Howto: Build the BitTorrent client Transmission under Karmic Koala

[andrew.46]

Hi Sonsum,

Perhaps this:

https://launchpad.net/~transmissionbt/+archive/ppa

but I will admit I have not tried this PPA...

All the best,

Andrew

[Sonsum]

Hi Sonsum,

Perhaps this:

https://launchpad.net/~transmissionbt/+archive/ppa

but I will admit I have not tried this PPA...

All the best,

Andrew

Wow. I have no idea how I missed that. Thanks!

[andrew.46]

Hi Sonsum,

Wow. I have no idea how I missed that. Thanks!

My pleasure . Perhaps you could report back if the PPA has a good quality build?

All the best,

Andrew

[Sonsum]

The PPA seems legit, won't know for sure until a newer version is released though... lol

[Jive Turkey]

I decided to go for the svn approach as detailed at the the projects website. but instead of "make install" I used checkinstall -D and manually filled in the details.

I had to change one line in /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon to reflect the different binary location (change highlighted in red):

#!/bin/sh -e
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          transmission-daemon
# Required-Start:    $local_fs $remote_fs $network
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs $remote_fs $network
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start or stop the transmission-daemon.
### END INIT INFO

NAME=transmission-daemon
DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/$NAME
USER=debian-transmission
# FIXME: no pidfile support; forks, so --make-pidfile doesn't work either
#PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
STOP_TIMEOUT=3

export PATH="${PATH:+$PATH:}/sbin"

[ -x $DAEMON ] || exit 0

[ -e /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME

. /lib/lsb/init-functions

start_daemon () {
    if [ $ENABLE_DAEMON != 1 ]; then
        log_progress_msg "(disabled, see /etc/default/${NAME})"
    else    
        start-stop-daemon --start \
        --chuid $USER \
        --exec $DAEMON -- $OPTIONS
    fi
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        log_daemon_msg "Starting bittorrent daemon" "$NAME"
        start_daemon
        log_end_msg 0
        ;;
    stop)
        log_daemon_msg "Stopping bittorrent daemon" "$NAME"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet \
            --exec $DAEMON --retry $STOP_TIMEOUT \
            --oknodo
        log_end_msg 0
        ;;
    reload)
        log_daemon_msg "Reloading bittorrent daemon" "$NAME"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet \
            --exec $DAEMON \
            --oknodo --signal 1
        log_end_msg 0
        ;;
    restart|force-reload)
        log_daemon_msg "Restarting bittorrent daemon" "$NAME"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet \
            --exec $DAEMON --retry $STOP_TIMEOUT \
            --oknodo
        start_daemon
        log_end_msg 0
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/$NAME {start|stop|reload|force-reload|restart}"
        exit 2
        ;;
esac

exit 0

Then I had to make the debian-transmission user with:

adduser --system --group --no-create-home --quiet debian-transmission

and all appears to be working so I updated rc-d to make sure it runs at boot time (I have yet to test this) with

sudo update-rc.d transmission-daemon defaults

Lastly, it remains unclear to me whether my daemon is gettin its config from which of these directories

~/.config/transmission-daemon/
/etc/transmission-daemon/
/var/lib/transmission-daemon/info/

So I copied the one I edited to suit me to all three locations like so:

sudo service transmission-daemon stop && sudo cp ~/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json && sudo cp ~/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json /var/lib/transmission-daemon/info/settings.json

It starts ok on reboot but fails to actually read from the watch directory or write any files even though it can connect to peers, the download directory is owned and writable by debian-transmission, grrrr... my syslog gets these before transmission-daemon gives up and pauses the torrents:

Watching "/moo/torrent/src/" for new .torrent files (daemon.c:456)
Using inotify to watch directory "/moo/torrent/src/" (watch.c:84)
Unable to watch "/moo/torrent/src/": Permission denied (watch.c:90)
--snip--
Couldn't create "/moo/torrent": Permission denied (utils.c:605)
Couldn't create "/moo/torrent/incomplete/The Ghost Of Grand Rapids": Permission denied (fdlimit.c:362)
The Ghost Of Grand Rapids tr_fdFileCheckout failed for "/moo/torrent/incomplete/The Ghost Of Grand Rapids/GhostOfGrandRapids.avi.part": Permission denied (inout.c:134)
Couldn't create "/moo/torrent": Permission denied (utils.c:605)
Couldn't create "/moo/torrent/incomplete/The Ghost Of Grand Rapids": Permission denied (fdlimit.c:362)
The Ghost Of Grand Rapids tr_fdFileCheckout failed for "/moo/torrent/incomplete/The Ghost Of Grand Rapids/GhostOfGrandRapids.avi.part": Permission denied (inout.c:134)

Any ideas guys?

[yug23]

Thanks for the guide Andrew, very useful, looking forward to installing this on Luicd as well.

I found this guide because the version of Transmission in the Karmic repos was causing my whole samba network to go slow- I have a laptop dualbooting Karmic and WinXP, a headless server running Karmic and a modded xbox running XBMC.

Once I removed the gui from the server and installed cli versions of several programs, the whole network ground almost to a halt. This was of course the opposite of the intention, but I tracked down the culprit: transmission-daemon. So I am trying this new version from the guide to see whether it's any better- unfortunately as I'm writing this it seems to be on a go-slow again - the music I'm streaming is stuttering... any ideas why this might be happening?

Anyway I wanted to respond to the post from Jive Turkey - I can confirm that the daemon gets its settings from

~/.config/transmission-daemon/

I am having a problem though in that the transmission remote gui and web interface refuse to connect to the daemon if it's running as a service (the web interface says 'incorrect username or password' and the remote gui program says that I have not enabled the whitelist when I have).
I have to do 'sudo /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon stop' when the server boots, then start it manually with 'transmission-daemon', then I can connect to the daemon remotely. Again, any clues?

Also I tried to make the download folder for transmission writeable by the debian-transmission user but it says 'Operation not permitted', even when I use sudo.

I know I should probably create a separate thread for each of these issues but I thought as people who have posted here have set this up and might have a similar situation to me, they might be able to provide the answers directly.

Thanks for any help in advance.

[snapy]

thank you very much for this thread!

[doccc]

Great work man!

Next download the source code, open the tarball and compile and install it:

$ cd $HOME
$ wget http://mirrors.m0k.org/transmission/files/transmission-1.92.tar.bz2
$ tar xjvf transmission-1.92.tar.bz2
$ cd transmission-1.92
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall --pakdir "$HOME/Desktop" --backup=no --deldoc=yes \
  --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --default --pkgversion "1.92"
$ make distclean

And that is it! This gives you the newest version of a great BitTorrent program, perfect for downloading and sharing the latest versions of Ubuntu. Remember: Have Fun!!

I've done everything else up until here,I'm confused about this part can I have detailed instructions of how to please

Thanks,

Doccc

[mchlor]

excellent guide.

[s3v3nsins]

Sorry to dig up such an old thread, but I would like to know this

1. Does andrew.46's guide make an installation of transmission whereby the GTK frontend connects to the daemon at the default rpc port of 9091 ?

2. Does this installation ensure that even if the GTK front end is closed (not minimized to tray) the daemon will continue to run at the background and download files ?