How to install uTorrent Server with WebUI on Ubuntu without Wine

Over the years I’ve tried several torrent clients on my Ubuntu server.
Since it’s an old 1Ghz P4 work horse, I prefer to run things “headless”.

The username used here is “yourname”, replace that with your own user name.
You also might want to check on the utorrent website for an updated version first.

Step 1 – get the uTorrent archive and unpack


$ cd /home/yourname/
$ wget http://download.utorrent.com/linux/utorrent-server-3.0-ubuntu-10.10-27079.tar.gz
$ tar xzf utorrent-server-3.0-ubuntu-10.10-27079.tar.gz


There may be a newer version available since I wrote this guide, please check the utorrent website for this.

Check the unpacked directory with the “ls” command, there should be a folder called “utorrent-server-v3_0”.

Step 2 – create a startup script

The script below is the startup script you need to run utserver automatically on startup.
Credit for the script goes to simonbcn.

Get the script here, and save it as /etc/init.d/utserver

Don’t forget to modify the CHDIR and NAME values in the script!

In our case, the CHDIR would be “/home/yourname/utorrent-server-v3_0” and the USER would be “yourname”

Step 3 – run the script on startup

Make it executable:


$ sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/utserver


Tell your system to run this script on startup:


$ sudo update-rc.d utserver defaults


Try running the executable before you reboot, if you get an error message “libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory” then type in the terminal:


sudo apt-get install libssl0.9.8


Now reboot your system to check if this works.
If all went well, you can access the WebGUI on http://yourserverip:8080/gui from inside your LAN.

The default username/password is admin/(blank)

Step 4 – configure uTorrent

Now next thing to do, is setup the uTorrent Sever in the Preferences window:

You will probably want to set a name, password and your own listening port for the WebGUI.
When you’re done, visit the new page and log in (in my case http://yourserverip:12090/gui).
Then configure the uTorrent Server to your liking!

Make sure your download directories are writable, most common errors have to do with file permissions!