC++ for Linux route

This is a good idea, trust me.
The guide on this site is not up,however, if you want to install DC++ on your Linux box the wonderful ubuntu community has provided a guide that can be located here Here is the start of my guide to get it to install. To install DC++ for Linux you must meet a few minimum requirements (this translates into a pain in the butt unless your distro has a package management system)
The requirements are (coppied directly from the readme)
Gtk+ 2.4
libglade 2.4
pthread
zlib
libbz2
scons
g++ 3.4 (Yes, this is REQUIRED for succesfull compilation!)
Meet all of these? Lets hope so

Now then what you must do is get the source. This needs to be done via cvs, since no files have been released yet.

• cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.linuxdcpp.berlios.de:/cvsroot/linuxdcpp login

(leave password blank)

• cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.linuxdcpp.berlios.de:/cvsroot/linuxdcpp co linuxdcpp

that should do the job for you. so all that is left is

• cd /location_to_where_it_is/linuxdcpp
• scons

and there you have it, just run the file afterwards and smile

Mac OSX

You have only a few choices on OSX, once again we don't descriminate so Mac OSX users can join the party of live music trading.

ShakesPeer

Shakespeer is a Direct Connect implementation for Unix-like systems. It aims to be fast, easy to use and compatible with DC++. The major goal of ShakesPeer is to create a Mac OS X application with an Aqua graphical user interface.
You can get ShakesPeer here

wxDC

it should be said that this client is a clone of nmdc, to a tee. it is very basic and has no nice features that dc++ has.
wxDC is a cross-platform DC (Direct Connect) filesharing client similar to DC++ written in C++ which runs on Windows (all), Unix/Linux (GTK+, Motif, X11), and MacOS X. wxDC uses the wxWidgets cross-platform SDK which can be found at www.wxWidgets.org.
You can download wxDC here

Neo Modus Offical DC Client

Well, some say its the worst, some says its the best, but its the offical client. Give it a try and see for yourself.
Download the Offical Client here

Go Active!!!

"Passive" users that can be "Active" but don't properly configure their settings, thereby choosing to remain "Passive" are bad for both the user and the Hub community, as they cannot connect to other "Passive" folks, thus limiting their own potential downloading capabilities as well as clogging the "Active" users' slots. You need to open your DC ports to be active, you can do this by checking somewhere like PortForward. However, not everybody can open there ports do to a restrictive ISP, but it is suggested that you try your best to open the ports.

To be active while running a firewall, you will have to forward ports (or disable the firewall). More instructions for this can be found at PortForward. For router users, you have to set a static IP and Forward ports. PortForward also has instructions for this. Feel free to contact us either via email, or connecting to the Hub in "Passive" mode while we walk you through the process.

-Syco54645, Punkishlyevil, quandar, rhinowing and gaffer

Note: when adding information, please put your name on the bottom next to mine.