Raspberry Pi as Download Server

4 min readMay 5, 2019

I take IoT course this semester. This is a small, but practical project on Raspberry Pi. The idea is from cloud storage transferring. I want to move all files from Baidu Wangpan to Google drive because of many limitation of Baidu. Finally, I deploy several enhancement functions on Raspberry:

Download, such as HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink (Aria2)
Domian name (Dynu.net)
Backup to cloud storage, such as Google Drive (Rclone)
Auto upload script
Optional: Baidu Wanpan client (Baidupcs-web）

1. Download function: Aria2 and AriaNg

Aria2 is a lightweight multi-protocol & multi-source command-line download utility.

AriaNg is a modern web frontend making aria2 easier to use. You can just put AriaNg in your web server and open it in your browser.

Install Aria2

sudo apt-get install aria2

Aria2 should run with configuration file. You can find configuration file from official website. Or use my configuration file

cd ~
wget https://github.com/YifangY/IoTProject2019/blob/master/aria2.conf

Please modify line 2, 3, 4, 8

Create session file:

mkdir /home/pi/.aria2/
touch /home/pi/.aria2/aria2.session

Aria2 can start by the command:

aria2c --conf-path={aria2 configuration file} -D

In order to start the Aria2 on boot, add above command to /etc/rc.local(before exit 0). For example:

Install Web GUI

sudo apt-get install nginx
cd ~
wget https://github.com/mayswind/AriaNg/releases/download/1.1.0/AriaNg-1.1.0.zip
sudo unzip AriaNg-1.1.0.zip -d /var/www/html/ang

Access http://{IP of Raspberry Pi}/ang in browser:

Go to AriaNg Settings->RPC({IP of Raspberry Pi}), Input rpc-secret of Aria2 configuration file on “Aria2 RPC Secret Token”.

Aria2 Status is “Connected” if the parameters are correct.

2. Domain name: Dynu.net

Then setup a cron job to run every 5 minutes to keep your hostnames updated to the most current IP address.

crontab -e

Add this line(replace UUUUU and PPPPP with your username and password):

/5 * * * * echo url="https://api.dynu.com/nic/update?username=UUUUU&password=PPPPP" | curl -k -K -

After IP is updated, you will find it on Control Panel->DDNS Services

Dynu.net provides instruction for Raspberry Pi

3. Install rclone to connect Google drive

Install rclone:

curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash

Configure rclone to connect Google Drive

rclone config

Define the name to mark the Google drive

Open the browser and input the link in above picture

Copy and paste the key code

4. Auto upload script

I write a script to upload the file to Google Drive automatically when the download task is complete

Download script:

cd ~
wget https://github.com/YifangY/IoTProject2019/blob/master/uploadtogoogle.sh
chmod +x uploadtogoogle.sh

Update parameter to match your system, such as REMOTENAME, REMOTEFOLDER, ArialocalFolder

Add this line in crontab:

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/flock -xn /tmp/uploadtogoogle.lock -c '/home/pi/uploadtogoogle.sh'

flock provide mutual exclusion to guarantee only one “uploadtogoogle.sh” is running.

5. Optional: Baidupcs-web

If you need to transfer file from Baidu Wangpan to Google Drive, Baidupcs-web is a good Linux client to access Baidu Wangpan. Baidupcs-web bases on BaiduPCS-Go. You can find the latest release from this link.

wget https://github.com/liuzhuoling2011/baidupcs-web/releases/download/3.6.7/BaiduPCS-Go-3.6.7-linux-arm.zip
unzip BaiduPCS-Go-3.6.7-linux-arm.zip

There is only one binary file in zip which could be executed directly

Access http://{IP of Raspberry Pi}:5299 in browser: