courtesy of kardia.
This is a basic guide to getting rtorrent up and running for OS X users. If you’re looking for a client that’s feature rich (i.e. not Transmission), but doesn’t hog resources (i.e. not Azureus) I highly recommend rtorrent. It’s a fairly easy install, but it differs depending on if you are running 10.5 or Tiger or lower.
Fink
The first step is to install Fink (macports is also able to install rtorrent, however, this will not be covered in this tutorial).
If you are running Tiger (10.4) or lower, you can jump down to the section for 10.4 users.
10.5 Users
If you are running Leopard (10.5) then you must compile Fink from source. Download the latest source code from http://www.finkproject.org/download/srcdist.php.
The next part is covered by the INSTALL file in the tarball, so to be brief, open a terminal window and do as follows:
- cd (wherever the tarball was downloaded to)
- tar xvf fink-0.27.8.tar.gz
- cd fink-0.27.8
- ./bootstrap
This will then take you through the install. It will ask you where to install fink, the default is to use /sw for the installation, and this tutorial will assume that Fink was installed to /sw. It will ask you what mirrors to use, the defaults are usually fine, or you can select whatever you want. The only important question it will ask is whether or not to enable the unstable tree. For this select yes and continue with the installation.
Once the script has finished installing there is just one more step. Assuming you have installed Fink to /sw, run:
‘/sw/bin/pathsetup.sh’
This will set your path correctly. Now skip to the Installation section.
10.4 Users
Tiger and below users can install Fink from the binary available on the Fink website. Download the appropriate binary from: http://www.finkproject.org/download/index.en.php. Mount the .dmg file and install using the package installer.
After the installer finishes, you’re done, with the exception of enabling the unstable tree. The Fink FAQ has a good section on this, but it’s pretty simple:
run ‘fink configure’ in a terminal shell and when it asks about the unstable tree says yes to enable it. Next run ‘fink selfupdate’ and ‘fink scanpackages’.
Now you’re done!
Installation
Now that Fink is set up, installing rtorrent should be quite simple.
‘fink install rtorrent’ in a terminal shell\
Let Fink download and compile the necessary files, if you get errors, the output should tell you what you need, (for me it was the right gettext package), run ‘fink selfupdate’ and try again (it may take a few tries).
Assuming everything went fine you’ve now got rtorrent on OSX!
Configuration
You’ll need a configuration file to set things up. The rtorrent homepage has a good example of a .rtorrent.rc file:
http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/browser/trunk/rtorrent/doc/rtorrent.rc?rev=latest
Save that file in your home directory (~/.rtorrent.rc) and uncomment the options you want.
You probably want to make a session directory too (I put mine at ~/.rtorrent).
You are now done! Go to a terminal and type ‘rtorrent’ and add your torrents etc…
Archived by FSFmirror
