Control Deluge remotely with a thin client

Learn how to configure your Deluge to control it from your local desktop using a thin client.

Updated over a week ago

Introduction

Remote access is one of the greatest features of the Deluge torrent client.

It allows you to manage torrents in Deluge remotely via a local client.

You have to prepare your remote Deluge machine to accept remote connections, so please follow this tutorial carefully.

1. Log in to your Seedbox/VPS

To set up Deluge remote access, we need to configure our remote client first.

Log in via SSH to your Seedbox.

If you are logged in as a root issue this command to switch to the user account.

su - user 

The reason for this is because Deluge is configured for the unprivileged account like user account.

2. Gather required information

We need to find info about our Deluge. If you are using our default configuration, information like username, password, Seedbox IP you can find in our Welcome email, and the default port is set to 58846.

If this is not a case follow those steps to find your details:

  • Find your IP address:

ip a

or

/sbin/ifconfig
  • Find your username:

whoami
  • Use the following command to get Deluge remote port:

sed -rn 's/(.*)"daemon_port": (.*),/\2/p' ~/.config/deluge/core.conf
  • Find your password:

sed -rn "s/$(whoami):(.*):(.*)/\1/p" ~/.config/deluge/auth

3. Configure Deluge remote option

Now you need to do some little tweaks on your VPS/Seedbox. Login remotely via SSH. If you are not sure how, please follow this guide How to Connect to Your Seedbox using SSH.

We need to stop existing Deluge service first:

systemctl stop deluged

Or if you are using our newest template:

systemctl stop deluged@user

If you are logged via SSH as a root account, you need to switch to user account first, or to a user for which Deluge is configured.

su - user

For everything to work properly, we need to allow remote connections.

deluge-console "config -s allow_remote True"
deluge-console "config allow_remote"

💡Note: If you are unable to run the above commands and they are left hanging in the background, then try connecting to your remote desktop and start Deluge GTK, and choose localclient connection:

If this is enabled, you might be getting an error when issuing the next command. Feel free to ignore it.

Now we need to start the Deluge service:

systemctl start deluged

Or if you are using our newest template:

systemctl start deluged@user

4. Setting your Local Deluge client

We need to disable Classic mode. Go to Edit/Preferences and navigate to the Interface tab like on the picture.

5. Adding Remote connection

We need to add an actual remote connection now. After you’ve disabled Classic mode, you need to restart your Deluge client.

The window-like bellow should pop up when you launch it next time.

If not, open a Deluge and navigate to Edit/Connection Manager or press Ctrl + M.

Click on Add button, and add parameters that you’ve obtained in previous steps.

6. Adding host

You need to fill information like on the picture:

Press Add, then Connect. After this step, you should be able to initiate a remote connection with Deluge.

💡 Note: If you are on using the Deluge Windows thin client (version 1.+) on your desktop, you will need to use the older Deluge daemon 1.3 on your seedbox, because it is not compatible with Deluge 2.* daemons.

💡 You can install the Windows Deluge (i.e. 2.+), which matches the seedbox Deluge daemon version (i.e. 2.+) by following this forum thread.

If you're using macOS you can install Deluge v2+ by following our article on this.

I don't know what to do next...

If you need any assistance, let us know by opening a chat in the bottom-right corner of your screen. We're here to help 😄

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