For those of you looking for DHT support with the default rtorrent package that it is in the Debian 5 apt repos you are out of luck. Currently the only way to get DHT support for rtorrent is to use the 0.8.5-2 release for Debian “Squeeze” (testing).

So to get rtorrent working with DHT, go about the installation like you would usually:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get -y install rtorrent
apt-get remove rtorrent libtorrent10 (should leave dependencies installed)
wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/r/rtorrent/rtorrent_0.8.5-2_i386.deb (for i386)
wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libt/libtorrent/libtorrent11_0.12.5-2_i386.deb (for i386)
dpkg -i libtorrent11_0.12.5-2_i386.deb
dpkg -i rtorrent_0.8.5-2_i386.deb

Your version of rtorrent, should now have DHT and PEX support.

For automatically starting rtorrent, you can download an init script from the libtorrent project, that works real great.
wget http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/raw-attachment/wiki/RTorrentCommonTasks/rtorrentInit.sh
mv rtorrentInit.sh /etc/init.d/rtorrent
chmod +x /etc/init.d/rtorrent
vi /etc/init.d/rtorrent (change the user in the config file to a different user account, your own? that has a .rtorrent.rc in it’s home directory –> /home/[user]/.rtorrent.rc)
vi /etc/rc.local < — stick in the line “/etc/init.d/rtorrent start” before the “exit 0″

Make a .rtorrent.rc startup file, so that /etc/init.d/rtorrent works properly
wget http://vraidsys.com/tutorials/rtorrent.rc
mv rtorrent.rc /home/[user]/.rtorrent.rc
vi /home/[user]/.rtorrent.rc (change user to the user you want this to run as)
mkdir -p /home/[user]/torrents/session
chown [user] /home/[user]/.rtorrent.rc <-- run this if doing everything from the root user
chmod -R 777 /home/[user]/torrents <-- I do this so that I can access my torrents from several user accounts. see comments section. [Edit 1/1/2010]

Now restart the machine: shutdown -r now

When you log back in, torrents should be automatically downloaded to the /home/[user]/torrents/ directory, when you stick .torrent files in the /home/[user]/torrents/ directory. You can also access the screen thread by screen -r rtorrent in a terminal session.