Some tools and instructions to help supplement aria2 when used as a download server.

List the download queue on the local machine.

Assumes the aria2 RPC server is available at localhost:6800

Example Debian init script to put in /etc/init.d/

It is set up for Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty's) packaged aria2c from the package "aria2" (see instructions below). If you're using Debian Squeeze you will want to change /usr/bin for /opt/aria2/bin and follow the instructions to install into /opt/aria2 below.

Example config file to put in /etc to use alongside the init script.

The version of aria2 in the Debian Squeeze repositories is too old for these tools and for the web client I use to handle.

The version in wheezy requires a libc update, so that's a no go too.

I just downloaded aria2 1.16.3 and built from source:

$ sudo apt-get build-essential aria2
$ tar xjf aria2-1.16.3.tar.bz2
$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/aria2-1.16.3
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd /opt
$ sudo ln -s aria2-1.16.3 aria2
$ sudo ln -s /opt/aria2/bin/aria2c /usr/local/bin/aria2c

Create a user to run the daemon as, and a download directory

$ sudo useradd --system --home-dir /var/local/aria2 download
$ sudo mkdir /var/local/aria2/down
$ sudo chown download: /var/local/aria2/down
$ sudo chmod ug=rwx,o=rx /var/local/aria2/down

I then copied in initscript/aria2c to /etc/init.d/aria2c.

Put the following in /etc/aria2.conf:

dir=/var/local/aria2/down
disable-ipv6=true
rpc-listen-all=true
enable-rpc=true
on-download-complete=/opt/aria2-tools/hooks/aria2_notify_complete

(you should set your dir= to the directory you want downloads to go in)

I then tested the init script:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/aria2c start
$ sudo /etc/init.d/aria2c status
$ sudo /etc/init.d/aria2c stop
$ sudo /etc/init.d/aria2c status
$ sudo /etc/init.d/aria2c start

Then installed it to run at startup:

$ sudo update-rc.d aria2c defaults

I then cloned a copy of webui-aria2 into /opt and linked into /var/www (I already had apache web server installed):

$ cd /opt
$ sudo git clone git://github.com/ziahamza/webui-aria2.git
$ sudo ln -s /opt/webui-aria2 /var/www/aria2

Then I can browse to http://minerva/aria2 from any machine on my network to view and manipulate the download queue.

I wrote the tool bin/aria2q so I can inspect the queue from the command line.