Install rtorrent

$ yum install rtorrent -y

Make a ~/bin/ directory

$ mkdir ~/bin

This is needed to keep a user copy of the torrent queue script and rssdler for the time being (which I hope to hack and submit for review soon). Please check if ~/bin is in your path or not. It should be there by default.

Make required directories

This is based on my setup, but you can edit it as you want once you get a hang of things.

$ mkdir -p ~/Downloads/torrents/rtorrent_watch ~/Downloads/torrents/rtorrent_completed ~/Downloads/torrents/rtorrent_loading ~/Downloads/torrents/rtorrent_sessions ~/Downloads/torrents/rtorrent_temp/

There are 5 directories above:

1. completed : directory that completed torrent files will be moved to
2. temp : currently downloading torrent files are stored here
3. watch : a watch directory. You place a .torrent in here, and rtorrent automagically loads it (moves it to watchdir after checking queue status)
4. loading : the queue manager uses this directory to keep torrent files. This is also the directory we'll get rssdler to download our torrent files to.
5. sessions : rtorrent session files will be stored here. You can now close rtorrent and resume it later without losing any data.

The rtorrent.rc file

Download my rtorrent.rc file. Place it as ".rtorrent.rc" in ~ (~/.rtorrent.rc). Don't miss the prefix DOT.

I've commented the file, so you can edit it as you like. For more info look up the rtorrent wiki. Make sure the directories match the ones you created above!

The rssdler setup

Download rssdler, copy the rssdler.py file to ~/bin/

$ cp /path/to/rssdler.py ~/bin/rssdler && chmod a+x ~/bin/rssdler

Download my rssdler config file. It needs to be placed as ~/.rssdler/config.txt The file is also commented since it's just an edited version of the sample one. Edit it as you like.

The rtorrentqueuemanager.py setup

Download the source. Open the rtorrentqueuemanager.py file in your favourite text editor and make necessary changes to the directories at the beginning of the file. You will notice it needs a "max_downloads_file". You can place this anywhere you want, I've placed it in my Downloads/torrent/ directory.

echo "2" > ~/Downloads/torrents/max_downloads.txt

Again, make sure that the value you give in the file is what you name the file as etc. If you aren't careful about this, the setup won't work. Place the python script in ~/bin/ and make it executable

cp rtorrentqueuemanager.py ~/bin/ && chmod a+x ~/bin/rtorrentqueuemanager.py

Alright, we're mostly set. If you want the two scripts to run at login, under GNOME head to System>prefs>startup applications and add them there. Add rssdler as "rssdler -d" (daemon mode) and rtorrentqueuemanager.py as "python rtorrentqueuemanager.py &"

Log out, log back in. Check if rssdler is running : "rssdler -s". You can list the downloaded files with "rssdler --list-saved". These files will be downloaded into the loading_dir. When the queuemanager sees less that max_download files in the watch dir, it moves a new one to it, thus implementing queue management. Cool ha!?

I think I've included most of what needs to be done. If you have queries/run into trouble, please ask.