SK3TCHY

This tutorial is geared towards both novice and advanced Linux users who are either thinking about purchasing a VPS or already own one, and want to setup an easy-to-use BitTorrent client that features a great-looking Web interface. Many people who setup a seedbox default to using rTorrent or Deluge, but Transmission is one that’s often overlooked, despite being feature-rich and reliable.

The biggest reason that some choose to use either rTorrent or Deluge is that a Web-based interface has the potential for being more of a security-risk. This, to me, isn’t a major concern, and I’ve never experienced an issue with mine, but for those who do care a lot about security, I’m going to list some tips to ensure your installation is as secure as possible.

Why do I choose Gentoo, and can this guide apply to other distributions? I choose Gentoo because for VPS use, it’s the easiest to use and manage. There’s a caveat that it has to compile everything it installs, but aside from that, getting Transmission, or even other clients like rTorrent, setup, is an easy process. As for this guide being applicable to other distributions… the answer is “maybe”. Most of the steps will work in all distributions, but the setup process will differ in minor ways.

Step One

Log into your VPS account and then reformat your VPS to use Gentoo. The version doesn’t matter, and neither does it matter whether you install a 32-bit or 64-bit version. If you are planning to A) use your VPS also as a webserver, or B) have more than 3GB of RAM installed, then opt for the 64-bit version if it’s available.

Step Two

If in Windows, connect to your VPS through Putty (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/).

If on Linux or Mac, you can use whatever terminal application is available to you.

In Putty, the first screen you will see is Session. From here, type in your VPS’ IP address.

I recommend enabling TCP keepalives as well, to ensure that your SSH connection doesn’t timeout during use. For Linux or Mac, a keepalive option might already be enabled, but to verify, look at the documentation for your particular terminal and find out how to change the value.

Step Three

When finished with the configuration, use the Open button to start a connection to your VPS.

Once the connection has been established, you will need to A) log in as root, B) add a personal user account, C) change that account’s password and OPTIONAL D) update the OS.

The last step is optional as it will take a while to update the OS on most VPS machines. If you don’t mind waiting, or have a faster VPS than most, I’d recommend going through the update process for the sake of added security. Most Linux distributions available for VPS aren’t the most up-to-date, so it’s never a bad idea to make sure you’re current.

Alternatively, you can execute the command ‘emerge –sync ; emerge -uDav world‘ instead, which will display the list of packages to be upgraded. From there, you can cancel the update and look through the list, and manually update any packages that look important (openssh would be considered an important one).

If you chose to upgrade the packages on the system, you will want to run ‘etc-update’ after the process is done. This enables you to update configuration files on the fly, and for the most part, you can apply all changes since this is a new install. The OS will automerge non-significant changes, and for the rest, you can type in ‘-3′ and then ‘y’ + ‘enter’ until all the updates are applied.

Step Four

After a primary user has been created and you (may have) updated your OS, you can install Transmission. Like most Linux distributions that have software repositories, Gentoo doesn’t always have the latest version of any piece of software marked as “stable”. Therefore, if you install Transmission as is, you’re likely to get an older version, and that’s not what I’d recommend as later versions feature additional feature and security fixes.

Before installing Transmission, I recommend searching for the package at Package.Gentoo.org and seeing if there is a newer version available. You can also run ‘emerge -s transmission’ to see which version it would install as stable.

http://packages.gentoo.org/package/net-p2p/transmission

On this page, green = stable, orange = unstable and red = bleeding-edge or unavailable. It’s never recommended to install a red version, but if there are orange versions available, then that’s what you’d want to install.

Installing the Stable Version of Transmission
emerge -av transmission

Installing the Unstable Version of Transmission (Recommended)
32-bit OS:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=”~x86″ emerge -av transmission
or specific version:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=”~x86″ emerge -av =transmission-2.12

64-bit OS:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=”~amd64″ emerge -av transmission
or specific version:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=”~x86″ emerge -av =transmission-2.12

To see whether you are running the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Gentoo, run ‘uname -a’ at the command-prompt. Unless it specifies something akin to x86-64, it’s the 32-bit version.

