Installing libTorrent and rTorrent on Linux Centos
As requested by one of my blog reader, I write this libTorrent and rTorrent installation tutorial 
I’m installing libTorrent and rTorrent on a Xen based VPS with Linux Centos 5.4
From the project’s website:
LibTorrent is a BitTorrent library written in C++ for *nix, with a focus on high performance and good code. The library differentiates itself from other implementations by transfering directly from file pages to the network stack. On high-bandwidth connections it is able to seed at 3 times the speed of the official client.
To install libTorrent and rTorrent first we install the compiler and dependencies required
yum install gcc gcc-c++ m4 make automake libtool pkgconfig perl openssl-devel ncurses-devel
Download curl, libsigc++, libtorrent and rtorrent
wget http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.19.7.tar.gz wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libsigc++/2.2/libsigc++-2.2.4.tar.gz wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/downloads/libtorrent-0.12.5.tar.gz wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/downloads/rtorrent-0.8.5.tar.gz
Extract curl, libsigc++, libtorrent and rtorrent
tar -xvzf curl-7.19.7.tar.gz tar -xvzf libsigc++-2.2.4.tar.gz tar -xvzf libtorrent-0.12.5.tar.gz tar -xvzf rtorrent-0.8.5.tar.gz
Compile curl
cd curl-7.19.7 ./configure make make install
Compile libsigc++
cd libsigc++-2.2.4 ./configure make make install
Compile libtorrent
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig cd libtorrent-0.12.5 rm -f scripts/{libtool,lt*}.m4 ./autogen.sh ./configure make make install
Compile rtorrent
cd rtorrent-0.8.5 rm -f scripts/{libtool,lt*}.m4 ./autogen.sh ./configure make make install
Download rtorrent sample configuration and rename it
wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/export/1105/trunk/rtorrent/doc/rtorrent.rc mv rtorrent.rc .rtorrent.rc
You have to modify the content of .rtorrent.rc file to configure the settings of rTorrent as you needed and place the file into your user directory.
To download from torrent we need the .torrent file, for example to download Centos 5.4 DVD installation I run the command:
rtorrent http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/CentOS/5.4/isos/i386/CentOS-5.4-i386-bin-DVD.torrent
The screenshot of rTorrent downloading file
December 10th, 2009 - 10:18
Nice one. They really need to fix whatever is culpable of the Time Out problem w/ rtorrent off of rpmforge. The sad part is this is the second time in a year I’ve had to troubleshoot problems w/ rtorrent from rpmforge but your quick checklist was accurate on a copy paste level and painless. Thanks again.
December 10th, 2009 - 22:43
EDIT: it’s libcurl that is responsible and not the rtorrent package or rpmforge. Also, your url has helped another person out from the #rtorrent channel on freenode and someone said they were adding your guide to the wiki. Thanks again.
December 10th, 2009 - 22:50
Hi Mike,
I’m happy to be able to help the community
December 14th, 2009 - 04:33
Hi Markus, quick question do the downloaded source and installs of libsigc++ and curl-7.19.7 break CentOS dependencies (i know CentOS has a old version of curl that causes tracker connection errors).
Please excuse my lack of knowledge i am new to dealing with dependencies, how can we make sure the rtorrent only uses our custom curl-7.19.7 and not the system ones (older version 7.15.2)?
Many thanks.
December 14th, 2009 - 16:06
It could be, the version that is installed by Centos’ YUM is curl-7.15.5-2.1.el5_3.5 which is quite old. if there are another softwares in your Centos that using curl too then that software might have some problem.
anyway, you can define the location where you want to install the newest curl, for example:
./configure –prefix=/path/to/curl/tree
I’ll test this kind of installation, i’ll let you know the result.
