Admins eHow SysAdmin Tips & Tricks

Here is a simple guide on how to install rtorrent/rutorrent on Debian 7 Wheezy , It may also work on Ubuntu and other Debian based Linux distros.

Install prerequisite packages :

apt-get install gcc pkg-config libssl-dev g++ make libncurses5-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev subversion screen nano

Install XMLRPC-C , it is required for rutorrent communication with rtorrent :

svn co http://svn.code.sf.net/p/xmlrpc-c/code/advanced xmlrpc-c
cd xmlrpc-c
./configure
make
make install

Install LibTorrent required by rtorrent :

wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/downloads/libtorrent-0.13.3.tar.gz
tar zxvf libtorrent-0.13.3.tar.gz
cd libtorrent-0.13.3
./configure
make
make install

Install rtorrent client :

wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/downloads/rtorrent-0.9.3.tar.gz
tar zxvf rtorrent-0.9.3.tar.gz
cd rtorrent-0.9.3
./configure --with-xmlrpc-c
make
make install
ldconfig

Now, we have to make a user for rtorrent and configure it :

useradd user1
mkdir -p /home/user1/rtorrent
mkdir -p /home/user1/rtorrent/.session
mkdir -p /home/user1/rtorrent/download
chown -R user1:user1 /home/user1

Copy rtorrent sample config from rtorrent source directory to user1 home directory :

cp rtorrent-0.9.3/doc/rtorrent.rc /home/user1/.rtorrent.rc

Now you can customize the configuration :

nano /home/user1/.rtorrent.rc

But what you need to customize are following options :

directory = /home/user1/rtorrent/download
session = /home/user1/rtorrent/.session
scgi_port = localhost:5000

It is time to run rtorrent, This command runs rtorrent as user1 :

su - user1 -c 'screen -fa -d -m rtorrent'

Now we can install Apache + php5 which is required by rutorrent :

apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

Enable auth_digest module which is required for rutorrent authentication :

a2enmod auth_digest

Install rutorrent+pluins :

wget http://dl.bintray.com/novik65/generic/rutorrent-3.6.tar.gz
tar zxvf rutorrent-3.6.tar.gz
mv rutorrent /var/www

wget http://dl.bintray.com/novik65/generic/plugins-3.6.tar.gz
tar zxvf plugins-3.6.tar.gz
mv plugins /var/www/rutorrent/

Tip : The only plugin which you need is httprpc. you can disable or delete all the rest.

Configure user1 on rutorrent :

mkdir -p /var/www/rutorrent/conf/users/user1
cp /var/www/rutorrent/conf/config.php /var/www/rutorrent/conf/users/user1
nano /var/www/rutorrent/conf/users/user1/config.php

Make sure $scgi_port in config.php matches scgi_port in rtorrent config file :

$scgi_port = 5000;

For rutorrent web authentication create .htaccess file in rutorrent directory :

nano /var/www/rutorrent/.htaccess

Copy and paste the following inside .htaccess :

AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /etc/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
require valid-user

Create password file for Apache :

htdigest -c /etc/.htpasswd "Restricted Area" user1

Now we need to configure Apache to allow .htaccess override :

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Change :

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

To :

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

And finally restart apache :

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now you should be able to access your rtorrent/rutorrent on this address : http://IP_SERVER/rutorrent