Running qBittorrent without X server (WebUI only, systemd service set up, Ubuntu 15.04 or newer)

Introduction

qBittorrent has a feature-rich Web UI allowing users to control qBittorrent remotely. qbittorrent-nox is a version of qBittorrent that only has a WebUI instead of a windowed desktop GUI. This is ideal for headless servers without the X window system such as Ubuntu Server.

This guide will show you how to setup qbittorrent-nox to run as a managed background service (daemon) by setting it up as a systemd service. It can then be customized like any other systemd service, to automatically start on boot, for instance.

Side Note: these instructions are written with Ubuntu in mind but should be much the same if not exactly the same for any modern distro that uses systemd. All instructions assume very basic knowledge of how to use the terminal.

Install qbittorrent-nox

Official qBittorrent packages are available for all mainstream Linux distributions, but distributions may not always contain the latest package versions.

For Ubuntu, it's advisable to install qbittorrent-nox from the official PPAs to get the latest version. Refer to https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/Installing-qBittorrent for more information.

Alternatively, you can always compile from source. Check out the articles under the Compilation section of the Wiki home page for more information.

Create a separate user account (optional - you may want to do this for security depending on your setup)

Create the user that qbittorrent-nox will run under with:

sudo adduser qbtuser

Give it a password when prompted. You may leave every other value blank.

Disable qbtuser account SSH login (optional)

You may also want to disable login for the account (from SSH) for security reasons. The account will still be usable locally:

sudo usermod -s /usr/sbin/nologin qbtuser

This can be reversed if necessary with the command:

sudo usermod -s /bin/bash qbtuser

Initialize qBittorrent

Before we set up qbittorrent-nox to run as a background service, it's advisable to run it once so that we can get some configuration out of the way such as the legal disclaimer.

First, switch to the user that will run qbittorent:

sudo su qbtuser

Then run qbittorrent-nox. It will prompt you to accept the legal disclaimer. You must agree to it in order to proceed.

Then, you should see the following information printed on your terminal:

******** Information ********
To control qBittorrent, access the Web UI at http://localhost:8080
The Web UI administrator user name is: admin
The Web UI administrator password is still the default one: adminadmin
This is a security risk, please consider changing your password from program preferences.

Now is a good time to adjust some qBittorrent settings. Visit the URL mentioned in To control qBittorrent, access the Web UI at... (might be different in your case), and log in with the credentials given. Then you can go to Tools -> Options to change settings such as the WebUI port.

Quit the running qbittorrent-nox process by pressing Ctrl-c on your keyboard:

^CCatching signal: SIGINT
Exiting cleanly

You can now stop impersonating the qbittorent user by executing the exit command or simply pressing Ctrl-d.

Setup the systemd service

If you are not using a very ancient version of qBittorrent, usually a service file will be already installed and it should be located at /usr/lib/systemd/system/qbittorrent-nox@.service
In case the file isn't present on your system, you can create one by copying the contents from here: https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/blob/master/dist/unix/systemd/qbittorrent-nox%40.service.in. Save it and run sudo systemctl daemon-reload to make the service manager aware of it.

• To start the service run: sudo systemctl start qbittorrent-nox@qbtuser
• To let the service start up on boot: sudo systemctl enable qbittorrent-nox@qbtuser

The rest of this section is outdated and it remains here as historical record.

On Ubuntu, system-wide systemd service definition files are located under /etc/systemd/system/ (for other distros it might be a different directory), so we'll create the service definition file for qbittorrent-nox there.

Create a new file, /etc/systemd/system/qbittorrent.service, and edit it with the appropriate permissions and text editor of your choice, for example:

sudoedit /etc/systemd/system/qbittorrent.service

Save the file with the following contents or similar. You may modify them as-needed to better suit your needs:

[Unit]
Description=qBittorrent-nox service
Documentation=man:qbittorrent-nox(1)
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target nss-lookup.target

[Service]
# if you have systemd < 240 (Ubuntu 18.10 and earlier, for example), you probably want to use Type=simple instead
Type=exec
# change user as needed
User=qbtuser
# The -d flag should not be used in this setup
ExecStart=/usr/bin/qbittorrent-nox
# uncomment this for versions of qBittorrent < 4.2.0 to set the maximum number of open files to unlimited
#LimitNOFILE=infinity
# uncomment this to use "Network interface" and/or "Optional IP address to bind to" options
# without this binding will fail and qBittorrent's traffic will go through the default route
# AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_RAW

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then run sudo systemctl daemon-reload to update the service manager.

The qBittorrent service is now ready to be used. To start the service on system boot, refer to the next section.

Controlling the service

• Start the service: sudo systemctl start qbittorrent
• Check service status: systemctl status qbittorrent
• Stop the service: sudo systemctl stop qbittorrent
• Enable it to start up on boot: sudo systemctl enable qbittorrent
• To disable: sudo systemctl disable qbittorrent. It simply disables automatic startup of the qBittorrent service.

Refer to the systemd documentation to know of more operations you can do on services.

Logging

qBittorrent will still log most interesting stuff to its usual logging directory. In this example, this would be /home/qbtuser/.local/share/data/qBittorrent/logs/.

However, some output can probably still be viewed with:

sudo journalctl -u qbittorrent.service

For more information on how to use and customize systemd logging, refer to its documentation.

systemd service dependencies (optional)

Let's say that you've configured qbittorrent-nox to download files to a directory that is in another drive, for example, mounted on /media/user/volume.

It's important that you edit the service created above and add dependencies to systemd service to prevent qBittorrent from writing files on a directory that it should not, in case your drive fails to mount or is accidentally unmounted.

After you added the mount point to the /etc/fstab, it should have a line like this:

UUID=aa-bb-cc /media/volume ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0

The nofail option prevents the system from stopping the boot process in case the drive can't mount on startup.

You should edit /etc/systemd/system/qbittorrent.service to add your volume's systemd name (for example: media-volume.mount) to the line After=network-online.target and add the line BindsTo=media-volume.mount to bind the qbittorrent service to the mount point that you want it to write the files. Your service file should look like this:

# ... other stuff ...

[Unit]
# ...
After=network.target nss-lookup.target media-volume.mount
BindsTo=media-volume.mount

# ...

The media-volume.mount is a systemd convention created dynamically at boot, based on the entries found in /etc/fstab. Conventions such as these are used by systemd to define conditions around services, such as requiring a drive to be mounted before the service will start.

Refer to Systemd.mount reference for further reading. It follows a simple logic: if your drive is mounted on /media/volume, the unit name will be media-volume.mount, if it's on /mnt/disk, the unit will be mnt-disk.mount.

For more complex paths you can use systemd-escape --path:

$ systemd-escape --path /mnt/disk\ with\ spaces-10
mnt-disk\x20with\x20spaces\x2d10

Using this to define the qbittorrent-nox service file, if the drive can't mount when booting or if the drive is unmounted after qbittorrent has been started, it will not allow it to start or force it to stop, preventing from writing when the drive is not ready or present.