Once one of the commands above are executed, the OS will first show you which version is going to be installed, and from there, you can type in ‘y’ or ‘yes’ and then enter to install it and its dependencies.

Step Five

With Transmission installed, close your SSH connection and reconnect using the primary user.

Once connected as a non-root user, type in ‘transmission-daemon’. After hitting enter, nothing will happen, but the program will be running in the background (verify by typing in ‘ps ax | grep transmission’). IMPORTANT: Close down transmission-daemon first before editing the configuration file, as your changes will be overwritten otherwise.

In my case, the program is ID 24040, so to close it:

kill 24040

Since the program was started at least once, a configuration file has been created that you must edit. This is located at /home/username/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json. You can edit using the program nano. Open it using ‘nano -w /home/username/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json’.

There are a couple of things to edit here. Here’s a list of the important ones:

“download-dir”: “/home/jackjeckel/Downloads”,

This is the download folder, and can be changed. For the sake of added security, I’d recommend changing it, because if someone does manage to exploit Transmission, it’ll be harder for them to find something when the default folder is changed.

“incomplete-dir”: “/home/jackjeckel/Downloads”,
“incomplete-dir-enabled”: false,

If you want your default download folder to be only for completed downloads, you can change the values here to save incomplete torrents elsewhere.

“peer-limit-global”: 240,
“peer-limit-per-torrent”: 60,

If you are planning to use your seedbox to seed a lot of torrents, these values could be increased accordingly if you believe they will be too limiting.

IMPORTANT SETTING
“rpc-port”: 9091,

This is the port required to connect to the WebInterface. Change it to a similarly high number.

IMPORTANT SETTING
“rpc-authentication-required”: false,
“rpc-password”: “{4ce8feb86766c4793c9213dd281cd1acfc7ef5c0tjSgnTIj”,
“rpc-username”: “”,

You don’t want your Transmission client to be accessible to anyone, so it’s important to create a username and password here, while also enabling the prompt. For the password, just edit the entire string that’s found in between the quotes. Anything you type here will be encrypted to the same hash form next time Transmission is run.

IMPORTANT SETTING
“rpc-whitelist”: “127.0.0.1″,

If you plan to connect to your Transmission client from only one Internet connection, you can change this IP address value to yours (check http://www.ipchicken.com for your IP). But, if your ISP changes your IP address on you often, this isn’t ideal since you will need to log into your VPS via SSH and change the value often. Ideally, a static IP is the way to go, but if that’s not available to you, you can change this value to *.*.*.* which means you can access it from anywhere.

“upload-slots-per-torrent”: 14

To upload to a greater number of people at once on a per-torrent basis, increase this number.

Example Configuration

Changed values have been made bold.

