ruTorrent is a web frontend for the command line based torrent client “rtorrent”.
It is designed to emulate the look and feel of µTorrent WebUI so it’s appearance is quite similar to the “parent”.
The name “RuTorrent” is the combination of µTorrent and rTorrent. (Seedbox Guide)
Many of our Seedbox clients choose ruTorrent as their favorite client since it’s reliable, convenient and very easy to use.In this tutorial, you will learn how to use ruTorrent and why it’s such a popular client in our niche.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to use ruTorrent and why it’s such a popular client in our niche.
Logging In
- Open your ‘Welcome’ email that contains all credentials for your product.
- Locate URL of your ruTorrent client. It will be in the format like this: 111.222.333.444/rutorrent/
Navigate to this link and you will be prompted for credentials (see screenshot below).
One of the first things to notice is a menu bar. We will also, explain step by step what is the purpose of the every button.
So let’s start explaining what every button do!
This button is for adding torrents.
This particular button will allow us to create new torrents.
“Delete” button. With this button, we can delete single or multiple torrents.
Start” button role is to start downloading/uploading torrent/torrents.
“Pause” button we can use for pausing torrents.
“Stop” button we can use when we want to stop all activity on particular torrent.
“RSS feed” button for creating RSS feeds.
“Autodl-irssi” plugin for monitoring our trackers Announce Channel and to automatically start downloads for you based on our filters.
“Plugins” button
“Settings” button where we can change all of the ruTorrent settings.
“Help” will show us some basic shortcuts.
How to load a torrent?
The torrents can be loaded via two ways, via magnet link or via the .torrent file. We will explain both ways. Click on “Add New Torrent”, and you will get popup window like on picture below:
“Directory” – The path where torrents will be downloaded.
“Label” – If we want to customize our torrent label, we can use this option.
“Torrent file” – If we have downloaded .torrent file, we will use this option to locate that file, and load it.
“Torrent URL” – The URL of magnet link.
After we select ‘Add file’ or ‘Add URL’, our torrent will start downloading just like in picture bellow:
How to create a new torrent?
First, click on “Create New Torrent” button, and the popup window will show, like this:
“Select Source” – Here we can determine a destination where our file is located.
“Trackers” – At this text area, we can add trackers separated by one blank row. Note: When using a private torrent, you can only add one tracker.
“Comment” – We can add an additional comment if we want. This option is not necessary.
“Piece size” – Depending on the size of our file, we can select following options:
Files:
Up to 50MiB: 32KiB piece size (-l 15)
50MiB to 150MiB: 64KiB piece size (-l 16)
150MiB to 350MiB: 128KiB piece size (-l 17)
350MiB to 512MiB: 256KiB piece size (-l 18)
512MiB to 1.0GiB: 512KiB piece size (-l 19)
1.0GiB to 2.0GiB: 1024KiB piece size (-l 20)
2.0GiB and up: 2048KiB piece size, and larger at your discretion. (-l 21)
“Start seeding” checkbox is, also optional if it is selected ruTorrent will automatically start seeding after the torrent is created.
“Create “ as a title says, create a new torrent.
ruTorrent Main dashboard
When you select particular torrent (like on the picture), you can notice down below all info related to that torrent.
You can see many tabs monitored in the real time, General, Files, Trackers, Peers, Speed, Plugins, File Manager, History, Tasks, Traffic, Chunks, Autodl-irssi, Log.
All of that info is very useful to find additional information regarding loaded torrent.
In “General ” tab, we can find info about:
- “Time elapsed” – Showing how much time is elapsed from starting a torrent
- “Downloaded” – Showing how much data is currently being downloaded
- “Download Speed” – Real time speed for downloading current
- “Uploaded” – Showing how much data is uploaded
- “Seeds” -Showing how much seeders are connected currently
- “Peers” – Showing how much peers are connected
- “Tracker” is showing info regarding trackers URL and its Status
- “Save As” – showing a path where our data is downloaded
- “Free disk space” – remaining free space on our HDD
- “Created On” – If we have created our torrent, its time-stamp will be shown here
Files tab
In “Files” tab we can find info about particular files that are included in torrent data.
You can find a size about that particular file, and how much data is remaining to be downloaded.
Trackers tab
“Trackers” tab will show info regarding currently loaded trackers, their name, protocol they use, status, group, how much Seeds/Peers are using that particular tracker, Download status, when is the time of the last update, the interval and information is a tracker private or not.
Peers tab
“Peers” tab is showing a real-time info about connected peers, their country, speed and much more.
This is managed by a plugin called ”show_peers_like_wtorrent”.
Speed tab
“Speed” tab represents real time speeds for downloading/uploading a torrent data.
Plugins tab
“Plugins” tab is pretty self-explanatory. It shows currently loaded plugins for RuTorrent. We can unload particular plugin or enable/disable it.
File manager
“File manager” tab is shown if file manager plugin is loaded. It provides basic navigation for our root directory where torrents are downloaded, usually, a root is our /home/ dir.
History
“History” keeps a track of all torrents downloaded/uploaded for our session. We can be clear it if we select all rows (or via CTRL+A) , and delete it by Right Click/Delete. It is loaded by a plugin named ‘history’.
Tasks
“Tasks” is keeping track for our session, about operations that we had done in the File manager.
Traffic
“Traffic” is showing real time statistic info for a specific tracker, in a shape of a formatted graphic chart.
Autodl_irssi
“autodl_irssi” tab will only be shown if an autodl-irssi plugin is installed and configured. This tab is showing log information about autodl-irssi, and provides basic operations regarding this valuable plugin.
Hint: To learn more about autodl-irrsi, visit our extensive guide: How to use ruTorrent’s autodl-irssi plugin
Log
“Log” tab is the most usable tab for debugging our ruTorrent related errors. It the errors exists, like misconfigured or not working plugins, or if there is an error in communication between rTorrent and ruTorrent, loaded torrents, and everything else, the output will be displayed in this tab.
If we want to clear up those messages, we can click on ‘clear‘ button.
Using a search
Search can significantly reduce your searching time for torrents. You can filter your results by clicking on drop menu (“All in the picture”), and you can choose different torrent sites from where you can narrow your search or select all source for searching.
On the other hand, you can also search for torrents that are stored locally by selecting “Local Torrents”.
Bottom menu bar explained
The Bottom menu bar was added in ruTorrent 3.0. It shows general “total” speed information, and can be used to set the server Throttle level. Also shows remaining space if you have “Plugin Disk space” installed.
Hint: Our best practice is to keep 5% of free space, to prevent your torrent client from freezing.
Should you ever see a warning as shown below, please remove some space by deleting unnecessary torrents.
Left side menu
The left side menu is designed to provide a quick info about loaded torrents. It provides information about the current state of loaded torrents.
“All” – Sum of total loaded torrents
“Downloading” – Total torrents that are currently downloading
“Completed” – Total torrents that have been completed.
“Active” – Sum of torrents that are currently downloading/uploading.
“Inactive” – Status of torrents that are currently stopped.
“Error” – If for example there are torrents with no seeders, it will be marked as an error.
“Labels” – We can label our torrents with a different name, hence to that, labels will be shown here.
“Search” – The results from our most recent search will be displayed here.
“Trackers” – Displays currently loaded trackers.
“Feeds” – If our RSS feed is set up, feeds will be displayed here as well.
And finally, we hope that you found this article useful and that you have all your questions answered. ruTorrent is a great Web-based torrent client that should tend to all your peer-to-peer needs.
Therefore, have a Happy seeding!
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