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Yesterday one of my friends asked me, if there is some torrent client, that runs on the command-line.

I have no answer for him, but I think that you have it.

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Why do you want a cli torrent client? Do you just prefer cli? Do you need it for a headless server? Do you need to pass it commands via bash script? – djeikyb Mar 11 '11 at 11:32

8 Answers

up vote 23 down vote accepted

Deluge

It is controllable by GUI, Web, and Console. Install Deluge.

To setup remote access to a deluge server see the Thinclient guide.

deluge-consoleInstall Deluge

deluge-console

deluge-gtkInstall Deluge

standard deluge gtk ui

deluge-webInstall Deluge (http://localhost:8112)

deluge web ui

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+1 for downloading ubuntu iso's !! – HackToHell Jan 9 at 15:25
up vote 11 down vote

I think the default torrent client transmission itself has a cli interface and can be installed with

sudo apt-get install transmission-cli

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1  
Another vote for transmission. In daemon mode, you can control an already-running instance of transmission to add/removetorrents, check on status, etc. – barrycarter Mar 11 '11 at 14:11
up vote 6 down vote

I use rtorrent on a headless server to serve Debian and Ubuntu ISOs, works quite well and can saturate my network link. Dependencies and memory usage are minimal.

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+1, rtorrent is very good for this. – poolie Mar 24 '11 at 22:41
up vote 4 down vote

Yes. I use ctorrent as my primary client. Usually from within tmux.

sudo apt-get install ctorrent
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up vote 2 down vote

I was looking for a torrent client for ubuntu server a few weeks ago.I didn't found anything interesting but µTorrent server.It runs a web interface which can be accessible from serveraddress:8000/gui.

Here is a screenshot of the web interface:

enter image description here

It can be downloaded from http://www.utorrent.com/downloads/linux

Configuration manual is included in the downloaded package (You wont install it.Only configure it and run the executable when you want to use it.).Be aware that this is a alpha version and it may have some problems.They say this version is only for 32bit linux but I used it on my 64bit server and I didn't experienced any problems.

Another option is rtorrent, a CLI application.It's not user-friendly and I had problems with different torrent files.You can install it from repositories:

sudo apt-get install rtorrent
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2  
rtorrent is well documented and if follow manual carefully it is easy to use. It is very lightweight with minimal dependencies. It can be extensively configured. And does not require to have web server what was very important for me – Osis Mar 11 '11 at 9:07
I only said it's not user friendly.Many CLI apps are easy to use without following manuals.Besides I couldn't download with different torrent file from different providers (piratebay for example).µTorrent worked better. – Pedram Mar 11 '11 at 9:22
up vote 2 down vote

aria2 (sf.net) is a multi-protocol & multi-source, cross platform download utility. The supported protocols are HTTP(S), FTP, BitTorrent, Metalink. It can download a file from multiple sources/protocols and tries to utilize your maximum download bandwidth.

sudo apt-get install aria2

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/aria2/wiki/UsageExample#BitTorrentDownload

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up vote 1 down vote

There are some torrent clients that you can run on a headless server. I dunno if you can control them via console, but the following clients are controllable via web interface:

  • torrentflux
  • deluge

Torrentflux is available in the Ubuntu repositories, but I think in a quite outdated version now.

Deluge can be obtained from the getdeb repositories. It also has a GUI client software that you could run from your desktop and connect to the "headless client" running on your server to control it.

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up vote -1 down vote

Or you could run deluge (my favorite) as a daemon and access it through Web Interface or or remote apps (eg. Transdroid on Android).

http://linuxblog.avserver.info/install-deluge-with-webui-on-ubuntu-1204-precise-pangolin-server/

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