Name: flood-installation-guide

Last reviewed by: Clipper, April 2026

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Installing Flood on your Appbox

Flood is a modern, responsive web UI for rTorrent (and other torrent clients). If you find the default ruTorrent interface dated or cluttered, Flood offers a cleaner alternative with a more modern design, real-time statistics, and a mobile-friendly interface.

Flood runs as a separate Node.js service alongside rTorrent and communicates with it via its RPC socket. It is not officially supported by Bytesized — you will need to resolve any issues you encounter on your own.

Note: Flood requires Node.js, which is pre-installed on your Appbox. Connect to your box via SSH before proceeding — see the KiTTY guide if you are on Windows.

Installation

Clone the Flood repository into your ~/apps/ directory:

git clone https://github.com/jesec/flood.git ~/apps/flood
cd ~/apps/flood

Install dependencies and build:

npm install
npm run build

First run

Start Flood manually to verify it works:

screen -dmS flood npm run start -- --host 0.0.0.0 --port 3081

Open your browser and navigate to https://yourserver.bysh.me:3081 (replace with your actual server hostname and the port you chose).

Create an account and add your rTorrent socket when prompted. The socket is located at:

~/.config/rtorrent/session/rpc.socket

Flood should now be connected to your rTorrent instance.

Auto-start on box reboots

To have Flood start automatically whenever your box restarts, create the config directory and a startup script:

mkdir -p ~/.config/flood
nano ~/.startup/flood

Paste the following:

#!/bin/bash

export TMPDIR=$HOME/tmp
PID_FILE=$HOME/.config/flood/flood.pid
LOG_FILE=$HOME/.config/flood/flood.log
APP_DIR=$HOME/apps/flood/

/sbin/start-stop-daemon \
    -S --pidfile $PID_FILE --make-pidfile -u $USER -d $HOME --chdir $APP_DIR -b -a \
    /bin/bash -- -c "exec \
        /usr/bin/npm run start -- \
            --host 0.0.0.0 \
            --port 3081 \
        > $LOG_FILE 2>&1"

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/.startup/flood

Run it once to start Flood immediately without rebooting:

~/.startup/flood

⚠️ Flood is not officially supported by Bytesized. You are responsible for maintaining and troubleshooting your installation.