Getting Started with rTorrent on Ubuntu

rTorrent is a ncurses-based BitTorrent client for Linux. It's a very lightweight client and is available on Ubuntu's universe repository. Just install using the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install rtorrent

To run the client, just type rtorrent from gnome-terminal or press Alt+F2 and key in rtorrent in the resulting window. This will run rTorrent with default settings and save any torrents you load to the current working directory, but often that's not what you want. To customise rTorrent to your needs, you'll need to edit rTorrent's configuration file. By default, this file doesn't exist so you'll need to create one yourself.

$ vim .rcrtorrent.rc

Below are the settings I personally use:

# Global upload/download rate in KiB. 0 for unlimited.
download_rate = 0
upload_rate = 30

# Default download directory
directory = ~/bt-download

# Default session directory
session = ~/.rtorrent/session

# Port range to use for listening
port_range = 49152-65535
port_random = yes

# Watch a directory for new torrents, and stop those that have been
# deleted.
schedule = watch_directory,5,5,load_start=~/.rtorrent/torrents/*.torrent
schedule = untied_directory,5,5,stop_untied=

# rTorrent should try to use UDP trackers
use_udp_trackers = yes

The version of rTorrent available from Ubuntu's universe doesn't yet support encryption, so you'll need to get a more recent version if you think you really need it. It doesn't seem to work in Malaysia, so I personally don't bother with it anymore.

There's more settings available that you can tinker with from the website.

Just remember that not all settings are available in the older client, so some of those settings may not work at all.

With that your rTorrent client should be up 'n running. Happy downloading! ;-)

Update: There's now a "Common rTorrent Tasks for Dummies" available with explanations for various configuration options.