Trouble getting WebUI to work properlly with WHS

[chewvodka]

Ok, so I've been a user of uTorrent for a while now, and know how everything works for the most part. I just completed building a Windows Home Server that will house all of my Movies, Music, and Tv Shows that I either recorded, converted, or downloaded. That part was a cinch, and everything works brilliantly on it. Now I"m at "phase 2" which consists of setting up uTorrent to run as the backend-serverside downloader. I've read it's been done, and I've followed a lot of guides. I'm about 95% there, but I'm hitting a strange snag. I'd like other user's input into this matter, and would be greatly appreciative.

So here's whats happened so far. I remote desktoped into the WHS and installed uTorrent. I then copied over all of the settings from my main machine over to the WHS, and forwarded all appropriate ports on the router and the Windows Firewall. I then extracted the WebUI rar file and moved the .zip file to the %App Path%\uTorrent folder (or whatever the path is the instrunctions say to put it). I then enabled the WebUI plugin from within uTorrent's settings, and assigned a username and password to log in with. I then tested the plugin in IE7 by typing out the full url: http://(server-name-censored).homeserver.com:(port-censored)/gui/. It prompted me to log in, in which case I used the login credentials I established in the uTorrent settings. It then opened up within my browser a remarkably similar looking interface very close to uTorrent itself. Bravo for that part!

And here's where the problems start. As a test, I downloaded a small torrent file while logged into the WHS remote desktop. uTorrent then began downloading it as per usual design. I then exited the remote desktop and opened up IE7 on my main machine, going to the server's WebUI address. Again, it displayed the proper interface, but nothing was populated. I had full access to menus, and navigations, and screens, but there was no active torrent to "monitor". I remote desktopped into the WHS again, and it was still active. At first I thought this might be because the WebUI just hadn't updated yet, but it stayed that way throughout the entire download. I removed the file and the torrent completely, and then tried to download it again. Only this time, I did it from the main machine, and saved it to the network share folder that uTorrent was configured to watch for new torrents. After it saved, I opened up the WebUI url again, and this time it showed the file there, ready to start downloading. I started it up, then remote desktopped back into the WHS machine. uTorrent there was showing no activity at all! No torrents in process or even loaded. I checked the "active torrents" folder on the machine and sure enough, it had moved the saved torrent file out of the network share and into it's correct location.

So what's going on here? Any ideas? Am I overlooking a step or something? Or is this going to be like this forever, where a remote user can see torrents they downloaded via WebUI only, and local users can see torrents they downloaded locally only? I thought the idea was you could download something, then check on the status of it while at work or something, and add a new torrent while there, and check it's status when you get home. Now it looks like I can only monitor the status of work files AT WORK, and home files AT HOME.

[jewelisheaven]

... wrong user. Remember RDP when multiple users are enabled use an emulated user. If you append /CONSOLE to the RDP connection you will connect to "Console". See if that helps?

[Lord Alderaan]

Log off (Don't simply disconnect) all users on the server.

Then go Start -=> Run -=> mstsc /console

And then log in.

When you remote desktop into a windows server version without /console it creates a NEW user session. You can see this when you open the Users tab on the Task Manager in the remote session. You'll see your username twice. This also means a second session of µtorrent was started which will fail to listen on the utorrent port (check the logger tab of µtorrent) because the original µtorrent session is listening there. Which means the webui still connects to the first µtorrent session while your remote desktop session is looking at the the second µtorrent session.

[chewvodka]

Ok, I did try to login again to the WHS with the /console flag. I then brought up the taskmgr.exe and it DID show 2 administrators logged in. I logged them both off, which then disconnected me from the server. Is that all I need to do?

[Lord Alderaan]

Yeah

Now always remote desktop in using mstsc /console and you should be fine.

[chewvodka]

Ok I got it. I reinstalled everything while logged in as /console to eliminate the possibility of dual sessions. Thanks for your help, it seems to work now. Now if I can only figure out how to allow me open uTorrent while logged, after I've set it up to run as a background service

[jewelisheaven]

you can't. if it's running under a different user, you MUST stop that session.. best to do it from the webui, so you don't have to go through rechecking.... then open it on your RDP console session... make changes.. stop it normally so you don't recheck on the SERVICE user, then restart the service :/

[chewvodka]

Yeah, the only reason I would want to reopen the program outside of the SERVICE would be so I could utilize the functionality of the RSS feeds. Since the WebUI doesn't have this feature implemented yet, I can only go about it through the program directly.