How To Compile Coloured rTorrent From SVN In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat / Debian 6 Squeeze With ruTorrent

Author: Stephan Jau
Revision: v1.0
Last Change: Feb 19, 2011

Introduction

rTorrent is a popular command line based bittorrent client. It provides very powerful features yet it is very light on the system - contrary to other bittorrent clients like Vuze. There are a couple of webinterfaces for it but they are not truly need. SSH access combined with the "screen" program provide you all the tools you need.

In addition to the previous compilation guides of rTorrent, this one will also feature ruTorrent on a force Apache SSL connection with password protection.

This howto works for Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat and for Debian 6 Squeeze. The difference is that commands that contain sudo must be executed as root.

In this howto I assume you download and compile the sources from your ~/svn/rtorrent folder.

1. Remove current rtorrent installation

sudo apt-get remove rtorrent libtorrent*

2. Install necessary packages

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf apache2 automake libtool libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev screen openssl php5 php5-cli libapache2-mod-php5 curl libcppunit-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev subversion php5-cgi libapache2-mod-scgi

3. Create svn folder

mkdir ~/svn

4. Go into the svn folder

cd ~/svn

Current location: /home/USER/svn

5. Get the xmlrpc sources by svn

svn co https://xmlrpc-c.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xmlrpc-c/advanced/ xmlrpc-c

Current xmlrcp reversion is 2090.

6. Go into xmlrpc-c folder

cd xmlrpc-c

Current location: /home/USER/svn/xmlrpc-c

7. Configure xmlrpc-c

./configure --disable-cplusplus

8. Compile xmlrpc-c

make

9. Install xmlrpc-c

sudo make install

10. Create rtorrent folder

mkdir ~/svn/rtorrent

11. Go into rtorrent folder

cd ~/svn/rtorrent

Current location: /home/USER/svn/rtorrent

12. Get the rtorrent sources by svn

svn co svn://rakshasa.no/libtorrent/trunk

Current rtorrent revision is 1191.

13. Go into the trunk folder

cd trunk

Current location: /home/USER/svn/rtorrent/trunk

14. Download the patches

Colour support for rtorrent:

wget http://www.simplylinux.ch/rtorrent/canvas-color_1191.patch

This patch enables you to colorize the rtorrent cli interfaces. It differentiaties between completed/uncompleted torrents and active/inactive ones. I first had to get used to it also but meanwhile I think it's really a good enhancement. The patch was originally supplied here: http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ticket/1382. However that patch does not work with the current rev. anymore. Because of that I fixed it and supply it also from my server.

Torrent Tracker Stats:

wget http://www.simplylinux.ch/rtorrent/trackerinfo.patch

This patch shows the number of seeders/leechers/completed as supplied by the tracker in the tracker view. Often it's not accurate however it's usefull for me to check if a tracker has any peers at all listed for a given torrent.

15. Apply the patches

Colour support for rtorrent:

patch -p0 < canvas-color_1191.patch

Torrent Tracker Stats:

patch -p0 < trackerinfo.patch

16. Get into the libtorrent folder

cd libtorrent

Current location: /home/USER/svn/rtorrent/trunk/libtorrent

17. Run the autogen.sh script

./autogen.sh

18. Configure libtorrent

./configure

19. Compile libtorrent

make

20. Install libtorrent

sudo make install

21. Extend /etc/ld.so.conf

echo "include /usr/local/lib" | sudo tee -a /etc/ld.so.conf

22. Updated ld.so cache

sudo ldconfig

23. Go into the rtorrent folder

cd ../rtorrent

Current location: /home/USER/svn/rtorrent/trunk/rtorrent

24. Run the autogen.sh script

./autogen.sh

25. Configure rtorrent

./configure --with-xmlrpc-c

26. Compile rtorrent

make

27. Install rtorrent

sudo make install