{
“alt-speed-down”: 50,
“alt-speed-enabled”: false,
“alt-speed-time-begin”: 540,
“alt-speed-time-day”: 127,
“alt-speed-time-enabled”: false,
“alt-speed-time-end”: 1020,
“alt-speed-up”: 50,
“bind-address-ipv4″: “0.0.0.0″,
“bind-address-ipv6″: “::”,
“blocklist-enabled”: false,
“blocklist-url”: “http://www.example.com/blocklist“,
“cache-size-mb”: 2,
“dht-enabled”: true,
“download-dir”: “/home/jackjeckel/torrents”,
“encryption”: 1,
“idle-seeding-limit”: 30,
“idle-seeding-limit-enabled”: false,
“incomplete-dir”: “/home/jackjeckel/torrents/incomplete”,
“incomplete-dir-enabled”: true,
“lazy-bitfield-enabled”: true,
“lpd-enabled”: false,
“message-level”: 2,
“open-file-limit”: 32,
“peer-limit-global”: 500,
“peer-limit-per-torrent”: 60,
“peer-port”: 51413,
“peer-port-random-high”: 65535,
“peer-port-random-low”: 49152,
“peer-port-random-on-start”: false,
“peer-socket-tos”: 0,
“pex-enabled”: true,
“port-forwarding-enabled”: true,
“preallocation”: 1,
“ratio-limit”: 2,
“ratio-limit-enabled”: false,
“rename-partial-files”: true,
“rpc-authentication-required”: false,
“rpc-bind-address”: “0.0.0.0″,
“rpc-enabled”: true,
“rpc-password”: “!.super#secret$password”,
“rpc-port”: 6800,
“rpc-username”: “juggalo”,
“rpc-whitelist”: “*.*.*.*”,
“rpc-whitelist-enabled”: true,
“script-torrent-done-enabled”: false,
“script-torrent-done-filename”: “”,
“speed-limit-down”: 100,
“speed-limit-down-enabled”: false,
“speed-limit-up”: 100,
“speed-limit-up-enabled”: false,
“start-added-torrents”: true,
“trash-original-torrent-files”: false,
“umask”: 18,
“upload-slots-per-torrent”: 50
}

Once finished editing the configuration, you can hit Ctrl + X to exit, at which point nano will ask you if you want to save. Type in ‘y’ and then enter to save the changes.

Step Six

It’s time to take Transmission for a spin! With the configuration file all edited, start Transmission again with ‘transmission-daemon’. This will start the service and allow you to connect to it through a browser.

The UI at first might look quite bland, but that’s because there are no torrents!

See how much better it looks when there are a slew of torrents loaded into it? From here, you can begin to add torrents using the “Open” button. If you want to save the torrents to a different folder than default, you can click the small icon to the bottom-left corner and change the default folder there (making sure to change it back again after the torrent has been added).

Happy torrenting!

DropBox is of course an amazing utility. There are endless creative ways to use it to sync different things. Many themes for What.CD are of course hosted on a DropBox. I wrote a quick overview of some fun things for a friend who had just signed up: http://bit.ly/DropBoxtips

This tutorial simply focuses on torrenting & uTorrent.
(The same exact principles apply to any torrent client)

1> Get a Free DropBox account. 2GB is free. (Can add 250 MB for every referral.)
2> In uTorrent: Options > Preferences > Directories

Select: Automatically Load .torrents from & navigate towards your DropBox folder.

You will also need to select where you want the torrents saved to. Select “Always Show Dialog on Manual Add” so you can choose where to save torrents to when you are home.

Also, you can select “Delete Loaded .torrents” to keep you DropBox neat and clean.

3> Download a torrent into your DropBox when you are away from home. (Note: This can be anywhere in your DropBox: does not need to be your public folder)

That’s it!

So in a nutshell:

1.You are away from your home computer & want to DL something so it is ready for you when you get home, it’s a new release and you want to start seeding, you found something you don’t want to forget about, etc. etc.

2. You download a torrent & save it to your DropBox

3. Your home computer constantly scans the DropBox for added torrent files and instantly sees the torrent, adds to uTorrent, and starts downloading to your Default save location, then deletes the torrent file out of your DropBox.

4. Your torrent is waiting for you when you get home!

NOTES:
Do NOT use DropBox as your save location for torrents.

You will likely ultimately want to move your torrents to a different location but you do need to pick a single folder location as there is no way to specify it after you add the .torrent file into you DropBox.

If you don’t have DropBox installed onto the remote computer, you can save the torrent file and use the Web interface or put DropBox on a memory stick (DropBox portable).

