How to install and configure transmission

The amount of energy required to keep the Raspberry pi 24/7, makes it perfect candidate for a Torrent client/server. There are some cons like storage and reliability, (I have experienced two SD cards that just died suddenly) but it is still fun.

Installing transmission is straight forward, but you need to remember that in order to modify the configuration file the transmission daemon has to be stopped. I forgot that the first time, it was really frustrating until I found out. Let's get started !!

root@sh-srv:~# apt-get install transmission -y

After the installation you will need to configure 'settings.json' which is located in /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

Before you start changing any settings make sure that the transmission-daemon is not running. I use the next command for that, probably there are more ways that work. It is a matter of taste, ... good taste :)

root@sh-srv:~# /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon stop

Find the next settings in the configuration file and modify them to suit your needs

"download-dir": "/downloads",
"incomplete-dir": "/downloads",
"rpc-authentication-required": true,
"rpc-username": "",
"rpc-whitelist-enabled": false,
"rpc-password": "",

To configure authentication for transmission you will need to type a username, password in quotations and set authenitcation required to true.

"rpc-username": "username",
"rpc-password": "password",
"rpc-authentication-required": true,

The "downloads" folder by default is located in "/var/lib/transmission-daemon/downloads", it took me some time to figure that out. The good news is that you can decide where you want to save your downloads, just put the complete path like "/mnt/disk1/downloads"

Remember to give tranmission-daemon ownership of the folder and change the permissions to 744. If it is a public samba shared folder, give it a 777, otherwise it will not be possible to delete stuff from other computers in the network.

root@sh-srv:~# chown debian-transmission:debian-transmission {foldername}
root@sh-srv:~# chmod 777 {foldername}

It is important to set the whitelist to false, otherwise you will need to add the ip of all the computer you will be using to access the web based GUI.

"rpc-whitelist-enabled": false,

That is all the basic configuration needed for the transmission daemon to work. You can fine tune it later, but first let's start it.

root@sh-srv:~# /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon start

Now we can log on the transmission web interface. Just start the web browser and type the ip address of your machine followed by colon and 9091 which is the default port.[Example: http://192.168.1.30:9091].

Remember that before making changes to the configuration file it is necessary to stop transmission-daemon, otherwise the changes can not be saved