I am looking for a bit torrent client that fullfills my particular needs. I have used several in the past and know what I'm after, but I am so lost in lists of clients and their proported abilities I thought I'd ask advice from people who had actually used them. So, the things I want are:

  • Runs on Linux (not too fussed about distribution, though I current have Fedora)
  • Runs headless, ie I will be installing the OS without a GUI, so command line or web interface is necessary
  • Has scheduling, so I don't p!ss off my housemates downloading when they are in
  • Supports blocklists, I'm a very paranoid man

Thats all I REALLY want, other nice features would be things like moving completed torrents, seeding/removal rules but I can live without them.

So, what do people think?

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needs moderation. – Sorantis Aug 21 '09 at 12:17
You need moderation I think Sorantis. And again, can we avoid downvoting good questions that simply need moving? Makes them look bad once they are moved. – Matthew Scharley Aug 21 '09 at 12:19
Can this be deleted and answers moved to the older, duplicate question? – tnorthcutt Aug 21 '09 at 12:42
Vote for Close. – Sauron Aug 21 '09 at 12:51
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5 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Create A Headless Linux Bittorrent Download Server With Deluge.
Another deluge reference.
Wikipedia Deluge page.
I think it can be controlled to all your needs.

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Those links look promising. I used deluge a while back, but they went through a big code overhaul and lost a lot of functionality as they were implemented as plugins that were no longer compatible. But the person in the second link seems to have done it with a recent version so I'll give it a look. – Andrew Jones Aug 21 '09 at 12:42
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transmission-daemon works great for me. It works headless, has a web gui built-in and there are several remote client applications available.

It allows to set up bandwidth throttling with simple scheduling and supports blocklists.

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I think rtorrent can be configured to meet all your requirements.

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Actually, out-of box rtorrent doesn't have support for block lists, but there is a patch in the works: libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ticket/239 – amphetamachine Feb 25 '10 at 18:02
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I have used btpd, but it's development dropped out for a while, and there are some limitations. It has a command line client.

I just started setting up btg http://btg.berlios.de/, but it should meet your requirements. In the help it has how to set up global limits at certain times of the day. Plus it has web and ncurses clients.

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I've got 2 possible solutions. Firstly you could use b4rt's fork of torrentflux and simply setup a cronjob to adjust the --max_upload_rate and --max_download_rate at certain times of the day via the fluxd daemon.

screenshot

The second is to use utorrent. I think utorrent is the only standard GUI client that fully supports time based bandwidth scheduling, you could run this via a web interface but installing it requires interacting with a GUI (and wine obviously). You could just forward x over ssh for the installation and initial configuration.

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Just to be clear, utorrent is only available for Windows and Mac. – humble coffee Aug 21 '09 at 13:43
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Yeah I should of made it clear that you will only be able to install utorrent on Linux by using WINE. Works perfectly well in my experience. – Lee Aug 21 '09 at 15:22
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