Guide changelog
2010-02-20 – v1.0 – First version
2011-09-09 – v1.1 – Added section on installing ruTorrent; updated second screenshot to include System Tools; changed MacPorts download links to a single link to their download repository; removed redundant part about manually installing xmlrpc-c
2011-10-15 – v1.2 – Added a few lines in §4.1 on creating a session directory for rTorrent (so it doesn’t forget your torrents when quitting and restarting)

Disclaimer
This guide is based on my experience with another guide. It’s something of a work in progress and certainly isn’t foolproof. However, nothing should go disastrously wrong if you at least follow the guide correctly. If something doesn’t work for you, post here and I will try to help (but no guarantees that I can offer any). Note also: I’m running Mac OS X 10.6, so if you’re running Lion, Leopard or Tiger then you may need to tweak parts of this guide for it to work.

This guide will (hopefully) allow you to get rTorrent and, if you like, ruTorrent or wTorrent up and running on Mac OS X. rTorrent is a text-based client; it comes with no GUI (though it’s still perfectly usable) but there are various graphical front-ends for it, two of which are ruTorrent and wTorrent. To install rTorrent, we’ll be using MacPorts. This requires the developer tools found on your Mac OS X installation disc.

1. Installing the Developer Tools
If you’ve already installed the Developer Tools, you can skip ahead to section 2

First things first: insert your Mac OS X installation disc into your Mac. Open up the disc in Finder, open the Optional Installs folder and open Xcode.mpkg, like so:

Continue through the installer until you get to the screen that lets you choose what you want to install. Make sure that System Tools and UNIX Dev Support are ticked:

Click Continue and carry on with the installation process. After a (possibly long) while, the Developer Tools should be successfully installed.

2. Installing MacPorts
This is pretty simple, really. Download MacPorts by getting the latest version for your system from here: https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/
Open the .dmg and install MacPorts. There are no options to deal with so no screenshots here.

3. Installing rTorrent
Open up Terminal (if you’ve never used it before, you can find it in the Utilities folder in Applications). To make sure MacPorts is working, issue (that means, type into Terminal and press enter) the following command (throughout this guide, you can copy and paste any commands into Terminal):

port

If MacPorts was installed properly, you should see something like:

MacPorts 2.0.3
Entering interactive mode… (“help” for help, “quit” to quit)
[/your/current/working/directory] >

To leave the interactive mode, issue the command:

quit

We can now install rTorrent. Issue the following command:

sudo port install rtorrent-devel +xmlrpc

It will ask for your password. Type it in (note that it won’t show up as you type it, not even in asterisks or dots; you can still press backspace to delete mistakes though) and press enter. You can now safely go do something else while MacPorts works on downloading and installing rTorrent and all its dependencies. Once it’s finished, you’ll have a working copy of rTorrent! Hurray! You can even start using it right now by issuing the command:

rtorrent

To quit rtorrent, use Ctrl q (i.e. hold down Ctrl and press q). There’s a nicer way to use rTorrent via a program called screen. Issue the following command:

screen rtorrent

It may not look any different to when you issued just ‘rtorrent’ by itself but here’s the clever part: press Ctrl a then d. You should be returned to the command prompt but with the following line above the prompt:

[detached]

screen is a program that effectively lets you create virtual terminals. This is useful because you can now quit Terminal without stopping rTorrent; it will carry on running in the virtual terminal you created, independently of the Terminal app. You can reattach the screen we’ve just made by issuing:

screen -r

This will return you to the screen where rTorrent is running. If you quit rTorrent (Ctrl q), the screen containing rTorrent will also be closed, and you’ll have to issue ‘screen rtorrent’ again to start running it again. At this point, you have a fully functioning text-based BitTorrent client. There are many guides out there describing how to use and configure rTorrent and you can now start making use of them. However, if you’re looking for a nice fancy GUI, read on…

4. Installing a web interface (optional) – pre-installation tweaks
There are various web interfaces that can control rTorrent through a protocol known as XML-RPC. To function, they need web server software. Luckily, Mac OS X comes with Apache, one of the most widely used web server software in the world. However, there is a fair amount of tweaking that needs to be done first (regardless of which interface you wish to use).

