Diagnosing RTorrent Problems

First, some obvious checking:
 * Have you filled the disk? Have free space? (df -h)
 * Is the lock file preventing it from starting (ls ~/.session/*lock)
 * Installed anything that took over your rTorrent ports? (netstat -tulpn)
 * You recently download any dodgy public torrent that has hung rtorrent? ( ps -edf |grep rtorrent)
 * Checked for errors in syslog? (tail -50 /var/logs/syslog)
 * Tried reboot to insure nothing is lingering around? (sudo reboot)

If none of those things, Rtorrent debugging 101:

First make sure rtorrent is not running (sudo killall rtorrent) then from the shell, as you, from your home directory, run:

If something systematic, it will crash in front of you, and tell you why. Might be a little cryptic, like a core dump.

Core dump probably means bad disk. Can check by:

Other errors tend to be more parsable, like permission denied, .rtorrent.rc not found, etc

If you are unable to get the direct answer, the next step is to [|enable logging in rtorrent].

Add the following to .rtorrent.rc

Then restart rtorrent ( commonly sudo service rtorrent restart)

If and when it crashes, you can get some clue why in the logfile, /var/log/rtorrent.log