Does anyone know how to run qbittorrent and protonvpn in a VM? When I try to run the qbittorrent setup app I get this message (image below) and I don’t see anything mentioning a VM in the qbittorrent [dot] org forum.
I am new to torrenting, so I don’t really know what to do. I figured/assumed that torrenting/seeding in a VM might be safer as it is another layer deep, and that it may help keep traffic separate (inside the VM: I’d be using a vpn and torrenting, and outside the VM: I’d not be using a vpn and just regular internet surfing). Is this possible?
Thank you.
Spare yourself a lot of wasted disk space, Windows stupidity, and RAM by just using any mainline Linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) instead of Windows for the guest. I don’t even mean a headless Linux. You can keep the GUI if you prefer and want. That will still be a small fraction of the ram, compute, and disk space for the VM than a Windows guest.
And a tip for the technique: don’t download torrents into the virtual hard drive for the VM. Download into a shared/mounted directory.
Honestly, if you are going the Linux route, you might as well get a headless Linux setup (no GUI, just command line), install qbittorrent-nox and access qbitborrent via the webUI.
You will save a massive amount of RAM, desk space and probably even CPU time.
It’d be even better and safer, if you pick Docker containers over VMs. Give them a shot, they’ll require less resources and would be overall much more efficient for a this purpose.
Don’t run your torrent client in a VM, that doesn’t actually provide you with any additional security.
Use a Docker container instead. Binhex has torrent+vpn containers that will fetch the random open port number from Proton and pipe it into qBittorrent for you, as well as make sure the port is updated if the VPN drops. The container also acts as a killswitch.
Yes that would work fine, you can pretty much run anything inside a VM. So yeah a properly set up VM with internet access + VPN client + anything else you want to install will work.
Not too sure what the issue is that you are encountering, you’d need to update your post with a lot more info. My suggestion is to start over and make sure the VM is set up correctly e.g. install the OS in the VM, verify it has normal internet access. Then install the VPN client in the VM, verify VPN is working properly. After that qBittorrent or anything else can be installed inside the VM. (probably best to save snapshots of your VM after each step in case you screw up and need to roll back)
I haven’t purchased the VPN yet, and I’ve only downloaded and ran the qbittorrent setup file. (then that window appeared (image above). The VM should be set up correctly (all I had to do is just enable the feature - Windows Sandbox).
Hmm I think your issue is specific to Windows Sandbox. I’ve only ever used full VM software (Microsoft Hyper-V, VirtualBox, etc.).
Never touched Windows Sandbox but it sounds like a sort of hybrid VM/Container thing… I could be wrong :) hopefully someone else knows more about using that or maybe you’ll need to post in another community to ask about it.
EDIT: Looking into it a bit more, Windows Sandbox isn’t actually a VM. So you’re really asking if you can run multiple apps (VPN+torrent client+whatever) inside a sandbox app like Windows Sandbox…I don’t think that’s how sandbox apps work, they usually are for sandboxing a single app, so you may need to experiment and figure it out. Everyone looking at your post is thinking you’re asking about VMs, not sandboxes :P
e.g. see this https://superuser.com/a/1775271 answer
Oh wow, I didn’t realize it isn’t a VM… Thank you for the in depth response.
Yep. The qbittorrent GitHub page has instructions. Use the headless qbittorrent package and you can use the webui to manage it.
It’s entirely possible and you do it the same way you do on bare metal. However if you are just trying to stop your ISP from seeing that you are pirating then using a VM won’t achieve anything. If you’re worried about downloading malware or something then yes that’s a good idea.
I’m not sure what you mean by bare metal. Yeah mostly the avoiding malware, but I think I can just download it via torrent and VPN > upload to my email > open the VM > download from email > check with virustotal > try running the exe if it seems normal
Bare metal = not in a VM
Why are you uploading to email? Can’t you just download the torrent in the VM and check it in virustotal there?
I meant that if I was unable to figure out a solution, at least I would be able to transfer it to a VM (which apparently Windows Sandbox isnt really)
