RTorrent 0.8.4

The Debian rtorrent package was upgraded to version 0.8.4 which has a few incompatibilities with the previous package. Since I depend on rtorrent for all my entertainment downloads, I spent some time today making sure there were no problems.

The session file format changed but there is a script, fixSession080-d.py, which will update all the session files to the new version. I only have one session for an extremely large Babylon 5 torrent which I still haven't seeded 1:1 yet so I don't want to lose the current ratio. The script updated the session file without any complaints. You just pass the the session directory (.rtorrent in my case) as an argument:

python fixSession080-d.py .rtorrent

The new version of rtorrent changed the configuration for ratio handling so I also had to update my .rtorrent.rc. My old ratio configuration was:

schedule = ratio,60,60,"stop_on_ratio=100,100M,500"

The stop_on_ratio command no longer exists. The rtorrent wiki page on ratio handling isn't very clear but eventually I came up with this replacement:

ratio.enable=
ratio.min.set=100
ratio.max.set=500
ratio.upload.set=100M

The new rtorrent gives a warning about deprecated configuration commands:

Deprecated on_* commands, use 'system.method.set_key = event.download.{inserted, erased, ...}, , ' instead.

These lines are the culprits:

on_start = lock_torrents,"execute=touch,~/torrents/lock"
on_stop = unlock_torrents,"execute=rm,~/torrents/lock"
on_hash_queued = lock_torrents,"execute=touch,~/torrents/lock"

I haven't figured out the fix for this problem yet, so it is fortunate that it is only a warning for now. Rtorrent's documentation is not the reason I use it. ;-)