Install Transmission a BitTorrent Client

Install Transmission in a Debian based systems (server or desktop)

Add Transmission PPA Repository

If you want the latest then add the PPA repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:transmissionbt/ppa

Update repositories

sudo apt-get update

Install transmission

sudo apt-get install transmission-cli transmission-common transmission-daemon

Configure

There are many settings which can be configured. This how-to focus on tweaking the default configuration file for use with a server. transmission-daemon will start automatically each time you start your server, with the settings defined in /var/lib/transmission-daemon/info/settings.json

Make sure the Transmission daemon is not running when changing the config file otherwise your changes will be over written.

sudo service transmission-daemon stop

edit settings.json

sudo nano /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

Username and Password

The default rpc-username and password is "transmission", Change if increased security is required, Change it to whatever you want (any password will work). After next restart the password will be rewritten in SHA1 encrypted format for security reasons.

"rpc-password": "{62b16db87b89a91dd49a5110a7cafc06d20eb4f2wtK6kqPj"
"rpc-username": "transmission",

Whitelist; This must be changed for remote access rpc-whitelist defines access to transmission. Localhost (127.0.0.1) is defined by default. I added ,192.268.*.* to allow any machine on my LAN access.

"rpc-whitelist": "127.0.0.1,192.168.*.*"
"umask" parameter

You will also have to set the "umask" parameter in Transmission’s settings file to “2” (default is 18) for the account user to have full access to files/folders created by Transmission.

"umask": 2,

After configuration change, restart transmission

sudo service transmission-daemon start

Default File Directory

Place a torrent file in this directory for automatic file download, or change them are you choice

"download-dir": "/path/to/downloads/folder",<--Change path to your setup
...
"incomplete-dir": "/path/to/incomplete/folder",<--Change path to your setup
"incomplete-dir-enabled": true,

Configure Users and Permissions

It is recommended that Transmission runs under it’s own username for security reasons. This creates a few issues with file and folder access by Transmission as well as your account (let us assume it is user).

Add the username user to the group debian-transmission:

sudo usermod -a -G debian-transmission user

NOTE: Change "user" to you own Ubuntu user login name.

NOTE: When adding a user to a new group, the user must log out and log back in for it to take affect. A reboot will also accomplish this.

Start transmission

sudo service transmission-daemon start

Transmission Daemon

Starting and Stopping Transmission Daemon. After install Transmission, the daemon will be started automatically (but not accessible yet). You can start and stop Transmission daemon using the following commands

sudo service transmission-daemon start
sudo service transmission-daemon stop
sudo service transmission-daemon reload

Note: Restarting (or reloading) Transmission daemon can be tricky. Restarting the the daemon (while it is already running) would rewrite the Transmission settings files to its original state. In other words, restarting the Transmission daemon would reset all the custom settings you saved.

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