Overview

Introduction

pyrocore is part of the PyroScope family of projects, and offers a collection of tools for the BitTorrent Protocol and especially the rTorrent client. This includes:

• Command Line Tools for automation of common tasks, like metafile creation, and filtering and mass-changing your loaded torrents.
• rTorrent extensions like a rTorrent Queue Manager and statistics (work in progress).
• All this is based on the pyrocore Python package, that you can use to Writing Your Own Scripts for any special needs that aren’t covered by the standard tools.

See the ScreenShotGallery if you want to get a first impression without installing the software.

To get in contact and share your experiences with other users of PyroScope, join the pyroscope-users mailing list or the inofficial ##rtorrent channel on irc.freenode.net.

This is also the way to resolve any problems with or questions about your configuration and software installation. Always look into the Trouble-Shooting Guide as a first measure, which is often the fastest way to get back to a working system. That guide also explains how to efficiently report your problem when you cannot fix it yourself.

Glossary

To help you better understand this manual, here are the definitions of some key concepts used in it.

(download) item

An item loaded into rTorrent.

field

An attribute of a download item, e.g. name, completed, and directory. Most of these you know from rTorrent or ruTorrent, but PyroScope adds some of its own. They are used in conditions to filter items using the rtcontrol tool, and also name the things you want to print to the console when listing items. To get a full list, use the rtcontrol --help-fields command.

metafile

The term metafile means the .torrent file – using ‘torrent’ is avoided intentionally, because it’s often used ambiguously to mean either the metafile or the data of a download item.

XMLRPC

The protocol used to remotely control a running rTorrent process. Note that support for XMLRPC is an option that must be activated when compiling the rTorrent binary, so make sure it’s active in your installation when ‘nothing works’ for you. A quick way to check is calling the following command:

$ ldd $(command which rtorrent) | grep libxmlrpc.so
        libxmlrpc.so.3 => /home/pyroscope/.local/rtorrent/0.9.6-PS-1.0/lib/libxmlrpc.so.3 …

Quick Start Guide

Work through these chapters in order to get the software up and running, and to learn basic concepts of using the command line tools.

• Installation Guide
• Configuration Guide
• User’s Manual

Consult the Trouble-Shooting Guide if anything goes wrong. Reporting an Issue, or Requesting a Feature explains how to provide feedback in case you encounter a serious problem, or are missing a feature.

Warning

If you do a fresh installation of pyrocore in addition to an existing rTorrent one, you will need to follow the instructions to Adding Missing Data to Your rTorrent Session, which fills in some data your already running rTorrent instance is missing otherwise! So do not skip that section.

Further Information & Customization

• Tips & How-Tos highlights some specific use-cases and might give you some inspiration when solving your own problems.
• Using Advanced Features requires some knowledge in the area Linux, Bash, and Python beyond a novice level, but they enable you to customize your setup even further and handle very specific use-cases.
• Custom Python Code tells you about Writing Your Own Scripts as an easy way to automate anything that the standard commands can’t do. There are more ways for adding your own custom logic, amongst them Defining Custom Fields for adding user-defined fields, available in rtcontrol just like built-in ones.
• Software Updates explains how to get newer versions of this software after the initial installation.
• References provides details on technical background topics like XMLRPC, and links into the web with related information.