RTorrent User Guide
Insert stuff about sessions, adding torrents, throttling etc. Anyone feel like writing something? This page really needs to be cleaned up...
See manpage in the meanwhile.
General note about key combinations: ^ means the Ctrl-key. M-x means Meta-x (Usually Alt-x or Esc-x)
Adding and removing torrents
| backspace | Add torrent using an URL or file path. Use tab to view directory content and do auto-complete. Also, wildcards can be used. For example: ~/torrent/* |
| return | Same as backspace, except the torrent remains inactive. (Use ^s to activate)
|
^o | Set new download directory for selected torrent. Only works if torrent has not yet been activated. |
^s | Start download. Runs hash first unless already done. |
^d | Stop an active download, or remove a stopped download. |
^k | Stop and close the files of an active download. |
^r | Initiate hash check of torrent. Without starting to download/upload. |
Note that ^s (and ^q for quit) is often used for terminal control to pause screen output (and ^q to resume). This may interfere with rTorrent. Type stty -a to see whether these have been mapped. To remove the mappings, execute the commands
stty stop undef stty start undef
before running rTorrent (or reattaching to screen) to leave them undefined. You could also replace undef with some other code -- ^p, say. ^d also usually sends end-of-file but ncurses passes this through to rTorrent. stty eof undef if you are worried.
To fix this, you may also toggle the flow control in screen with ^a ^f until screen displays "-flow" in the bottom left corner.
Throttling
| a/s/d | Increase the upload throttle by 1/5/50 KB. |
| z/x/c | Decrease the upload throttle by 1/5/50 KB. |
| A/S/D | Increase the download throttle by 1/5/50 KB. |
| Z/X/C | Decrease the download throttle by 1/5/50 KB. |
Note that all throttling is applied globally and not per torrent.
Common Error Messages
- Could not parse bencoded data
- This message is caused by bad communication with the tracker, often caused by invalid client authentication (passkey, IP address, etc.)
- Could not create download, the input is not a valid torrent
- This message is caused by a corrupted or otherwise non-valid .torrent file. You should redownload the .torrent file or possibly find a new source for it.
Navigating
Global Keys
^q | Initiate shutdown, press again to force the shutdown and skip sending the stop signal to trackers. |
| up/down | Select item. |
| left | Go back to the previous screen. |
Main View Keys
| right | Switch to Download View. |
^r | Initiate hash check of torrent. |
| +/- | Change priority of torrent. |
| l | View log. Exit by pressing the space-bar. |
| 1 | Show all downloads |
| 2 | Show all downloads, ordered by name |
| 3 | Show started downloads |
| 4 | Show stopped downloads |
| 5 | Show complete downloads |
| 6 | Show incomplete downloads |
| 7 | Show hashing downloads |
| 8 | Show seeding downloads |
Download View Keys
| right | Switch to selected view |
| left | Switch to view selection or back to main view |
| 1/2 | Adjust max uploads. |
| 3/4 | Adjust min peers. |
| 5/6 | Adjust max peers. |
| p | Display peer list |
| o | Display torrent info |
| i | Display file list |
| u | Display tracker list |
| t/T | Initiate tracker request. Use capital T to force the request, ignoring the "min interval" set by the tracker. |
Peer list View Keys
| left | Switch to view selection |
| right | Show peer details |
| * | Snub peer (stop uploading to this peer) |
| k | Kick peer (disconnect from peer) |
| B | Ban peer (No unbanning is possible.) 0.8.4+ |
File list View Keys
| left | Switch to view selection |
| right | Show file details |
| space | Change the file priority; applies recursively when done on a directory |
| * | Change the priority of all files |
| / | Collapse directories. While collapsed, press right to expand the selected directory. |
Priority options are blank (standard priority), hig (high priority) and off (not to be downloaded).
Tracker list View Keys
| left | Switch to view selection |
| * | Enable/disable tracker |
| space | Rotate trackers in a group |
Main view window.
