Run qBittorrent as a service, also under the Local Service account

[Spamme1]

I'm running qBittorrent as a service and it's really great, but it's not really straight forward.
It would be nice if qBittorrent would be able to run as a service per se.

Instructions to run qBittorent as a service:

1. Enable the web UI interface in qBittorrent and quit it. (required to use qBittorent as a service)
2. Download NSSM (https://nssm.cc/) and copy it in the program files folder (better than leave it in the download folder)
3. Create a new service: nssm install qBittorrent
4. Select the qBittorent path: C:\Program Files (x86)\qBittorent\qBittorent.exe
5. Change the Log On account to own account (required for qBittorent to find the configuration file)
6. Start the new qBittorent service: sc start qBittorrent

Advanced: Use the Local Service account instead of own account

1. Change the log on account to "Local Service" and leave the password fields empty.
2. Copy the qBittorrent configuration from local profile to "Local Service" profile: xcopy %appdata%\qbittorrent %windir%\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\appdata\Roaming
3. Change the torrent download location to a folder, where Local Service has full control, for example: C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\Downloads (Note: qBittorent can't use environment variables, this doesn't work: %windir%\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\Downloads)
4. Or grant full control to Local Service on the download folder: icacls %userprofile%\Downloads /grant "Local Service":(OI)(CI)F

[demifiend9]

Thank you so much! Was looking exactly for this!

[vicosmola]

Thank you! Works great!

[bmhanson]

Maybe you canb assist, I have tried this under windows 10 and not had a lot of luck. I expect I am just missing a piece and just can't see it.

My issue is not getting it defined. That works fine. It also starts up and shows running, BUT I cannot get access tot he webui. Even from a user logged into the local machine. Just running it as the user and everything works fine. I can get the the webui and access everything as expected.

I expect it is just not really starting up even though it says it has started since it is not writing anything to the log file. I will say I am running is under the Local Service ID. But I did copy over the setting files to C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\qBittorrent AND the Local Service has access to the directory I am writing to.

Thoughts on where I am going wrong?

There is a little more detail here if you have time to give me some thoughts.

https://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php/topic,4268.0.html

Thanks

[bmhanson]

Please ignore my question above. It has been resolved and did end up being a simple mistake on my part as I had figured.

[marukka]

Has anyone managed to get this to work while saving the torrents to a SMB share? I run qBittorrent 3.3.5 in a Windows Server Core 2012 R2 VM (because reasons) and have it save them to a SMB share on a file server. This worked fine while qBittorrent was being ran as a user process, but as a service (being ran under a domain admin account) it never creates (or modifies) any files on the SMB share. Both the VM and the SMB file server are joined to the same domain. I've checked the log file and all I get are a bunch of the following entries

(N) 2016-07-16T17:47:51 - An I/O error occurred, 'REDACTED - Name of the torrent' paused. REDACTED - Name of the torrent file (D:\REDACTED - Name of the torrent\REDACTED - Name of the file.extension) error: The system cannot find the path specified

Switching back to running it as a user process works fine. The domain admin account does have full access to the SMB share, and i've verified it can create/update files. I've also tried clearing out the contents of the share, just in case, but that had zero effect and the I/O errors persisted.

I'd love it if I could get this to run as a service, because as of right now im going to have to have the VM auto-login, have qBittorrent be a startup item, and then run a script to lock the screen. I'd also have to change group policies for Windows Update to permit it to reboot while a user is logged in.

[kimboslice99]

just use a user account instead of network service when you install with nssm. this is what I do, works fine, the user is then granted logon as service rights when doing this (automatically)

[Taps7734]

marukka : You can try running the service as a user who has permissions to the SMB Share. Or you can add the QBSERVERNAME$ computer account to the list of users who have access to the share.

I would also suggest using the UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path instead of the drive letter (if you can) so that instead of going to D:\REDACTED\ (since the local system account doesn't know what D: is mapped to, that's a user setting) it would go to \SERVER\SHARE\DIRECTORY

[AtariBaby]

nssm is a breeze to work with. Great tip to share. Already using this for a usenet program.

[Spamme1]

I like to revive the dead, but after two years it would be nice to have an official reply, if having qBittorrent running as a service natively without the help of a service wrapper is a feature on the road-map.
By the way I saw also somebody else asking for the same feature: #2070

[passion2]

If you don't insist on running specifically as service you may use the built in Windows Task Scheduler.
With TS you won't need any 3rd party tool to start client/webui on os startup (login not required).