December 14th, 2009 - 17:14
I checked again, the requirement of rtorrent is libcurl >= 7.15.4 so the one that installed by YUM should be enough to compile rtorrent.
if you still have 7.15.2, you should do ‘yum update’
December 15th, 2009 - 04:12
have a look here: http://markus.revti.com/2009/12/install-rtorrent-using-curl-in-different-path-on-centos-linux/
let me know if there is problem
December 22nd, 2009 - 02:57
Superb, many thanks. Have replied on your other thread. Cheers, Chris
December 24th, 2009 - 13:02
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
I was banging my head all day trying to get rtorrent to work on my centos box, and this finally did the trick! Damn Centos and it’s always “just too out of date to work” packages
February 20th, 2010 - 03:25
No package ‘openssl’ found
Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.
Alternatively, you may set the environment variables OPENSSL_CFLAGS
and OPENSSL_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.
I have installed
openSSL
# wget http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-0.9.8g.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf openssl-0.9.8g.tar.gz
# cd openssl-0.9.8g
# ./Configure gcc
# make
# make install
But still no luck
February 20th, 2010 - 04:09
try run:
yum install openssl-devel
May 12th, 2010 - 02:41
Hi, Great post,
I dont have admin rights so i cant use yum. Do you think you could guide me on how to install openssl devel from source? I have the same problem and installed openssl the same way he did. I would really appreciate it
February 20th, 2010 - 06:26
Hi
Ive been through all the steps and installed fine
everytime i type in rtorrent it says
-bash: rtorrent: command not found
is there any way you could drop me a email
February 21st, 2010 - 07:27
did you compile rtorrent as root?
rtorrent should be installed on: /usr/local/bin/rtorrent if it’s not there then try re-compiling rtorrent again:
cd rtorrent-0.8.5
rm -f scripts/{libtool,lt*}.m4
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
make install
August 1st, 2010 - 21:36
No need to download then move
wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/export/1105/trunk/rtorrent/doc/rtorrent.rc -O ~/.rtorrent.rc
November 27th, 2010 - 21:51
Thanks.. I got stuck up on the PKG_CONFIG_PATH step.. Got away with that with the help of your post :)
December 21st, 2010 - 11:14
Hello, can i ask help how to install webUI too for rTorrent client. The installation setting to connection with rTorrent syntax command. Thanks in advance.
December 21st, 2010 - 15:17
I’ll look into it and try to install
March 12th, 2011 - 18:51
Hey, I’m having a little trouble getting this to work. Maybe I’m doing something wrong in the configuration, but here’s what I get WHEN:
a) I use the command ./configure in the dir libtorrent-0.12.5 after using ./autogen.sh and receiving no errors:
./configure: line 2027: syntax error near unexpected token `build_old_libs,’
./configure: line 2027: ` _LT_DECL(build_old_libs, enable_static, 0,’
(From here I tried out ‘make’)
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
(I found Makefile.am and Makefile.in inside the directory, so I’m not sure why the command isn’t finding it.)
b) I used the command ./configure in the dir rtorrent-0.8.5 after using ./autogen.sh without recieving any errors. The following is the last two lines of what looks like healthy results.
./configure: line 18658: syntax error near unexpected token `TORRENT_ENABLE_DEBUG’
./configure: line 18658 `TORRENT_ENABLE_DEBUG()’
(I also get the same ‘makefile not found’ error as with libtorrent even though the Makefiles are there. What am I doing wrong, and what can I do to fix this problem?)
May 10th, 2011 - 12:38
it seems that the ./configure is failed. a search on google said that is something to do with libtool, so try install or update libtool on your server.
September 8th, 2011 - 08:45
on a freshly installed CentOS 6, this is what i do to get libtorrent and rtorrent compiled:
# yum install gcc vsftpd pkgconfig openssl-devel libsigc++20-devel make gcc-c++ ncurses-devel libcurl-devel libtool xmlrpc-c-devel cppunit-devel pcre-devel bzip2-devel httpd-devel php-devel php-pdo
# export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
then in libtorrent directory, ./autogen.sh, ./configure, make, make install
in rtorrent directory, ./autogen.sh, ./configure –with-xmlrpc-c, make, make install
xmlrpc because i’m using rutorrent.
hope this helps the others.