Hello everyone, I recently tried switching my docker torrent client setup from haugene/transmission-openvpn to linuxserver/qbittorrent with gluetun for my VPN.

I have gluetun set up to use port forwarding with ProtonVPN which assigns a random port on every connection. Gluetun provides a VPN_PORT_FORWARDING_UP_COMMAND which can be used in this scenario to update the port used by qbittorrent. While I had issues with the example command in the gluetun wiki to do this, I eventually managed using a bash script I found in another forum.

My issue now is that my server shuts down for the night to reduce noise and after restarting, even though I have the container startup order set up, qbittorrent is no longer reachable on its webinterface. The logs do not indicate any issue though.

As far as I can tell, the stack as I have set it up is extremely finnicky in terms of startup order and time. If I start gluetun first and then wait too long before starting qbit, the port update script will fail because there is obviously no target for it. If qbit is up and running before gluetun is done, I typically can’t access its webinterface for some reason and the network interface used by gluetun will set itself to loopback.

The result of this is that basically every morning I have to start and restart the containers in the stack a couple of times until I can access the interface and ensure that the port and network interface of qbit are configured correctly.

If anyone has a similar setup working that they could share or maybe another solution to my current issue that would be great. Thanks.

This is my docker-compose stack for the new setup

version: '3'
services:
  gluetun:
    image: qmcgaw/gluetun
    container_name: gluetun
    restart: unless-stopped
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    ports:
      - 8080:8080 # qbittorrent webinterface
      # - 6881:6881 # qbittorrent, only needed without port-forwarding
    environment:
      - VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=protonvpn
      - OPENVPN_USER=${OPENVPN_USERNAME}
      - OPENVPN_PASSWORD=${OPENVPN_PW}
      - SERVER_COUNTRIES=Switzerland
      - VPN_PORT_FORWARDING=on
      - PORT_FORWARD_ONLY=on
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin
      # From gluetun wiki: https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main/setup/advanced/vpn-port-forwarding.md
      - VPN_PORT_FORWARDING_UP_COMMAND=/bin/sh -c 'sh /gluetun/update-port.sh "{{PORTS}}"'
      - VPN_PORT_FORWARDING_DOWN_COMMAND=/bin/sh -c 'echo "Execution port forwarding down command" && wget -O- -nv --retry-connrefused --post-data "json={\"listen_port\":0,\"current_network_interface\":\"lo\"}" http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/v2/app/setPreferences'
      - QBIT_ADDRESS=http://localhost:8080/
      - QBIT_USERNAME=${QBIT_USER}
      - QBIT_PASSWORD=${QBIT_PW}
    volumes:
      - /mnt/truenas/qbittorrent/update_port.sh:/gluetun/update-port.sh
    labels:
      - "com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true" # Auto update using watchtower

  qbittorrent:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/qbittorrent:latest
    container_name: qbittorrent
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - WEBUI_PORT=8080
      - TORRENTING_PORT=6881
    network_mode: "service:gluetun"
    depends_on:
      - gluetun
        # condition: service_healthy
        # restart: true
    volumes:
      - /home/poseidon/qbittorrent:/config
      - /mnt/truenas/qbittorrent:/downloads
    # ports:
    #   - 8080:8080
    #   - 6881:6881
    #   - 6881:6881/udp
    restart: unless-stopped

And this is the script I use for updating the qbittorrent ports

#!/bin/sh
# update-port.sh
port="$1"
retries="${UPDATE_PORT_RETRIES:-5}"
interval="${UPDATE_PORT_RETRY_INTERVAL:-10}"

echo "Attempting to update qBittorrent port to $port..."

for i in $(seq 1 "$retries"); do
  response=$(wget --quiet --save-cookies=/tmp/cookies.txt --keep-session-cookies \
                  --post-data="username=$QBIT_USERNAME&password=$QBIT_PASSWORD" \
                  --header="Referer: $QBIT_ADDRESS" \
                  "$QBIT_ADDRESS/api/v2/auth/login" -O -)

  if [ "$response" = "Ok." ]; then
    break
  fi

  echo "Login attempt $i/$retries failed. Retrying in $interval seconds..."

  sleep "$interval"
done

set -e

if [ "$response" != "Ok." ]; then
    echo "Unable to log in to qBittorrent."
    rm -f /tmp/cookies.txt

    exit 1
fi

wget --quiet --load-cookies=/tmp/cookies.txt \
     --post-data="json={\"listen_port\": $port, \"current_network_interface\":\"$VPN_INTERFACE\", ,\"random_port\":false,\"upnp\":false}" \
     "$QBIT_ADDRESS/api/v2/app/setPreferences" -O /dev/null

rm -f /tmp/cookies.txt

echo "qBittorrent port updated successfully to $port."