[sbeaudoin]

I will possibly open a bug report, but service install from qBitTorrent would be better for support.
Installed as a service with nssm and a specific account to access my media, no access to web ui. If I execute the normal way, web ui can be accesses. Nothing in the event log. No log file in qbittorrent. No information at all nowhere.

[Spamme1]

@sbeaudoin I run it since years as a service and it is working, most probably you have missed something in the setup. I would suggest you first to run qbt under your account, if it is working, then try to run it under another account.

[bmhanson]

@sbeaudoin What account did you set this up to run under? You don;t specify the version of windows or qBitTorrent., etc. The big part to remember is to coy the config files over to whichever user you run this under as the config files live in the roaming profile for eh user that it runs under. That is where the information for the WEB GUI is. the port, user, etc.

[sbeaudoin]

The account is a domain administrator, I don't think this is a security issue. The host of the service is a domain computer. It is running under Windows 10 1803, latest qBitTorrent (4.1.1). As for the config files, if I run QBT manually from a session opened with the same user as the service, the web interface run ok. The problem occur if I run the app while the service is running. After that, the only way it works is by restarting the service, so, it is ok now.

[Spamme1]

@sbeaudoin I never run the application and the windows service with the web UI at the same time, because I would run two different instances of QBT at the same time, what could cause maybe some problems. When I need to change something in the settings of QBT, which aren't available in the web UI (for example RSS feeds), I stop the windows service, start QBT as application, change the settings, close QBT as application and restart the windows service.

[sbeaudoin]

It is working now. I think it is because it should be run once the usual way before being able to use it as a service. Possibly to create config files.

[expressrussian]

I'm running qBittorrent as a service and it's really great, but it's not really straight forward.
Instructions to run qBittorent as a service:
Thanks for the instructions.
It installs and works (downloads the torrents), but only until server reboot. After the reboot the torrent list is empty!
The windows service starts correctly, the web front-end works almost normally, but all the torrents are gone, the list is empty. The downloaded data is in place in the download folder, but they are no longer listed in qbittorrent web-interface of the service.
Maybe it is not possible to run qbittorrent as windows service?

[SBRK]

I have kind of the same problem as the person above. The service runs ok and I can add torrents, but as soon as I restart Windows, all the torrents are gone

[didyouexpectthat]

I'm on qBittorrent 4.2.1.

On restart of the service, it is creating a new directory in C:\Users... it is a temp folder. After the service restarts, it creates a new folder.

qbittorrent supposedly supports a few extra arguments... I tried to redirect the config files to another folder but it was not working.

[didyouexpectthat]

I actually got it working again with nssm.

1. Download NSSM (https://nssm.cc/) and copy it in the C:\Windows\System32 folder
2. Create a directory in your C:, my path is c:\ServiceAccts\qBittorrent
3. Create a new service: nssm install qBittorrent
4. Under Application:
   
   Set Path to the qBittorrent path: C:\Program Files\qBittorent\qBittorent.exe
   Set Startup Directory to the location where the qBittorrent.exe file is: C:\Program Files\qBittorrent
   For Arguments, I set: --webui-port=18080 --no-splash --profile=c:\ServiceAccts\qBittorrent
5. Go to the Logon tab and select it however you want. (I login as a user called qbittorrent)
6. Now, try to run C:\Program Files\qBittorent\qBittorent.exe --webui-port=18080 --no-splash --profile=c:\ServiceAccts\qBittorrent from the Run command
7. qBittorrent should come up and give you a pop-up... then start the client.
8. Do some basic config. Confirm the Web UI is enabled... reset the web UI admin password... maybe enable localhost auth....
9. Shut down qBittorrent
10. Run nssm start qBittorrent

For me, this runs qBittorrent as a service and points it to a common profile directory.

[AtariBaby]

One thing I initially disliked about nssm is a lack of graphical interface, and a lack of ability to see an overview of every service you’re running.

But then I figured out you can see all of them in services.msc, duh! You’d want to install and uninstall using nssm, but in Services.msc, you can pause, restart, etc. I like nssm better now.

Recent Windows 10 automation features still make it a breeze to use apps that merely autostart. I’m not as passionate about services as some are.

[Moe1369]

I have something to add to this and I'm not sure if anybody else experienced this aswell.
After creating the service if torrents are in your queue and you shutdown all torrents are gone.(Files are still there)
Next I tried sleep mode (s1-s3: normal sleep and s4:hibernation) and the torrents were still there and continuing without issues.
Anybody found a way to gracefully exit the service?

