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rTorrent and ruTorrent - troubleshooting

A very important thing which you must understand is that:

* rTorrent is CLI (command line interface) BitTorrent client running in shell

* ruTorrent is WebUI (web-based user interface) for rTorrent, it's not BitTorrent client

ruTorrent is a simple web page that runs in the browser and ruTorrent connects to rTorrent. Thanks to it you can see and manage your rTorrent through your web browser and you don't need to use rTorrent in shell.

ruTorrent can't be restarted because it's a web application and it won't crash, that's why if something is wrong with your account and you can't see your torrents in ruTorrent or access ruTorrent URL, there is a problem with rTorrent, not ruTorrent. Probably rTorrent crashed and ruTorrent can't connect to it, so your content in a web browser can't be served.

If you have a problem with your rTorrent you can restart it from your client area in our manager. Below we describe some useful tips.

The most frequent cause of rtorrent crash is full HDD. rTorrent gets switched off when there is no space on HDD, so you should check it first. it can be done in our manager or via SSH with the following command:
du -sh ~ | awk -F " " '{print $1}'
If the HDD is full, first you need to remove some data, while rTorrent is not working it can be done via FTP, SSH or HTTP.

When you get some free space on your HDD, you can restart rTorrent.

ERROR: could not connect to rTorrent — check if rTorrent is really running

It means that rutorrent can't connect to rtorrent and probably rtorrent crashed.

You can restart rtorrent from your client area or just wait when rtorrent is restarted by the system automatically. The system checks it every 15min and if it's down it will try to start rtorrent. Remember that if you have full HDD space it will fail.

ERROR: ruTorrent stuck on "Loading" spinner

If you have already used Web UI and suddenly such a problem occurs, you must remove cookies in the webbrowser. If that doesn't help, remove temporary files in the webbrowser. If that still doesn't help, check with another web browser. If the problem still exists, open a support ticket and we will ckeck it.

ERROR: Storage error: [File chunk write error: Cannot allocate memory

This error occurs when rTorrent is out of available memory. Usually it happens when you are downloading a few torrents at the same time with high speed up/down. Don't worry, everything is OK. Just let it keep running and when you finish downloading everything will go back to normal. No action is required.

ERROR: Could not parse bencoded data

If you have this error it means rtorrent can't parse the data the tracker(server) sends back to it. In simple terms, rtorrent had difficulty communicating with the tracker(server). The response from the tracker(server) is incomplete or empty. Most often it happens when a tracker(server) is overloaded. There is nothing you can do, just leave it and when rtorrent updates the tracker successfully, the error will disappear.

Checking if rTorrent is running via SSH

If you want to check if your rTorrent is up, you can do this via SSH with the following command:
ps --User $(whoami) | grep rtorrent 
if it returns something like this:
sh-4.2$ ps --User $(whoami) | grep rtorrent
13278 pts/13 00:04:57 rtorrent
rTorrent is up, if you don't get any return it means that rTorrent is off.

Join to existing rTorrent screen session.

First you need to find your rTorrent screen session PID

To do this use this command:
screen -ls | grep rtorrent | awk -F '.' '{print $1}' 
In return you will get your screen PID

Now to reattach the screen session you need to use the following command:
screen -r PID 
Where PID is the return which you get in the last command, so if it was 2761 the command will be:
screen -r 2761 
Also you can just go directly into your rTorrent screen session with the following command:
screen -r $(screen -ls | grep rtorrent | awk -F '.' '{print $1}') 
Now you should see rTorrent if it's running

Detaching rTorrent screen session

If you are in rTorrent screen session you must detach the screen, otherwise if you just exit from the screen it will close rTorrent. You need to have rTorrent running in the background so you need to detach the screen. To do it use ctr+a+d (press and hold ctr and then press a and then d). It will detach rTorrent screen session running in the background.

If you exit from the screen without detaching screen session and consequently rTorrent was closed you can wait when the system starts rTorrent automatically or you can restart rTorrent from your manager. It will start your rTorrent in the screen in the background.

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