How To Install rTorrent
rTorrent - What you will need:
- Copy of rTorrent compiled for Intel OS X.
- An AppleTV set up with SSH access.
- Patience, padawan.
Here is how to install!
As with anything in Unix, there's usually a few ways to do things. Clearly things will differ if you have your own username set up on the AppleTV, if you set up a different sshd, if you used a pre-authorized key, and so on. I will center this on how-to from a relatively stock OS X perspective. First, unarchive the file on your local machine, and use scp (or your favorite ftp or sftp client, such as Cyberduck on OS X, or FileZilla on Windows - see their instructions) to transfer them to your AppleTV. In the following examples, replace 192.168.0.5 with whatever your AppleTV's address is. On OS X, open up Terminal.app and do:
scp -1r rtorrent-0.7.4-osx frontrow@192.168.0.5:
Now, log in to your AppleTV with SSH:
ssh frontrow@192.168.0.5
Once you're in, do:
cd rtorrent-0.7.4-osx sudo ./installme
Environment
Now you may create a file called .profile in your home directory, either by using nano and pasting the following, or just do:
echo export PATH="/bin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin" > ~/.profile
CAUTION! This will erase the previous contents of your ~/.profile file, if one already existed!
There is also a more global way of doing this, if you set up your path in the file /etc/profile
Now just run rtorrent, or better yet, screen rtorrent and you have a text-mode BitTorrent client on your AppleTV! What's more convenient than that! The basics of using screen is to type Ctrl+A then Ctrl+D and you can exit out of things, but leave rTorrent running. Next time you need to access it, SSH back in to your AppleTV and type screen -rd and boom!
Resources
rTorrent site - Read the man page and the common tasks!
Where to get rTorrent for AppleTV - I think this will work on MacBook (Pro) and Mac Minis as well. Someone please let me know if you have tried.
