Init.d script for rtorrent. The script creates a screen session and launch rtorrent as the given user. The user is taken from the script name; the script must follow the namnig convention "rtorrent-<user>".

rtorrent-XXX

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          rtorrent-XXX
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $remote_fs $portmap
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs $remote_fs $portmap
# Should-Start:      $network
# Should-Stop:       $network
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Daemonized version of rtorrent.
# Description:       Starts the rtorrent daemon.
### END INIT INFO

# Author: Laurent Etiemble

#######################

# System user to run as
user="`basename $0 | awk -F"-" '{ print $2 }'`"

# The full path to the filename where you store your rtorrent configuration
config="`su -c 'echo $HOME' $user`/.rtorrent.rc"

# Set of options to run with
options=""

# Default directory for screen, needs to be an absolute path
base="`su -c 'echo $HOME' $user`"

# Name of screen session
srnname="rtorrent-$user"

# File to log to (makes for easier debugging if something goes wrong)
logfile="/var/log/rtorrent-$user.log"

#######################

PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin
DESC="rtorrent as $user"
NAME=rtorrent
SCRIPTNAME="/etc/init.d/`basename $0`"

checkcnfg() {
    exists=0
    for i in `echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n'` ; do
        if [ -f $i/$NAME ] ; then
            exists=1
            break
        fi
    done
    if [ $exists -eq 0 ] ; then
        echo "cannot find rtorrent binary in PATH $PATH" | tee -a "$logfile" >&2
        exit 3
    fi
    if ! [ -r "$config" ] ; then 
        echo "cannot find readable config $config. check that it is there and permissions are appropriate" | tee -a "$logfile" >&2
        exit 3 
    fi 
    session=`getsession "$config"` 
    if ! [ -d "$session" ] ; then
        echo "cannot find readable session directory $session from config $config. check permissions" | tee -a "$logfile" >&2
        exit 3
    fi
}

rtorrent_start() {
    [ -d "${base}" ] && cd "${base}"
    stty stop undef && stty start undef
    su -c "screen -ls | grep -sq "\.$srnname[[:space:]]" " $user || su -c "screen -dm -S $srnname 2>&1 1>/dev/null" $user | tee -a "$logfile" >&2
    su -c "screen -S "$srnname" -X screen rtorrent ${options} 2>&1 1>/dev/null" ${user} | tee -a "$logfile" >&2
}

rtorrent_stop() {
    session=`getsession "$config"`
    if ! [ -s ${session}/rtorrent.lock ] ; then
        return
    fi
    pid=`cat $session/rtorrent.lock | awk -F: '{ print $2 }' | sed "s/[^0-9]//g"`
    kill -s INT ${pid}
}

getsession() { 
    session=`cat "$1" | grep "^[[:space:]]*session[[:space:]]*=" | sed "s/^[[:space:]]*session[[:space:]]*=[[:space:]]*//" `
    su -c "readlink -f $session" $user
}

checkcnfg

case "$1" in
    start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
        rtorrent_start
        echo "."
        ;;
    stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME"
        rtorrent_stop
        echo "."
        ;;
    restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: $NAME"
        rtorrent_stop
        sleep 1
        rtorrent_start
        echo "."
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

If your user is www-data and you run as rtorrent-www-data, then https://gist.github.com/letiemble/5143971#file-rtorrent-xxx-L19 will only catch www.

Here's how to hotfix:

user="`basename $0 | awk -F"rtorrent-" '{ print $2 }'`"