Running a X application as a service? (or headless torrent client with RSS support?)

witnessmenow

Hey Guys,

I have a microserver running Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop

There is a torrent app that does everything I want it to do, qbittorrent, but it is a X application. It has a web interface so once I create a VNC session and launch it, I dont need to go back to the VNC session again unless the server restarts for whatever reason.

qbittorrent has a nox version, but it is not as feature complete as the regular version and doesnt have RSS support, which is the thing I like most about qbittorrent.

I've tried to work around no RSS support by using flashget, but although I managed to set up ok wiht my RSS feed, it doesnt seem to be working great, I often have to add torrents manually from the watched folder and I often am downloading the same torrent twice.

So it seems like with xvfb I can create a fake X server and I can point the display to that with:

env DISPLAY=:0 XAUTHORITY=/home/whoever/.Xauthority /path/to/my/X/program

this seems to work ok, any reason why this wouldnt be a good idea?

Then the next thing, whats the best way of making this run on startup? On startup there will be no users logged in.

Thanks

DeepBlue

If your issue is just RSS then I'd recommend using flexget - http://flexget.com/
There's a bit of learning curve in configuration but it works very well. You just set up a cronjob to call it, say, every 15 minutes and away you go.

witnessmenow

DeepBlue wrote: »

If your issue is just RSS then I'd recommend using flexget - http://flexget.com/
There's a bit of learning curve in configuration but it works very well. You just set up a cronjob to call it, say, every 15 minutes and away you go.

Sorry, typo in my original post, flashget should be flexget!

Flexget seemed to have been doing its job ok, but the watch folder craic didnt seem to be wokring very well on qbitorrent. I had a look at transmission, but I prefer the web interface on qbittorrent

syklops

Sorry I dont understand your problem.

Is it that you want to run qbittorrent on a headless machine and just use the web interface? Because that can be done by following the instructions here

witnessmenow

syklops wrote: »

Sorry I dont understand your problem.

Is it that you want to run qbittorrent on a headless machine and just use the web interface? Because that can be done by following the instructions here

Yeah, I just want to use the web interface.

I mentioned that in the op, I tried it and its not as feature complete as the actual version.

Basically at the moment If I restarted my server I would manually need to log in create a fake display with xvfb, then launch qbittorent to point at that display. Im just wondering can this be done automatically

syklops

Use this script to start xfvb on boot:

#!/bin/bash
#chkconfig: 345 95 50
#description: Starts xvfb on display 99
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "`basename $0` {start|stop}"
exit
fi

case "$1" in
start)
/usr/bin/Xvfb :99 -screen 0 1280x1024x24 &
;;

stop)
killall Xvfb
;;
esac

Then point qbittorrent at display 99 in another startup script.

d31b0y

What functionality are you missing on a headless torrent client?
Have you tried an rtorrent / rutorrent setup? There is some config files to be setup to your liking but I have used it for years now and it's always suited my needs.