RTorrent/RuTorrent

Related articles

• LAMP
• RTorrent

ruTorrent is a PHP frontend/web interface to rTorrent (a console based BitTorrent client). It uses rTorrent's built-in XML-RPC server to communicate with it.

It is lightweight, highly extensible, and is designed to look similar to uTorrent.

Warning: SECURITY The config snippets given on this page are insecure (specifically using unprotected /RPC2 mounts). It needs an in-depth review, and fixing.

Installation

Install rutorrent^AUR from the AUR. If you want to use the development version install rutorrent-git^AUR.

Configuration

See upstream wiki here. By default the configuration files are symlinked to /etc/webapps/rutorrent/conf.

Web server configuration

Apache 2.4

Install and configure Apache with PHP according to the LAMP page.

Note: The configuration examples below do not take your current Apache hosts into account. If you are, for example, using Virtual Hosts, you should adapt those accordingly.

• Edit the open_basedir value in /etc/php/php.ini to include:

/etc/webapps/rutorrent/conf/:/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/php/:/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/

• Enable the rTorrent XMLRPC interface on UNIX socket : rTorrent#XMLRPC interface

• Enable SCGI on the socket you chose for rTorrent by adding this to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:

ProxyPass /RPC2 scgi:///path/to/rpc.socket

• Lastly, add the ruTorrent folder to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

As a directory alias

<IfModule alias_module>
  Alias /rutorrent /usr/share/webapps/rutorrent
  <Directory "/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent">
    Require all granted
  </Directory>
</IfModule>

As a VirtualHost

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName torrent.yourwebsite.com
  DocumentRoot /usr/share/webapps/rutorrent
  <Directory "/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent">
     Options -Indexes -MultiViews
     Require all granted
     AllowOverride all
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Note: You should enable authentication through Apache if your site is public.

Nginx

• Create a link from your web root to rutorrent

ln -s /usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/ /usr/share/nginx/html/rutorrent

• Edit the open_basedir value in /etc/php/php.ini to include:

/etc/webapps/rutorrent/conf/:/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/php/:/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/

• Enable the rTorrent XMLRPC interface: rTorrent#XMLRPC interface

• Edit the following location to your rutorrent configuration at /etc/webapps/rutorrent/conf/config.php where rtorrentuser is the user running rutorrent:

$scgi_port = 0;
$scgi_host = "unix:///home/rtorrentuser/rpc.socket";

Note: A multi-user setup will need user specific configuration files under /usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/conf/users for each user's socket location. Create a folder with the user's name, then create a config.php, for example:

/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/conf/users/rtorrentuser/config.php
/usr/share/webapps/rutorrent/conf/users/anotheruser/config.php

• Restart nginx:

# systemctl restart nginx

• You can now access ruTorrent at http://127.0.0.1/rutorrent

Lighttpd

rtorrent in the repos should be compiled with XML-RPC support.

Add the following line to your rtorrent config file, usually ~/.rtorrent.rc.

scgi_port = 127.0.0.1:5050

Instead of using a tcp port, it may also be possible to use a socket using the scgi_local option instead, however lighttpd may complain about permissions regardless of permissions / location of socket file.

You can choose a port other than 5050 if you like.

lighttpd

Install Lighttpd and PHP: lighttpd php php-cgi fcgi.

After starting lighttpd as per the wiki, you should be able to access the test page at http://localhost:80.

By default the pages are served from /srv/http, this is where we will be putting rutorrent.

lighttpd.conf

Edit lighttpd's config file, /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf.

The following lines tell lighttpd to load the fastcgi and simple-cgi modules. Fast cgi is needed for rutorrent itself, and scgi for rutorrent to communicate with rtorrent.

server.modules += ( "mod_fastcgi" )
server.modules += ( "mod_scgi" )

We need to tell lighttpd how to treat files like css, images (jpg etc.), js. Otherwise it will not know what to do with them, and you may get a dialog to download the file or rutorrent will just not work properly.

Here is a long list of filetypes, it is probably overkill as most of them are not needed, but easier to cover them all.

