TheHub

Intro

This is a guide for how to get to The Smashing Pumpkins lossless hub. The hub has only a few rules, one of which is no mp3s. Please follow this rule as you will get a permanent ban if you do not. The other is dont share anything that is commercial, there are other places where you can do this and most of us do not partake in such things. With that said, I give you the guide for getting to the hub.

First things first, you need a program to do this. First I will present the windows tutorial, and then the linux tutorial. Someone else will have to pick up the mac, beos, amiga, etc tutorial as my system is linux.

Windows

Here you have a plethora of clients, including the dreaded (official) NMDC client. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIECE OF JUNK. With that said, please grab a copy of DC++ or one of the variants. Since before I went to linux the only client I used was DC++ (BCDC++ was used for 2 days befor the switch so I dont remember it at all), I will make a guide for that, and I hope that others can make a guide for the variants (mostly just to talk about the other features).

Regular old dc++

1) Get DC++ or some variant. This guide will assume you are using DC++ which can be gotten at www.dcplusplus.sf.net.

2) Install DC++

NOT COMPLETE!

More-from rhinowing

3) open dc++. click the yellow star in the top menu. click the new button towards the bottom of the screen. put "tsphub.no-ip.com:2004" into the adress box. hit ok. double click the listing you have created. this will connect you to the hub.

CONFIGURING YOUR CLIENT

Set your client to have at least two slots. (File>Settings>Sharing)

If you are on windows XP, with SP2 installed, and have not disabled the firewall, you will have to be passive. To set your client to passive, navigate to file>connection settings>click the box for passive. please note that passive users cannot connect to anyone else who is passive.

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 www.portforward.com

If you are on a router, you have to set a static IP and Forward ports. Please see www.portforward.com for instructions.

SETTING UP YOUR SHARE

I don't have anything to share!!! -Dont sweat it. there is no minimum share in the hub. however, there is a danger of being kicked/banned if you do not share what you download.

I do have something to share, how do I do it? -Go to: File>Settings>Sharing and click Add Folder. This will add the folder into your share and people can download it's contents from you.

Do not share: -MP3. EVER. -ANY copyrighted material -The directory you download to -Incomplete shows -Commercial programs (photoshop, etc.) -Porn

DOWNLOADING FILES

Once you connect to the hub, you should see a chat window and a list of user names to the right. Double click a username to get that user's file list.

What do the icons next to the user names mean? -A key means that person is an OP. -A brickwall means they are passive. -If their icon is green, you have not tried to connect to them. -If it is blue, you have sucessfully connected to them -If it is red, you cannot connect to them.

What does "No slots availible" mean?!?!?! -Remember how you set your client to have two slots at the beginning of this? That means two people can download from you at a time. No Slots Availible means two people are already downloading from that person. You have to wait for a slot to open (and oftentimes there is a line) before you can download.

Will I lose my slots/place in line if I log off? -yes. You will lose your place in line if you exit that particular hub or close DC++, but your slots may stay open. Some people set their clients to close your slot if you leave a hub.

Linux

Well since I got the DC++ on linux to work, there is no reason not to talk about that one. Both DC++ and Valknut have their short comings, and I will discuss them here and then you can decide what you want to use.

Valknut (aka dcgui):

website http://dcgui.berlios.de This was for some time the only DC client that wasnt banned from 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 dont 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 majour change, didn't have tabs and most of it still does not. A lot of times when I am downloading something, I find that the files have errored, and most of the time I cannot even get a file list from people (which makes it terribly painful to use). The transfer pane doesnt have a side scroll bar, so if the file you are geting has a long path, forget knowing what the file is called. There are only two nice things that I can say about Valknut is that 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 it rehases 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 doesnt show the speed of the person
• Banned from alot of hub
• (I am sure that there are more that I can't remember)

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

DC++ for Linux

That is right, DC++ for Linux is available and screen shots can be found here. If someone has used DC++ for windows, then this would look very familiar. So what can I say about DC++ for linux, well not much as I have not really used it to get 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 doesnt 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 over Valknut in much the way how DC++ is when compared to NMDC (NeoModus Direct Connect, the official client). It has the nice tab system that is inheriant in DC++ for Windows and it also has the horizontal scroll at the bottom of the transfers window (yay!!!). There are how ever a few problems with it, upon hub entry you do not see the rule, this is a majour 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) till after you try to connect (this is really no biggy, because you can just look at their tag, but still an annoyance none the less). It got 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

Go Active!!!

Passive users that can be active are one of the worst things, at least imho as they cannot get stuff from other passive people, thus 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

-Syco54645 & quandar

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