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Downloading Torrent from the Terminal


Written by Pavs on May 11th, 2008

1) There are quite a few applications in linux that has the ability to download torrent from the terminal. rtorrent is perhaps the most easiest to use and widely configurable out of all of them. To kick off with downloading any torrent file, you simply have to provide the link location of the torrent file, ie. rtorrent <torrent_address>


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rtorrent is highly customizable and and can be configured by editing the configuration file located in ~.rtorrent.rc by default. You can assign rtorrent to load your own custom configuration file using this command: rtorrent -n -o import=~/custom.rc

Some interesting entries you could use in your configuration file; by default rtorrent does not come with a config file.

Saving and resuming download between sessions: session = ~/Download/session

Watch a Directory for new torrent:
schedule = watch_directory,10,10,load_start=~/Download/watch/*.torrent

Move torrents after download is finished:
on_finished = move_complete,”execute=mv,-u,$d.get_base_path=,~/Download/ ;d.set_directory=~/Download/”

Stop torrent upload after reaching upload ration:
schedule = ratio,60,60,”stop_on_ratio=200,50M,300″

For a complete list of option and download check out the rtorrent website: http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/

2) Another light-weight torrent downloader, Transmission, also has a cli version. To download files using transmission you have to provide the location of the downloaded torrent file unlike rtorrent where you could provide the link location of the torrent file. ie, transmissioncli /home/pavs/Desktop/test.torrent


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furthermore you can use custom download and upload speed using -d and -u options. Debian package for transmission-cli can be downloaded from here: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/transmission-cli

3) Third option for command line torrent downloader could be ctorrent, which has been discontinued since 2006, but still does the job for the most part, using the same command as transmissioncli, ie: ctorrent /home/pavs/Desktop/test.torrent

You can find out more about ctorrent from it’s website. http://ctorrent.sourceforge.net/

If you guys know about any other command line torrent downloader let me know.

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