Add this to /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf also.

mimetype.assign             = (
      ".rpm"          =>      "application/x-rpm",
      ".pdf"          =>      "application/pdf",
      ".sig"          =>      "application/pgp-signature",
      ".spl"          =>      "application/futuresplash",
      ".class"        =>      "application/octet-stream",
      ".ps"           =>      "application/postscript",
      ".torrent"      =>      "application/x-bittorrent",
      ".dvi"          =>      "application/x-dvi",
      ".gz"           =>      "application/x-gzip",
      ".pac"          =>      "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig",
      ".swf"          =>      "application/x-shockwave-flash",
      ".tar.gz"       =>      "application/x-tgz",
      ".tgz"          =>      "application/x-tgz",
      ".tar"          =>      "application/x-tar",
      ".zip"          =>      "application/zip",
      ".mp3"          =>      "audio/mpeg",
      ".m3u"          =>      "audio/x-mpegurl",
      ".wma"          =>      "audio/x-ms-wma",
      ".wax"          =>      "audio/x-ms-wax",
      ".ogg"          =>      "application/ogg",
      ".wav"          =>      "audio/x-wav",
      ".gif"          =>      "image/gif",
      ".jar"          =>      "application/x-java-archive",
      ".jpg"          =>      "image/jpeg",
      ".jpeg"         =>      "image/jpeg",
      ".png"          =>      "image/png",
      ".xbm"          =>      "image/x-xbitmap",
      ".xpm"          =>      "image/x-xpixmap",
      ".xwd"          =>      "image/x-xwindowdump",
      ".css"          =>      "text/css",
      ".html"         =>      "text/html",
      ".htm"          =>      "text/html",
      ".js"           =>      "text/javascript",
      ".asc"          =>      "text/plain",
      ".c"            =>      "text/plain",
      ".cpp"          =>      "text/plain",
      ".log"          =>      "text/plain",
      ".conf"         =>      "text/plain",
      ".text"         =>      "text/plain",
      ".txt"          =>      "text/plain",
      ".dtd"          =>      "text/xml",
      ".xml"          =>      "text/xml",
      ".mpeg"         =>      "video/mpeg",
      ".mpg"          =>      "video/mpeg",
      ".mov"          =>      "video/quicktime",
      ".qt"           =>      "video/quicktime",
      ".avi"          =>      "video/x-msvideo",
      ".asf"          =>      "video/x-ms-asf",
      ".asx"          =>      "video/x-ms-asf",
      ".wmv"          =>      "video/x-ms-wmv",
      ".bz2"          =>      "application/x-bzip",
      ".tbz"          =>      "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar",
      ".tar.bz2"      =>      "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar",
      # default mime type
      ""              =>      "application/octet-stream",
     )

Next we add the configuration for scgi to connect to rtorrent. Make sure to use the same port as when configuring rtorrent.

scgi.server = ( "/RPC2" =>
    ( "127.0.0.1" =>
        (
            "host" => "127.0.0.1",
            "port" => 5050,
            "check-local" => "disable"
        )
    )
)

And finally the fastcgi settings so lighttpd knows how to deal with php.

fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => ((
                 "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
                 "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket"
)))

Test

At this point, you should be able to test if rtorrent and lighttpd's scgi are working properly using the xmlrpc command to ask rtorrent for a list of functions. ( See https://github.com/rakshasa/rtorrent/wiki/RPC-Setup-XMLRPC#test-and-usage ).

   $ xmlrpc localhost system.listMethods

This should output a log list of methods that can be accessed through rtorrent's scgi interface. If it does not then something may be wrong. If you get error 500 (internal server error), make sure rTorrent is running.

php.ini

We need to make a small change to the open_basedir line in /etc/php/php.ini, to allow rutorrent to access the binaries it needs to run.

   open_basedir = /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/:/usr/bin

The binaries are stat, id, php, curl, gzip. If these are installed somewhere other than /usr/bin, then you may need to append that to the line also.

rutorrent

We will download rutorrent to lighttpd http directory.

   # cd /srv/http
   # wget https://github.com/Novik/ruTorrent/archive/v3.9.tar.gz
   # tar xvfx rutorrent-3.9.tar.gz
   # mv ruTorrent-3.9/ rutorrent/
   # chown -R http rutorrent/
   # rm rutorrent-3.9.tar.gz

These should download and extract rutorrent to /srv/http. You may need to change rutorrent-3.6 to the desired version from the rutorrent website.

rutorrent's config files are in /srv/http/rutorrent/conf/.

