How to install rtorrent and rutorrent

Sun, Feb 3, 2013

In order for rutorrent to work, rtorrent must be compiled with xmlrpc-c support. Here is the full instruction.

1. First, check to make sure the following libraries are installed on your system. At any step below, if you cannot run ./configure script correctly, you might have to install -dev or -devel packages of these libraries

• gcc
• ncurses
• libsigc++-2.0
• libssl
• xmlrpc-c
• subversion

1. Download and install xmlrpc-c if your distro does not support it

svn co http://xmlrpc-c.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xmlrpc-c/advanced xmlrpc-c
cd xmlrpc-c
./configure
make
make install

1. Download and install libtorrent and rtorrent

wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/downloads/libtorrent-0.13.3.tar.gz
wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/downloads/rtorrent-0.9.3.tar.gz
tar xzfv libtorrent-0.13.3.tar.gz
tar xzfv rtorrent-0.9.3.tar.gz
cd libtorrent-0.13.3
./configure
make
make install
cd ../rtorrent-0.9.3/
./configure --with-xmlrpc-c=/usr/local/bin/xmlrpc-c-config
make
make install

1. Execute this line to copy rtorrent config to your home directory

cp /usr/share/doc/rtorrent/examples/rtorrent.rc .rtorrent.rc

1. Add the following line to the end of your .rtorrent.rc

scgi_port = 127.0.0.1:5001

1. Create download and session directories as pointed out in .rtorrent.rc. You might also change these directory as desired.
2. Download, extract rutorrent and plugins and placed them anywhere under your web root so that you can access it via HTTP

wget http://rutorrent.googlecode.com/files/rutorrent-3.5.tar.gz
wget http://rutorrent.googlecode.com/files/plugins-3.5.tar.gz
tar -xf rutorrent-3.5.tar.gz
cd rutorrent
tar -xf ../plugins-3.5.tar.gz
cd ..
mv rutorrent /var/www/

1. Delete /var/www/ruttorrent/.htaccess to disable htaccess authentication (you can always enable it in the future)

2. Fire up your web browser and open http://yourdomain.com/rutorrent. You will see the GUI very similar to uTorrent.

Happy torrenting. Download responsibly.