Transmission

Transmission is a torrent client that is available on Amahi as a one-click app. It has a web based interface.

Blocklist Rules

Blocklists can be added to Transmission via the user interface:

• Select Edit Preferences (looks like a wrench at the bottom left)
• Choose Peers tab
• Select Enable blocklist checkbox
• Replace http://www.example.com/blocklist with http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=bt_level1
• Choose Update

You should now see "Blocklist has 0 rules" change. Close the Preferences by selecting the X at the top right corner.

Automatically Download to a Share

• When you install Transmission from your Amahi dashboard, the torrents share will be created automatically.

• Torrent files added to this share directory are also automatically added to Transmission to download. This is done every 5 minutes via /etc/cron.d/amahi-torrent-watch Cron job.

• Change the following portion of the file as desired (*/5 = 5 minutes):

*/5 * * * *

Automatic download script (Amahi 7)

• To change the logging or saving of torrents, you will need to modify the script below (located in /usr/share/transmission directory):
  • Remove >> /var/log/torrentwatch.log to disable logging.
  • Change mv "$file" "$file".added" to "rm -f "$file" to prevent saving torrents with .added extension.
  • Change /var/hda/files/torrents to desired share path to change download location.

#!/bin/bash
for file in /var/hda/files/torrents/*.torrent
do
if [ "$file" != "/var/hda/files/torrents/*.torrent" ]; then
echo [`date`] "$file" added to queue. >> /var/log/torrentwatch.log
/usr/bin/transmission-remote localhost:9091 -a "$file"
mv "$file" "$file".added
sleep 1
fi
done

Add Transmission Web Client Password

NOTE: Do all tasks as root user

1. Stop the Transmission service:

service amahi-transmission stop

2. Edit the settings.json.

nano /var/lib/transmission/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json

3. Edit these fields, remembering the username and password

"rpc-authentication-required": true,                                        
"rpc-bind-address": "0.0.0.0",                                              
"rpc-enabled": true,                                                        
"rpc-password": "[Insert wanted password]",        
"rpc-port": 9091,                                                           
"rpc-username": "[Username wanted]",

CTRL-X to save.

4. Restart Transmission Service

service amahi-transmission restart

5. Next, we need to make sure that the cronjob that automatically loads torrents from the torrents share uses the same user authentification.

• (Amahi 6) Edit /etc/cron.d/amahi-transmission-watch and change the following:

*/5 * * * *     transmission    transmission-remote localhost:9091 -a /var/hda/files/torrents/*.torrent && rm -f /var/hda/files/torrents/*.torrent

add "--auth [username]:[password]" so the line becomes:

*/5 * * * *     transmission    transmission-remote localhost:9091 --auth [username]:[password] -a /var/hda/files/torrents/*.torrent && rm -f /var/hda/files/torrents/*.torrent

• (Amahi 7) Edit /usr/share/transmission/torrentwatch.sh and change the following:

/usr/bin/transmission-remote localhost:9091 -a "$file"

add "--auth [username]:[password]" so the line becomes:

/usr/bin/transmission-remote localhost:9091 --auth [username]:[password] -a "$file"

• The username and password are the ones you entered as rpc-username and rpc-password. Now navigate to web address and input information and you're all set!

Change Downloaded Files Permissions

By default, transmission sets the file permissions of downloaded files so that only the transmission user can write to the downloaded files and folders. To change this, modify the settings as follows:

1. Stop the transmission server from the Amahi Control Panel. Be sure to disable the watchdog timer as well.

2. Edit /var/lib/transmission/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json:

vim /var/lib/transmission/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json

3. Find the line: umask: 18, and change it to umask: 2. This will enable all users in the transmission group to also write to the file.

4. Restart transmission from the Amahi Control Panel (Settings/Servers/Transmission Server/Restart) for the changes to take effect. Remember to check the watchdog timer as well.

Adding Transmission to users group

This prevents the "Error: permission denied /file_location/file_name" error when starting a torrent.

GUI method:

1. Go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups
2. Enter your root password
3. Click on Edit -> Preferences
4. Make Sure "Hide System users and groups" is unchecked and close the dialog box
5. In the list of Users find "transmission" and double click
6. In the Groups tab find "users" and make sure it is checked.
7. Close all windows.

Terminal method:

1. Open Terminal
2. Type

sudo su -

3. Enter your password
4. Type

usermod -G users transmission

5. Close Terminal

Adding User To Transmission Group

You may run into a problem where even after adding transmission to the users group, that you cannot delete or modify files downloaded from Transmission. If this happens, you can add the user(s) you want to modify the downloaded files by running the follow command as root replacing "admin" with the user you want to add:

usermod -a -G transmission admin

Note: You need to stop the transmission-daemon service and watchdog before running the above command, and a restart of the server may be necessary, just remember to restart the service and watchdog first.

Prevent Transmission Email Reports

Transmission installs a cronjob that checks a preset folder every xx minutes for torrent files. If a torrent-file is present it will automatically start the download for you and delete the torrent file. In some cases you might receive email reports when the folder is empty. You can edit the cronjob to make sure no reports are sent when the cronjob is run.

• cronjob can be found at /etc/cron.d/amahi-transmission-watch

• Add >/dev/null 2>&1 to the end all command lines and reports will not be sent in the future.

Transmission with HTTPS Trackers (Ubuntu)

Ubuntu 12.04 64bit currently suffers from this bug in libgnutls26 which prevents Transmission communicating with SSL trackers. In order to fix this run the following commands.

wget http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gnutls26/libgnutls26_2.12.20-1_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i libgnutls26_2.12.20-1_amd64.deb

For a list of available mirrors see here