Debian Package of the Day

Article submitted by Dmitry E. Oboukhov. Guess what? We still need you to submit good articles about software you like!

Many people use a wonderful bittorrent client: rtorrent. It is an extremely easy and convenient program for servers. However, its Command-Line Interface may scare some.

If you’re already using apache then you may use an external GUI for rtorrent. rtpg-www (RTorrent Perl GUI) is a package package that quite recently appeared in Debian (Sid) and Ubuntu (Jaunty). It will please your nearest and dearest with a nice web interface, as they will be able to run rtorrent without having to touch the dreaded terminal :)

The package comes with an already configured virtual server. In its simplest variant all you need to do is:

1. Answer “yes” on debconf’s question about adding a line to /etc/hosts (only if dpkg asks you medium priority questions)
2. Switch on the scgi module with a2enmod scgi
3. Enable the virtual server in apache: a2ensite rtpg.apache.conf
4. Reload apache to activate the new configuration: invoke-rc.d apache2 reload
5. Add “scgi_port = localhost:5000″ to your ~/.rtorrent.rc

Now, you can go to http://rtpg/ and start using it! With it you can:

• add/delete/view the list of torrents.
• Control torrents’ download priorities, start, and stop them.
• Control torrents’ file-by-file download priorities.
• View the statistics: rating, number of peers, download/upload rate, etc.
• Control the overall download/upload rates (for all torrents).

rtpg supports skins which are easy to add by yourself. For those of you who doesn’t want to get out of the habit of using console there is a cool “Console” skin ;)

So install and enjoy! Good luck!