The main view window lists all loaded torrents with respective status info. Example of a single torrent:
* ubuntu-5.10-install-i386.iso * Torrent: 161.6 / 617.2 MB Rate: 1.1 / 41.3 KB Uploaded: 5.1 MB [24%] 0d 3:09 [TI R: 0.03] *
Torrent info line explanation
Torrent: 161.6 / 617.2 MB
Amount of downloaded data / total size of torrent.
Rate: 1.1 / 41.3 KB
Upload / download speed rates.
Uploaded: 5.1 MB
Amount of uploaded data.
[24%]
Download ratio. 161.6 MB downloaded makes 24% of the total 617.2 MB. Well, roughly apparently, presumably since some of the downloaded data may have been bad and discarded.
0d 3:09
Estimated completion time. This torrent is expected to be completely downloaded in 0 days, 3 hours and 9 minutes.
T
Present if torrent is tied to a file, blank otherwise.
I
Present if torrent is ignoring commands (such as stop_on_ratio). Toggle with 'I'.
R: 0.03
Share ratio. 5.1 MB uploaded makes 3% of the 161.6 MB already downloaded.
Note that the estimated completion time does not take into account whether you turned off the download of individual files in the torrent. It just relies on the current download speed and total size of the torrent.
Bottom line in GUI shows current info about a lot of things.
Here are a few outlined.
Example of the statusbar:
Throttle U/D: 200/off Rate: 141.6 / 0.0 KiB Listen:<default>:xxxxx Bind: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx [U 3/14] [D 15/0] [H 1/32] [S 6/40/768] [F 4/128]
Bottom line explanation
Throttle U/D: 200/off
These are the current speed settings.
U = upload = outgoing transfer
D = download = incoming transfer
In this case the total upload speed is limited to 200 KB/s. With the D setting to "off" there is no limit on download speed.
See Throttling section for information on how to change the settings.
Rate: 141.6 / 0.0 KiB
These numbers show the current upload/download speeds.
Listen:<default>:xxxxx
This is the ip reported to the tracker. It should be the same as the ip from where you are browsing the tracker.
Bind: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
This is the ip on which libtorrent/rtorrent is running. The external ip if you're behind a NAT.
[D 15/0]
Current number of download slots in use and the maximum (0 if unlimited).
[H 1/32]
Current number of active HTTP requests (for tracker announces and downloads of .torrent files), and the maximum.
[U 3/14]
Current number of upload slots in use, and the maximum, which depends on the global upload rate limit.
[S 6/40/768]
The three numbers represent handshakes/open sockets/max open sockets.
[F 4/128]
The two numbers represent open files/max open files. The library dynamically closes the least used files as needed.
The Peers screen
Some parts of this screen is fairly cryptic, here's explaination of the fields.
Header:
IP UP DOWN PEER C/RE/LO QS DONE REQ SNUB
Example entry:
1.1.1.1 1.1 0.0 20.5 r/ci/un 3/0 32
Explanation
IP
The IP address of the peer. (Which, of course, has nothing to do with DNS)
UP
The rate at which your client is uploading to the peer (KiB/sec).
DOWN
The rate at which your client is downloading from the peer (KiB/sec).
PEER
The download rate (KiB/sec) of this peer for this torrent (reported to your client by the peer client).
C/RE/LO
C = Connection type, can be r, l, R or L.
r = Started remotely, the peer initiated the connection to your client.
l = Started locally, your client initiated the connection to the peer.
R = Started remotely, using encrypted data transfer.
L = Started locally, using encrypted data transfer.
RE = Remote client information, has two parts; the first is u or c and the second is i or n.
c = This peer has choked your client (which means it is not going to send you any pieces for now).
u = Your client is not choked by this peer (unchoked).
i = This peer is interested in downloading from your client.
n = This peer is not interested in downloading from your client.
LO = Local client information, has two parts; the first is u or c and the second is i or n.
c = Your client has choked this peer (which means it is not going to send this peer any pieces for now).
u = Your client is not choking the peer (unchoked).
i = Your client is interested in downloading from this peer.
n = Your client is not interested in downloading from this peer.
QS
Queues Outoing/Incoming pieces. The first is the number of pieces that are queued to be sent to the peer. The second is the number of pieces your client has requested and is waiting for the peer to send.
DONE
What percent this peer has of the file.
