Compiling qBittorrent on Debian and Ubuntu

This how-to will guide you though the compilation of qBittorrent and libtorrent-rasterbar.
This guide is written for Ubuntu/Debian, but the process should be similar for other Linux distributions.

Only follow this guide if you know what you are doing, and this is what you really want.
If you are looking only for the latest version of qBittorrent, just head to the download page and use our PPAs.

Required dependencies

General required dependencies

 sudo apt-get install libboost-dev libboost-system-dev

Qt4 libraries (optional and only if it exists in your distro's repo)

 sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev

Qt5 libraries

 sudo apt-get install qtbase5-dev qttools5-dev-tools

Python (Run time only dependency, for the search engine)

 sudo apt-get install python

Optional dependencies

Geoip Database (For peer country resolution, strongly advised)

 sudo apt-get install geoip-database

Libtorrent

Libtorrent is a library written by Arvid Norberg that qBittorrent depends on. It is necessary to compile and install libtorrent before compiling qBittorrent. If your distro packages at least libtorrent 0.16.19 or 1.0.6 you can install it. Otherwise you'll need to compile it yourself.
If it exists in your distro's repos:

 sudo apt-get install libtorrent-rasterbar-dev

If you have to compile it:
Go to this page and download at least 1.0.6 (tar.gz format). Extract the archive, and enter the folder from a terminal.
First you'll need some extra dependencies to be installed:

 sudo apt-get install libboost-system-dev libssl-dev libgeoip-dev pkg-config

Now you're ready to compile:

 ./configure --disable-debug --prefix=/usr --with-libgeoip=system && make clean && make

if you get a "configure: error: Boost.System library not found.", try:

 ./configure --disable-debug --prefix=/usr --with-libgeoip=system --with-boost-libdir=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu && make clean && make

Then you can install libtorrent using the following commands:

 sudo make uninstall
 sudo make install-strip

For more information on building libtorrent, see libtorrent downloading and building

Compiling qBittorrent (with the GUI)

First, obtain the qBittorrent source code. Either download and extract a .tar archive from Sourceforge or clone this git repo (git clone https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent).
Enter the folder in a new terminal window and run:

 ./configure --prefix=/usr
 make

Note1: If you're using libtorrent-rasterbar from the 0.16.x series, you also need to pass the "--with-libtorrent-rasterbar0.16" option to configure. qBittorrent v3.3.x has dropped the support of libtorrent 0.16.x.
Note2: If you want to compile with qt4 instead of qt5, you also need to pass the "--with-qt4" option to configure.

And finally to install qBittorrent:

 sudo make install

That's it! qBittorrent should now be installed. You can now run qBittorrent using the following command:

 qbittorrent

Compiling qBittorrent (without the GUI; aka qBittorrent-nox aka headless)

First, obtain the qBittorrent source code. Either download and extract a .tar archive from Sourceforge or clone this git repo (git clone https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent).
Enter the folder in a new terminal window and run:

 ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-gui
 make

Note1: If you're using libtorrent-rasterbar from the 0.16.x series, you also need to pass the "--with-libtorrent-rasterbar0.16" option to configure. qBittorrent v3.3.x has dropped the support of libtorrent 0.16.x.
Note2: If you want to compile with qt4 instead of qt5, you also need to pass the "--with-qt4" option to configure.

And finally to install qBittorrent:

 sudo make install

That's it! qBittorrent-nox should now be installed. You can now run qBittorrent-nox using the following command:

 qbittorrent-nox

Since you disabled the graphical user interface, qBittorrent can only be controlled via its Web UI. As a default, you can access it from:

 http://localhost:8080
 Username: admin
 Password: adminadmin

A documentation about running qBittorrent without GUI is available here.

Notes

If you experience any problem with this how to, do not hesitate to contact me at sledgehammer999(at)qbittorrent(dot)org.

qbittorrent/qBittorrent