[tangre]

When I set this up, it totally ruined desktop usability. When I try to add a torrent, it won't download the metadata and show me the content of the torrent, so I can't pick and choose what parts of the torrent I want to download, which is very frustrating. When I start the torrent, it immediately goes to "stalled" and all of the trackers say "not contacted yet." This goes for all of my existing torrents as well. Sometimes the torrent will download when I reboot the computer, but it's almost as though everything stops when I open qbittorrent on my desktop. Is there a workaround for this? qBittorrent runs when I'm logged out which is nice but it's left largely unusable on desktop now.

Edit: I created a workaround. I only wanted this as my computer has been having BSOD problems lately that I'm trying to fix but are as of this time unresolved, it's very frustrating when my computer bluescreens at 12:00pm while I'm at work, so I can't log in and start qBittorrent downoading/seeding again until I'm off at 5:00pm and can go home and do that. I fixed this by creating a batch script that tells the qBittorrent service to stop when ran, and a scheduled task that runs the batch script upon logon.

[e2t]

Anybody found a way to gracefully exit the service?

I only manage torrents in GUI mode, that is, first stop the service and then restart it.
nssm stop qBittorrent && "c:\Program Files\qBittorrent\qbittorrent.exe" --profile=d:\Bin && nssm start qBittorrent

[LudovicBouvierJohnston]

I am still having the same problem. The issue #13921 does not answer to the problem I am having on Windows using NSSM. Is there a fix for this? Sometimes qbittorrent will crash the week before and NSSM will restart it automatically. When I log in after that my whole torrent list is empty. I have to manually add again my .torrent files.

[bri2]

A few problems I encountered when using the Local Service account instead of own account and how I solved them:

• Web-UI not showing: make sure you have set the service (with nssm) to run with "this account:" (radio button) and then as the username "Local Service" (no password needed). I mistakenly selected the "Local System account" radio button.
• Torrents disappearing after service restart / system reboot: add "--relative-fastresume" (no quotes) to the service arguments. Note this will not restore your old torrents, check the next tip for that. Note I haven't tested this feature thoroughly, a few restarts later it still works.
• If you have missing torrents after migrating from desktop-run qbittorrent to service-run qbittorrent, copy the files from "C:\Users\your_username_here\AppData\Local\qBittorrent\BT_backup" to "C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\qBittorrent\BT_backup". Then restart the qbittorrent service and your torrents should be back.

[ThinkPadNL]

I followed the instructions in #4498 (comment) and saw the qbittorrent.exe process running in Task Manager. But i couldn't reach the webinterface so something wasn't right yet.
I saw that the logfile (in one of the C:\ServiceAccts subfolders) was not updating (where it was when QB was run by hand). I gave the account i made for qBittorrent full permissions on the ServiceAccts folder. Now the log was updating, so i knew the permissions were correct. But the WebUI still wasn't reachable. I then used runas to start QB from CMD, by using the account i made for QB, changed some settings and closed QB. After a reboot i could now reach the WebUI.

[Pentaphon]

Here's the feature request to have qBittorrent be installed as a Windows service via the installer. Transmission already does this on their Windows installer so it's not impossible for the qBittorrent team to make it happen on Windows as well. Please give it a thumbs up if you want it.

#8664

[kimboslice99]

I'm not sure why anyone would want it run under local service. I think it is much more wise to create a user account and run it under that, which is more permissive and allows you to define permissions specifically for the user which qbt is running under.

Just my 2 cents, of course.

[Pentaphon]

Whatever gives us a headless version of qBittorrent for Windows that can be installed from the official Windows installer works for me.

[kimboslice99]

And if youre fine with the implications thats alright

LocalService is indeed a restricted account and not a horrible choice, however now when you grant localservice permissions to files you are also granting many other services permissions to the same file/folder, which may not be wise depending on what else is running under that context on your system

[marukka]

I'm not sure why anyone would want it run under local service. I think it is much more wise to create a user account and run it under that, which is more permissive and allows you to define permissions specifically for the user which qbt is running under.

Just because you're incapable of thinking of use cases doesn't mean other people aren't. The only purpose of your reply is to fulfill a narcissistic desire to hear your own voice.

[kimboslice99]

This is not reddit.

1. Learn how to comment in discussions.
2. This site is code and solution focused, your feelings have no relevance here.
   But anyways Ill continue
3. Giving a download utility local service rights is not a great idea. but go ahead and show me your ignorance.
   Anyways, I dont have time for you. I have many projects. Bye-bye.

[talraveh1]

Is there a way to redirect magnet links to be opened by the qBittorrent service?

Currently, if I click a magnet link a new process of qBittorrent is created with the configuration in the default location, etc.