We need to edit /srv/http/rutorrent/conf/config.php, and change the port to the one we used in rtorrent and lighttpd.

$scgi_port = 5050;
$scgi_host = "127.0.0.1";

Change the owner of the rutorrent to http (the user that lighttpd runs as by default).

# chown -R http rutorrent

Testing

rutorrent should now be set up.

Start rtorrent, and restart lighttpd if you have not done so since changing the configuration.

You should now be able to access the rutorrent interface on localhost or 127.0.0.1 on port 80 (assuming you did not change the default port for lighttpd).

http://localhost

Plugins

To install plugins for rutorrent, download the archive of the plugin you want and extract to rutorrent's plugin directory.

/srv/http/rutorrent/plugins

Plugins can be found on the rutorrent website: https://code.google.com/p/rutorrent/wiki/Plugins

SSL and authentication

User authentication

Detailed information on the different authentication methods can be found here: https://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/1/wiki/Docs_ModAuth

In this example we will digest authentication with htdigest method.

In your lighttpd directory, we will create a file called "lighttpd-htdigest.user" or some other filename of your choice to hold the passwords.

For htdigest, the format of the lines is:

username:Realm:hash

Username is your desired username, Realm is a name you chose to give to the access level. Hash is an md5sum of a string that looks like:

username:Realm:password

So your actual password is not stored in the file, it just contributes to the md5sum.

So using username: 'tom', Realm: 'rtorrent' and password: 'secret_pass', we can obtain the hash by running:

   $ echo -n "tom:rtorrent:secret_pass" | md5sum | cut -b -32
   6a4aaa1091eb2d1d025bbd692dee3f0c

-n tells echo not to print a newline, the cut command takes just the first 32 bytes so we do not get the dash at the end.

So now save the hash in a variable by running:

   $ hash=$(echo -n "tom:rtorrent:secret_pass" | md5sum | cut -b -32)
   $ echo $hash
   6a4aaa1091eb2d1d025bbd692dee3f0c

Now save it to our password file:

# echo "tom:rtorrent:$hash" > /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-htdigest.user

You can use any file name you like, just add the same file to lighttpd.conf.

If root as owner of this file does not work, try http:

# chown http /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-htdigest.user
# chmod 400 /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-htdigest.user

Now we will change /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf to tell it to use this password file for anytime rutorrent is accessed.

Add the following lines:

   server.modules += ( "mod_auth" )
   auth.debug = 0
   auth.backend = "htdigest"
   auth.backend.htdigest.userfile = "/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd-htdigest.user"

   auth.require = ( "/rutorrent/" => (
                    "method"  => "digest",
                    "realm"   => "rtorrent",
                    "require" => "valid-user"
                  ))

Restart lighttpd, and it should now require you to enter your username and password when you reload rutorrent.

# systemctl restart lighttpd

SSL

See Lighttpd#Enabling https via SSL. The following resources can help you add ssl to lighttpd [1][2].

If you just want to get it working, the following commands should work.

Create pem file:

   sudo mkdir /etc/lighttpd/certs
   sudo openssl req -new -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/lighttpd/certs/lighttpd.pem -out /etc/lighttpd/certs/lighttpd.pem -days 730 -nodes

Then add the following lines to /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf (remove '#' comments if you still want plain http enabled:

   #$SERVER["socket"] == ":443" {
        ssl.engine = "enable"
        ssl.pemfile = "/etc/lighttpd/certs/lighttpd.pem"
   #}

And change this line from 80 to 443 (if you only want ssl enabled):

   server.port     = 443

Then https should work, and depending on what you changed, http may not work anymore.

Note: This cert is not signed by a Certificate Authority, so you will have to add an exception in firefox.

Troubleshooting

For problems with rutorrent or lighttpd, the best place to check first is probably the lighttpd log files, in /var/log/lighttpd/. Particularly error.log.

   $ tail /var/log/lighttpd/error.log

See also

• https://github.com/Novik/ruTorrent/wiki
• https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/configuring.html