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Is there any Linux application (bonus points for being console/headless) that supports Magnet links - like the ones provided now by some famous "bay" for pirate BitTorrent users?

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Magnet links are different? I thought that they were the same as any other torrent, just linked from other trackers... – Kaji Dec 6 '09 at 23:41
Yes. They are trackerless torrents, but require a different way of authenticating than traditional torrents – Diablomarcus Jan 9 '10 at 18:38
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magnet links are not about being trackerless, they are about being .torrent less. You can have a .torrent file that uses the DHT instead of a tracker. magnet links take this one step further and do away with the .torrent file entirely. – user23307 Jan 9 '10 at 20:21
I notice that the "headless" thing was mostly ignored. Did you find an actual solution? Deluge site doesn't mention feeding it magnet links with console- rather than X-based browsers. By now you clearly know that firefox-->vuze works for normal usage... – Maggie Jan 18 '12 at 1:20
@Maggie: the accepted answer - rtorrent - is the one that I found the most useful. I run rtorrent on screen (well, actually tmux), and it doesn't require any kind of X environment. – depesz Jan 18 '12 at 12:00

8 Answers

up vote 15 down vote accepted

rtorrent has support for magnet links since v0.8.7 released in october 2010, to load one just hit backspace in rtorrent and paste the magnet info.

The info provided below is 3 years old and outdated.

Maybe the tutorial How To Compile rTorrent From SVN In Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala / Debian 5 Lenny With Magnet Link Support will help you.

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magnets arnt supported till rtorrent 0.8.7 but 0.8.7 doesnt work with rutorrent... – Hayden Thring Jan 19 at 23:36
up vote 7 down vote

Also, Transmission development version 1.80b1 supports magnet links. See changes.

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up vote 5 down vote

Deluge 1.1.9 supports magnet.

Deluge is a full-featured BitTorrent client for Linux, OS X, Unix and Windows. It uses libtorrent in it's backend and features multiple user-interfaces including: GTK+, web and console. It has been designed using the client server model with a daemon process that handles all the bittorrent activity. The Deluge daemon is able to run on headless machines with the user-interfaces being able to connect remotely from any platform.

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Deluge works as a server which has several clients that connect to it, this is specially good for depesz because there are at least 3 clients. One written in GTK, another is web based, and the third runs on the console. – Flávio Amieiro Jan 9 '10 at 20:57
Deluge supports magnet links. It also has headless operation and a WebUI, it is like uTorrent. But you must teach Firefox/Chromium whatever browser you use or xdg-open about how to open Magnet links. – Mavromatis Lozay Jan 18 '12 at 17:35
up vote 2 down vote

Azureus has support for magnet links.

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up vote 2 down vote

The new Transmission version (1.82) accepts Magnet links. It works fine!

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up vote 1 down vote

ktorrent as far as I know supports them

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up vote 1 down vote
  • transmission
  • azureus / vuze
  • rtorrent
  • ktorrent
  • deluge

here's a useful script to enable magnet URLs in firefox and chrome / xdg-open:

http://sam.nipl.net/code/nipl-tools/bin/magnet-enable

e.g.: ./magnet-enable vuze

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up vote -1 down vote

HEADLESS OPERATION WORKS!

The problem we faced lies in the instability of older versions of rtorrent and libtorrent. rtorrent 0.8.9 and libtorrent 0.12.9 are stable and will correctly load magnet links if the magnet link is wrapped as given by the script provided by rtorrent.

As far as I know rtorrent is the only client that can handle magnet links dropped in to the client as easily as torrents.

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