4.1 Apache: enabling PHP, installing mod_scgi and other tweaks
Mac OS X’s preinstalled copy of Apache comes with the PHP extension but it’s disabled by default. To enable it, we need to edit a certain text file. At this point, I’m going to assume you have a good text editor like TextMate (paid) or TextWrangler (free). TextEdit has to be constantly told to save files as plain text, and doesn’t have any colour schemes for displaying code, so I don’t recommend using it. The file we’ll be editing is:

/private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

The ‘private’ folder (found at the top level of the drive that Mac OS X is installed to; probably ‘Macintosh HD’) is, as the name suggests, hidden from view in the Finder. However, TextMate and TextWrangler both allow you to see hidden files in their ‘Open’ dialog box. So open the file with one of them and scroll down to line 115. You should see:

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

The ‘#’ at the beginning of the line means the whole line is treated as a comment; Apache will ignore it and so won’t load the php module that we need to run a web interface. To fix this, simply delete the ‘#’ so that the line becomes:

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Save the file (you’ll be prompted for your password) but don’t close it, as we’ll be editing it again soon. We now need to install mod_scgi, an extension that isn’t included with Mac OS X. You can do so by issuing the following commands in Terminal in order:

curl -O http://python.ca/scgi/releases/scgi-1.14.tar.gz

tar xf scgi-1.14.tar.gz

cd scgi-1.14/apache2

sudo apxs -i -c mod_scgi.c

This will install mod_scgi (after which you can delete the files that the above commands just downloaded) but, before Apache can start using it, we need to make one last tweak.
Issue the following commands in order:

cd /usr/sbin

sudo mv ./httpd ./httpd.fat

file ./httpd.fat

You should see that the Apache binary is compiled with support for several architectures. If for example you’re running Snow Leopard on a (64-bit) Intel processor, this will probably be displayed as:

./httpd.fat: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
./httpd.fat (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
./httpd.fat (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
./httpd.fat (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

We need to strip the unneeded parts so that Apache can load the scgi module. Which part you need depends on which architecture you’re on. If you’re on a 64-bit capable processor (Intel Core 2 Duo, i5, i7, etc.), you’ll want x86_64. If you’re on the older 32-bit only capable ones (Intel Core Duo, Core Solo, etc.), you’ll want i386. And if you’re on PowerPC, you’ll want ppc7400. Since my MacBook uses an Intel Core 2 Duo, I issue the following commands in order:

sudo lipo ./httpd.fat -thin x86_64 -output ./httpd.x86_64

sudo ln -s ./httpd.x86_64 ./httpd

file ./httpd.x86_64

If you want to keep i386, replace every instance of ‘x86_64′ in the above with ‘i386′, and similarly for ppc. You should be met with something like:

./httpd.x86_64: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

showing the architecture that you kept.
We can now tell Apache to load the module by editing the file /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf that we edited previously, so open it up again in TextMate/Wrangler. Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘LoadModule’ lines (around line 115) and add this line:

LoadModule scgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_scgi.so

Then, add this line at the bottom of the file:

SCGIMount /RPC2 localhost:5000

This is also a good chance to create a session directory for rTorrent, so issue the following commands in Terminal:

cd

mkdir .session

Then edit line 26 of .rtorrent.rc to tell rTorrent to use this directory ( /Users/username/.session ) as a session directory. In my case, line 26 would read:

session = /Users/Ali/.session

Don’t forget to remove the # at the beginning of the line.

Save the file and quit TextMate/Wrangler. We’re now almost ready to install a web interface. The only thing that remains is to make a certain configuration file for rTorrent.
rTorrent uses a configuration file in your home folder called .rtorrent.rc but there won’t be such a file in your home folder right now. If rTorrent is still running, quit it, as it won’t use the configuration file until it’s been restarted.

