Exploding Kitten's Blog

TIL: The `qbittorrent-nox-static` repository

3 min read

Hello there!

qBittorrent - is a nice torrent client based on Qt and libtorrent libraries. The Qt library is a cross-platform UI framework, so, qBittorrent is also cross-platform. But there is a special version, called qbittorrent-nox. It doesn’t have UI and the only option to control this client is WebUI. It’s a good option for servers where the torrent client is running on a server and the end user controls it from the browser on a different machine.

To install qBittorrent, you can download the latest release from the official site or install it from any package manager. But I decided to go a different way build it from the source code and pack it into a docker image (I didn’t know about docker-qbittorrent-nox repository or maybe it didn’t exist at that time). To build qBittorrent, you can use the good old ./configure and make approach or use CMake. So, I created a Dockerfile to build libtorrent as a static library, build qbittorrent and link it statically with libtorrent, other dependencies are installed from Alpine’s package manager.

Here is my old Dockerfile:

FROM alpine:latest as base
RUN apk add --no-cache qt5-qtbase
 
FROM base as base-dev
RUN apk add --no-cache build-base \
                       automake \
                       libtool \
                       boost-dev \
                       qt5-qtbase-dev \
                       qt5-qttools-dev \
                       qt5-qtsvg-dev \
                       zlib-dev \
                       wget
 
ARG LIBTORRENT_VERSION=1.2.19
RUN wget https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/releases/download/v${LIBTORRENT_VERSION}/libtorrent-rasterbar-${LIBTORRENT_VERSION}.tar.gz && \
    tar xf libtorrent-rasterbar-${LIBTORRENT_VERSION}.tar.gz
WORKDIR /libtorrent-rasterbar-${LIBTORRENT_VERSION}
RUN ./configure --disable-debug --disable-shared --enable-encryption --with-libiconv CXXFLAGS="-std=c++17 -mtune=native -march=native" && \
    make -j$(nproc) && \
    make install
 
WORKDIR /
ARG QBITTORRENT_VERSION=4.6.7
RUN wget https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/archive/release-${QBITTORRENT_VERSION}.tar.gz && \
    tar xf release-${QBITTORRENT_VERSION}.tar.gz
WORKDIR /qBittorrent-release-${QBITTORRENT_VERSION}
RUN ./configure --disable-gui CXXFLAGS="-std=c++17 -mtune=native -march=native" LDFLAGS="-l:libtorrent-rasterbar.a" && \
    make -j$(nproc) && \
    make install
 
FROM base as final
 
RUN adduser --disabled-password --no-create-home --shell /bin/sh --ingroup nogroup qbittorrent-user
RUN mkdir -p /config/qBittorrent/ && chown -R qbittorrent-user:nogroup /config/
 
COPY --from=base-dev /usr/local/bin/qbittorrent-nox /usr/local/bin/qbittorrent-nox
 
USER qbittorrent-user
CMD ["qbittorrent-nox", "--profile=/config"]

I knew that the project authors planned to migrate to CMake and remove the old approach in the release qBittorrent 5.0. So, I need to update my scripts. I started to google documentation for it and found this project qbittorrent-nox-static. It’s “a bash script which builds a fully static qbittorent-nox binary with current dependencies to use on any Linux OS”. It required only bash, everything else is installed automatically. So, you just need to run ./qbittorrent-nox-static.sh all (optionally add other options like -o). No more complex scripts, tools, or parameters. Just a single script.

Here is the updated Dockerfile:

FROM alpine:latest as build
RUN apk add --no-cache bash git
RUN git clone --depth 1 --branch release-5.0.0_v2.0.10 --single-branch \
    https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static.git qbittorrent-nox-static
WORKDIR /qbittorrent-nox-static
ENV qbt_qt_version=6
RUN chmod +x ./qbittorrent-nox-static.sh
RUN ./qbittorrent-nox-static.sh -i -o all
 
FROM alpine:latest as final
RUN adduser --disabled-password --no-create-home --shell /bin/sh --ingroup nogroup qbittorrent-user
RUN mkdir -p /config/qBittorrent/ && chown -R qbittorrent-user:nogroup /config/
 
COPY --from=build /qbittorrent-nox-static/qbt-build/completed/qbittorrent-nox /usr/local/bin/qbittorrent-nox
 
USER qbittorrent-user
CMD ["qbittorrent-nox", "--profile=/config"]

In conclusion, building qBittorrent from the source by using qbittorrent-nox-static simplifies this by automating dependency management and building static binaries. The new approach reduces manual steps and makes it a reliable solution for maintaining a headless torrent client.

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