REQ
The number of the piece that is currently on the top of the request queue.
SNUB
This field has a * in it when your client is snubbing this peer. When a peer agrees to send you a piece you have requested and then does not send that piece within a certain time your client will snub this peer. It is basically a way for the client to flag that this peer is unreliable and it is better to request pieces from other clients.
Status
A status line in this screen lists information such as:
Peers: 99(1002) Min/Max: 40/100 Uploads: 15 U/I/C/A: 3/71/5/3 Failed: 0
Peers
The amount of peers you are connected and (not connected) to.
The minimum and maximum amount of peers to try to keep connected. Can be toyed with keys 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Uploads
Maximum number of peers to upload to at the same time (given the global upload slots are available). Can be toyed with keys 1 and 2.
U/I/C/A
U = Number of corrently unchoked peers
I = Currently interested peers
C = Complete peers
A = Peers accounted
Failed
Number of failed chunks.
The Chunks seen screen
You see that screen after you press the 'i' key. You got
Chunks seen: [C/A/D 25/29/6.99] X downloaded X missing X queued X downloading
0 EFDFEFFDFE CEFFFFFFFF EFCFCFDDBC 9DFDBDDECF BDDBCEDDFD DEFEEDECFC
60 DBDFEE9BEC FCCBECCFEB FAFDDFCAAD CABCDECDFC 9BFDCDEFAA ADCEFFBBDC
120 FAFFCCBEAC EDFFEDDF9B EDD9DEBDDD C9BCEAFF9C F8FDCDDBFB CFCECFCEDD
180 FFFADCCFAE FB9FBFCCAC BEABBB9FDD ABCECEDFAB DCF9BDDFBD BBEFAE7EED
240 DDCEAFBCF7 EEEFBF9AAD 9FDBCDDEBB DDF79C8FCE EFF9FDFE9A EF9DCCEEBA
C/A/D stands for Complete/Accounted/Distributed copies. Only those peers whose bitfields are accounted for are included above; they do not include seeders, peers with empty bitfields, nor normal peers if there are too many.
Then, you have a view of the chunks of the torrent. The chunks are shown in groups of 10. Each new line begins with the number of the first chunk on that line.
Each chunk is shown by a hexadecimal number (0123456789ABCDEF) which is equal to its rarity among the non-seeders:
- a chunk shown as 0 is not available from non-seeders in the swarm (but all seeders have it of course)
- a chunk shown as 6 is available from 6 non-seeders
- and a chunk shown as F is available from 15 or more peers.
If the chunk is in bold it means you do not have that chunk yet, if it is underlined then it is in the transfer list (i.e. queued to be downloaded), and if the chunk is in reverse, it is currently being downloaded. Otherwise, a normal font indicates that the chunk has already been downloaded and verified as correct by rTorrent.
Session directory
Setting the session option will enable session management and the torrent files for all open downloads will be stored in this directory. When restarting rtorrent all torrents previously open will be restored. Only one instance of rtorrent should be used with each session directory, though at the moment no locking is done. An empty string will disable the session directory.
Watching a directory for torrents
The client may be configured to check a directory for new torrents and load them. Torrents loaded in this manner will be tied to the filename and when the file is deleted the torrent may be stopped or removed. If a torrent which is tied to a file is removed from the client, the tied file will be deleted.
schedule = watch_directory,5,5,load_start=./watch/*.torrent schedule = untied_directory,5,5,stop_untied=
Creating a config file
Trackers
Using the -i <ip> flag or "ip = <ip>" option you may change your ip address that is reported to the tracker. If you have a dynamic ip address then "schedule = ip_tick,0,1800,ip=my_address" may be used to update the ip address every 30 minutes.
The client may spend as much as 60 seconds trying to contact a UDP tracker, so if you are behind a firewall that blocks the reply packets you should tell the client to skip the UDP tracker. Set "use_udp_trackers = no" in your configuration file or in the command line option.
Signal handlers
| SIGINT | Normal shutdown with 5 seconds to send the stopped request to trackers. |
| SIGTERM | Shut down immediately. |
| SIGWINCH | Resize and redraw. |