You can download an example configuration file from here. Open it up with TextMate/Wrangler and add the following line to the bottom of the file:

scgi_port = localhost:5000

Save the file, then move it to your home folder. Rename it using the Terminal by issuing the following command:

mv rtorrent.rc.txt .rtorrent.rc

We can now install a web interface! Already?! You can now pick which web interface you wish to use. If you have no particular preference, I recommend ruTorrent as it has various plugins available for it and is more regularly updated than wTorrent. You can even download both if you like.

5a.1 Installing ruTorrent
Before doing anything, make sure that rTorrent is running. If you haven’t quit it yet, you can reattach the screen for it by issuing the command:

screen -r

Otherwise you can start it again by issuing the command:

screen rtorrent

Remember that you can detach from this screen by pressing Ctrl a then d.

Now, we need to download ruTorrent to the Sites folder in your home folder and modify its permissions. You can do all this by issuing the following commands in order:

cd ~/Sites

svn co http://rutorrent.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rutorrent

chmod a+rx rutorrent

To start using ruTorrent, we need to start Apache. This is done most easily by opening up System Preferences and enabling ‘Web Sharing’ in the Sharing pane:

Finally, there’s one last thing to install via MacPorts. Issue the following command in Terminal:

sudo port install proctools

When that’s installed, you can run ruTorrent by pointing your web browser to the following address (depending on your username on Mac OS X):

http://localhost/~username/ruTorrent/

In my case, this is:

http://localhost/~Ali/ruTorrent/

You should now be greeted with a working copy of ruTorrent:

Hurray! You might notice a button with an icon of a star in my screenshot that you won’t have at this point. This button is for a plugin that allows ruTorrent to create torrent files. If you don’t want this functionality, you may stop reading now and go off and use ruTorrent like a giddy schoolgirl. Otherwise, keep reading.

5a.2 Installing the create plugin for ruTorrent
To download the create plugin, issue the following commands in Terminal:

cd ~/Sites/rutorrent/plugins

svn co http://rutorrent.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/plugins/create

The create plugin itself can create torrent files but I prefer to just use it as a frontend for another little program called mktorrent, which works a bit better. You can install it using MacPorts with the following command:

sudo port install mktorrent

Now go to the ruTorrent folder (in your home folder’s Sites folder). Open up the plugins folder, then the create folder. In there is a file called conf.php which we need to edit, so open it up with TextMate/Wrangler. Edit the first part of line 6 so that it reads:

$useExternal = ‘mktorrent’;

Then edit the first part of line 12 so that it reads:

$pathToCreatetorrent = ‘/opt/local/bin/mktorrent’;

Now save the file and close it. If you open up ruTorrent now, you’ll be able to see the star icon button for the create plugin. If you click it, you’ll see a box that allows you to specify the path of the folder/file you want to create a torrent out of (plus other options). Specifying the full path of something can be a bit of a pain though, so let’s install the _getdir plugin.

5a.3 Installing the _getdir plugin for ruTorrent
To download the _getdir plugin, issue the following commands in Terminal:

cd ~/Sites/rutorrent/plugins

svn co http://rutorrent.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/plugins/_getdir

This plugin doesn’t require any configuring but you might have to modify the permissions of rTorrent’s download directory. I’ve configured rTorrent to download stuff to the Downloads folder in my home folder. You can specify this in the .rtorrent.rc file in your home folder that we created earlier; you’ll need to use TextMate/Wrangler to open the file as it’s hidden in the Finder. The part you need to edit in the .rtorrent.rc file is the following:

# Default directory to save the downloaded torrents.
directory = /Users/Ali/Downloads/

You’ll notice I’ve removed the # at the beginning of the second line (this makes the option enabled) and specified the path of the folder I want rTorrent to download stuff to. If you’re unsure of a folder’s path, you can find out what it is by simply dragging and dropping that folder onto a Terminal window. When you do so, the path of the folder will appear in Terminal, which you can copy & paste into the .rtorrent.rc file.

