Login to your Centos 6 server and run the following commands to get the pre-requisite packages required for rtorrent:

• yum install gcc gcc-c++ curl curl-devel m4 automake perl openssl-devel libtool
• yum install ncurses ncurses-devel
• yum install screen
  (used later on to keep a copy of rtorrent open in the background)
   
• yum install wget
  (This isn't strictly required, but it does come in handy for downloading the packages!) 

There are a few packages that we can't get through yum, so we'll install them manually. Throughout these steps I assume a Prefix-directory of /usr because I want my software going to /usr/bin, /usr/lib, etc...

• Install libsigc++
• Can be downloaded from their download page
• Run the following commands to Install (assumes that the file has been downloaded and decompressed)
• ./configure --prefix=/usr
• make
• sudo make install
  
  Fairly straight-forward stuff
   
• Configure libsigc++ to be accessible & Usable by the libTorrent install (see further down). I ran the following pkg-config commands to make this work:
• updatedb
• locate pkgconfig | grep sigc++-2.0.pc
  
• Take the directory that was output by the grep command and use it to set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable:
  
  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib64/pkgconfig    (this is the path from my system, YMMV)
  
  
• Copy the sigc++-2.0.pc file from /usr/lib/pkgconfig to /usr/lib64/pkgconfig
• On my system this was necessary to get libtorrent to compile:
  
  cp /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/sigc++-2.0.pc /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/sigc++-2.0.pc
   
  (YMMV) 
   
• Install libtorrent
• Can be downloaded from their download site
• Decompress & run through the familiar make process:
• ./configure --prefix=/usr
• make
• sudo make install
   
• Configure libtorrent to be available when rTorrent is compiled. I ran the following pkg-config commands to make this work:
  • updatedb
  • locate pkgconfig | grep libtorrent.pc
  • Take the directory that was output by the grep command and use it to set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable:
    
    export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib64/pkgconfig    (this is the path from my system, YMMV)
    
    Note: exporting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable is redundand if you did this when installing libsigc++ 

• Copy the libtorrent.pc file from /usr/lib/pkgconfig to /usr/lib64/pkgconfig
• On my system this was necessary to get rtorrent to compile:
  
  cp /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/libtorrent.pc /usr/lib64/pkgconfig/libtorrent.pc
  
  (YMMV)

 

 

Install & Configure rTorrent

If you have made it through the above process without any build errors you should be in good shape to compile rTorrent:

• rTorrent can be downloaded from the download page
• Decompress & run through the typical make process:
• ./configure --prefix=/usr
• make
• sudo make install
  
  If all goes well you should be able to type which rtorrent and see a result
   

Before you can run rTorrent it needs to be configured. Fortunately the developers have put together a sample configuration file which can be downloaded from their website:

• Download the config file
• Place it in your user's home directory and rename it to .rtorrent.rc
• Edit the configuration file to your liking. It is well-commented, so it should be fairly straight forward to alter. For some 'help' you can see this blog post [kmandla.wordpress.com]
   
• I configured my profile to:
• Watch a certain folder for torrents and start downloading new ones as they appear
  
  

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

   
• Limit the uploading rate of the torrent client (since rtorrent needs to be on all the time)
  
  

  # Global upload and download rate in KiB. "0" for unlimited.
  #download_rate = 0
  upload_rate = 50

   
• Limit how much the torrent client seeds (Primary purpose is download)
  
  

  # Stop torrents when reaching upload ratio in percent,
  # when also reaching total upload in bytes, or when
  # reaching final upload ratio in percent.
  # example: stop at ratio 2.0 with at least 200 MB uploaded, or else ratio 20.0
  #schedule = ratio,10,10,"stop_on_ratio=20,1M,10"
  schedule = ratio,10,10,"stop_on_ratio=30,400M,600"

  
   
• Set a downloads folder where completed files should go
  
  # Default directory to save the downloaded torrents.
  directory = /shared/downloads 

Run rTorrent

At this point rTorrent should be ready to run! I installed GNU Screen to allow me to start it and leave it running in the back-ground. From what I can tell, rTorrent doesn't run as a service. Maybe later on I'll take libTorrent and create a background-service torrent daemon. For now, screen quickly gets me where I want to go by typing these commands:

• screen     (Starts a new terminal session in screen)
• rtorrent     (starts rTorrent in the screen session
• Ctrl-a, d    (Disconnects from the screen session while leaving rtorrent running)
  
  Note: Press Ctrl-a then release the keys and press d to disconnect

If I want to observe how rtorrent is doing I can re-connect to screen:

 

 

This makes it really simple to keep rtorrent running after I close my ssh window. For some other quick help commands, see this quick reference guide [aperiodic.net]. Screen can have more than one session open- it is a powerful tool which I'm only using superficially in my project.