In the evening I decided to install the 64 bit 3.0 alpha of µTorrent Server on my Dell Vostro 200 ST running Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Earlier this week I had checked if the program would even run on my computer, which it seemed to do without any problems. And today I wanted to install it for real and configure it. Until recently I had been running µTorrent under Wine so a native 64-bit Linux version is very welcome.
I downloaded the Ubuntu 10.10 build from the first post in the µTorrent Server 3.0 alpha build 25376 (for Linux) - x64 thread in the "Announcements (Linux)" forum on the official µTorrent web site.
After a very short download, it's named µTorrent for a very good
reason, I ended up with a file utorrent-server-3.0-ubuntu-25376.x64.tar.gz in my Downloads directory with a MD5 digest of:
5be6a068d42c1b350d69f67f52cc4805Note: if you are on a 32-bit Linux platform use the Download µTorrent page. The rest of the instructions most likely work for the 32-bit version as well.
Programs that I am going to use myself only and are not
going to be available to other users on my computer I prefer
to install into a directory named .local-apps
in my home directory. Hence I installed µTorrent Server as
follows:
mkdir -p ~/.local-apps
tar zxvf utorrent-server-3.0-ubuntu-25376.x64.tar.gz \
-C ~/.local-apps/
cd ~/.local-apps/utorrent-server-v3_0/
ls -al
total 1256
drwxr-xr-x 3 john john 4096 2011-06-11 04:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 john john 4096 2011-07-09 20:18 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 john john 4096 2011-06-11 04:01 docs
-r-xr-xr-x 1 john john 939392 2011-06-11 04:01 utserver
-r--r--r-- 1 john john 322296 2011-06-11 04:01 webui.zip
I created a file utserver.conf inside the utorrent-server-v3_0 directory with the following settings:
dir_active: /home/john/Downloads/active-torrents
dir_completed: /home/john/Downloads/finished-torrents
dir_autoload: /home/john/Downloads/web
dir_autoload_delete: true
admin_name: john
admin_password: *******
bind_port: 56938
I have Firefox configured to save files, including torrent files,
to the web directory. And with this configuration
µTorrent Server will automatically pick those up. Make sure that
the bind_port you specify is open for incoming traffic
on your firewall and router.
If you like to use the same hierarchy as I use you can create these directories in one go as follows:
mkdir -p ~/Downloads/{active-torrents,finished-torrents,web}
and then configure your browser to downloaded files to the
web directory.
The settings above are explained in the µTorrent server
documentation located in the docs sub
directory. I opened the HTML documentation in my browser as
follows (I was still inside the utorrent-server directory):
xdg-open docs/uTorrent_Server.html
In order to start µTorrent Server automatically after login
via "Startup Applications" you have to create a small shell script
that changes the directory to utorrent-server-v3_0 and
then runs utserver. Without the cd the program looks
for its configuration files in your home directory. This script, which
I named utserver.sh is as follows:
#!/bin/sh
cd /home/john/.local-apps/utorrent-server-v3_0
exec ./utserver
I saved this script in the utorrent-server directory and used
chmod +x utserver.sh to make it executable.
Then I clicked "Startup Applications" in the Preferences submenu
of the System menu, clicked the Add button, entered "uTorrent Server"
in the "Name" field, used the "Browse..." button to select the
utserver.sh script (you might have to press Crtl+H to
reveal the hidden .local-apps directory).
If after login µTorrent Server doesn't automatically start up
check the file .xsession-errors in your home directory.
Use the script to start µTorrent Server. There is no need to
cd to the directory first, this should work:
~/.local-apps/utorrent-server-v3_0/utserver.shNote that this is only needed unless you logout now, and log back in. Once you have logged out µTorrent Server should start up automatically if you log back in.
Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/gui/ in your browser and enter your username and password. You should be greeted with the µTorrent Server interface.
Now, when you put a torrent file in the ~/Downloads/web
µTorrent Server must remove the file from the directory and start
downloading.
Note that instead of 127.0.0.1 the IP address of your computer or the hostname of your computer should also work with the above server configuration. Moreover, unless a firewall prevents it you should be able to connect from other computers in your local area network to the µTorrent Server.