This is the folder we also need to modify permissions for. You can do this by issuing the following command in Terminal (depending on the path of your download folder for rTorrent):

chmod a+rx path/of/rTorrent/download/folder

In my case, this is:

chmod a+rx ~/Downloads

Once you’ve done this, the create plugin will allow you to choose files/folders by clicking on the small box shown below:

You can go ‘up’ a folder in this box by double-clicking on /.. although you should note that it will only display folders for which it has permission to. If there’s a folder you want to pick with it that isn’t showing up, just modify the permissions for that folder in the same way that we did before, i.e. issue the following type of command:

chmod a+rx path/of/folder

Congrats, you now have a functioning copy of ruTorrent that can even create torrent files! Feel free to explore the other plugins available for ruTorrent if you so wish (see the list at the bottom of this page) but you’ll have to support yourself in using them as I don’t use any other plugins myself.

5b.1 Installing wTorrent
Before doing anything, make sure that rTorrent is running. If you haven’t quit it yet, you can reattach the screen for it by issuing the command:

screen -r

Otherwise you can start it again by issuing the command:

screen rtorrent

Remember that you can detach from this screen by pressing Ctrl a then d.

Now, we need to download wTorrent to the Sites folder in your home folder and modify its permissions. You can do all this by issuing the following commands in order:
cd ~/Sites

svn co svn://wtorrent-project.org/repos/trunk/wtorrent/

chmod a+rx wtorrent

To properly install (and start using) wTorrent, we need to start Apache. This is done most easily by opening up System Preferences and enabling ‘Web Sharing’ in the Sharing pane.

To install wTorrent, you can now point your web browser to the installation file. This is done by entering the following in your browser’s address bar:

http://localhost/~username/wtorrent/install.php

In my case, this is:

http://localhost/~Ali/wtorrent/install.php

You’ll probably find a webpage full of many errors that begin ‘Deprecated: Assigning the return value…’ but if you scroll to the bottom you should see the installation form:

The only thing that needs changing here is the field ‘Default folder to save torrent data’. Change it to the path of the folder you want things to be downloaded to. For example, if you want things to download to the Downloads folder in your home folder, you’d put:

~/Downloads

You also need to enter a username and password under ‘Set wTorrent login’ (not the rTorrent scgi user and password fields). These will have to be entered when you try and open wTorrent, so it’s a layer of security to stop people controlling your torrent client just by knowing your IP address. Once you’ve done that, click the ‘Try configuration’ button and hopefully you’ll get the message “Configuration seems fine, you can save it now.” Do as it suggests and click the ‘Save configuration’ button. You’ll get the message “Configuration file and database created, enjoy wTorrent and don’t forget to delete install.php.” As it suggests, you’ll want to delete the installation file we just used (namely ~/Sites/wtorrent/install.php). Once that’s done, you can start wTorrent. Just point your browser to (note the tilde before “username”; it’s a ~, not a -):

http://localhost/~username/wtorrent/

In my case, this is:

http://localhost/~Ali/wtorrent/

You should now be at the main page of the wTorret interface and can start using it.

5b.2 The ‘Deprecated’ errors
These errors seem to be due to SimplePie, an Atom and RSS parser. Presumably this is what wTorrent uses to handle Atom and RSS feeds. If you’re not in need of this feature, you can effectively disable SimplePie which will get rid of the ‘Deprecated’ errors but will probably break wTorrent’s ability to accept Atom and RSS feeds. Here’s how you do it: in your wTorrent folder open up the file lib/inc/includes.inc.php with TextMate/Wrangler. You should see this as line 32:

require_once( ‘lib/simplepie/simplepie.inc.php’ );

Simply add two forward slashes at the beginning of this line to comment it out:

//require_once( ‘lib/simplepie/simplepie.inc.php’ );

Save the file and refresh wTorrent. All the nasty errors should now have disappeared