transmission-daemon won't start as a service

[m-dw]

I'm running transmission-daemon as a service, installed from the transmissionbt PPA. It was upgraded from 2.92 to 2.93 today, but the upgrade didn't complete. The software seems to have been installed, but the service refuses to start. After installation the message I get is this:

Setting up transmission-daemon (2.93-1ubuntu1~16.04.1ubuntu1) ...
Job for transmission-daemon.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status transmission-daemon.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript transmission-daemon, action "start" failed.
● transmission-daemon.service - Transmission BitTorrent Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2018-03-04 22:31:39 GMT; 26ms ago
  Process: 1152 ExecStart=/usr/bin/transmission-daemon -f --log-error (code=exited, status=217/USER)
 Main PID: 1152 (code=exited, status=217/USER)


Mar 04 22:31:39 srvbuntu systemd[1]: Starting Transmission BitTorrent Daemon...
Mar 04 22:31:39 srvbuntu systemd[1152]: transmission-daemon.service: Failed at step USER spawning /usr/bin/transmission-daemon: No such process
Mar 04 22:31:39 srvbuntu systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=217/USER
Mar 04 22:31:39 srvbuntu systemd[1]: Failed to start Transmission BitTorrent Daemon.
Mar 04 22:31:39 srvbuntu systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: Unit entered failed state.
Mar 04 22:31:39 srvbuntu systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
dpkg: error processing package transmission-daemon (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 transmission-daemon
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The daemon runs manually from the CLI invoked with sudo -u debian-transmission, so I'm guessing that systemd is having a problem dropping the privileges of the daemon after it starts. How can I fix this?

[marcosbl2]

Exact same error and versions, in my case I must use the sudo -u debian-transmission + config path for it to work manually, update never finish

sudo -u debian-transmission transmission-daemon -g /etc/transmission-daemon/

[o1dalex]

The same here.

If I change in /lib/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service user name from 'transmission' to 'debian-transmission' - it starts (the service is available for some time), but it stops by systemctl timeout.

[m-dw]

I hadn't tried that... yes I get the same symptom.

[Casperutz87]

Same problem here...

[auveele]

I've got the same problem since the last update to 2.93.
I tried to uninstall and purge the transmission packets, but the daemon still fails on start.

[greven2]

Same here, hoping for a solution

[hooghs]

Yeah, also the same issue, appeared with the latest update.

[mizled2]

Just wanted to comment and say I am also having this issue

[pperp]

Ahh...so I'm not the only one. Same issue, same version here.