How To: Run uTorrent as a service (with FireDaemon)

[wildwestgoh]

Does anyone still have this program setup (free edition)?

Upload somewhere easier for anyone to download would be great =)

Or if not, any alternative that works similiar as this.

[mauirixxx]

would suggest that people running utorrent as a service to use a limited account (maybe the howto could be updated to explain how to do this?).

That's really beyond the scope of just making uTorrent run as a service, which is all I was trying to help people do. Honestly, I was NOT thinking security when I wrote the walk through 2 years ago, but after thinking about it I personally don't believe it's really necessary for me to write up, though adding a line to the walkthrough stating you SHOULD use a limited user is definitely a good idea.

I actually wrote the walkthrough using an Active Directory based setup (note my inclusion of username@domain) but I think I covered how to set the username accurately. If the server is NOT part of an Active Directory domain, then the proper syntax would be servername\username when using a local user. New users in an Active Directory domain actually have 0 administrative access, however local users are administrators by default if I remember correctly.

Running the service using an account with admin access to your pc is a bit if a security risk, esp if you have the webui publicly accessable.

That is true. It's just like running any other service that accepts incoming connections. But there are multiple ways to protect yourself if you decide to run the service with an administrative account. Run the webgui on a different port, that doesn't have an incoming rule from your router / firewall, then VPN into your system - Windows Server 2003 has a relatively easy to setup PPTP VPN server built into it. If you deem PPTP to not be strong enough, you still have options for setting up an IPSec or an SSL based VPN - google is your friend there.

All of this is waaaaaay beyond the scope of the walkthrough though. I took on the task of helping you getting uTorrent as a service. How you (and heazlewood, I don't mean YOU literally) secure your servers is your job (and again beyond the scope of the walkthrough and uTorrent in general).

I'd be more then happy to discuss this further in another thread so as to keep this thread somewhat on-topic. Creating a walkthrough that shows people how to create local and domain users with limited access is fairly trivial, it just requires time, testing, and patience. If you decide to take on that task yourself, I'd be more then happy to assist in any way you need (screenshots, virtualized servers to test on, whatevers), I'm just in no rush to do it myself.

Aloha!

[s1derboy]

Ok I found a way that you can have Utorrent installed as a service using SRVANY.EXE and have your old data. So you follow the normal steps of installing utorrent as a service and in the registry under your utorrent service and there should be a key called parameters you add a string and call it "AppDirectory" keep it as a REG_SZ and the value of the key is is where your application data is for the user you want it to run as. Example "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\uTorrent". You will still run the service as a local system account and have the interact with desktop checked. The service will still run as "System" but it will have all of your past torrent of the user application data that you select and still interact with the desktop. That should work with any application that has some sort of data stored in a different directory. The first time it runs utorrent may have to ask to install I am not sure but I had that happen the first time I tried. It also still have the icon in the startup in the task bar.

[mauirixxx]

BUMP. Updated web links and edited post to reflect the non-availability of Firedaemon Lite (product was discontinued due to piracy & misuse). Will revisit the original post with an updated version of Firedaemon to see if anything has changed.

Need to add info about uTorrent Remote as well, for folks who don't wish to use the webui.

[kevv]

Do you have to use /recover if you want to run multiple utorrent services.