So recently I was trying to get wireguard running on osmc debian 9.11 and had the pleasure of screwing my network config at the kernel level. This meant I needed to reinstall osmc, as my backup was severely outdated and wouldn’t work after restoring. Anyways I needed to re-setup my environment which meant reconfiguring rutorrent. Here are some issues I encountered when trying to install it following this guide that is generally pretty helpful.

dependency problems when trying to install nginx, something about nginx-*

symptom

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of nginx:
...
nginx depends on nginx-full (>= 1.10.3-1+deb9u3) | nginx-light (>= 1.10.3-1+deb9u3) | nginx-extras (>= 1.10.3-1+deb9u3); however:
...

solution

You need to follow ooshro’s post. Basically, update apt and then reinstall all the nginx stuff.

nginx port 80 already in use

symptom

nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (98: Address already in use)

solution

You need to change port 80 in your nginx configuration to something else like 3000.

getplugins.php gives 502 error

symptom

Bad response from server: (502 [error,getplugins]) Bad Gateway

solution

Installing php-fpm with apt solved the issue for me.

webserver user can’t access external program

symptom

Webserver user can't access 'stat' program. Some functionality will be unavailable. rutorrent

solution

In the path /var/www/rutorrent/conf/config.php there is a pathToExternals section which needs to be updated to include the paths that the webserver has trouble accessing. Thanks to null-dev!

rtorrent user must have read/execute access

symptom

rTorrent user must have read/execute access to the file ./test.sh (/var/www/rutorrent/php/test.sh)

solution

Even after adding your user to the www-data group you still can’t access the directories! The solution is to just reboot or relogin.