Running Transmission on a headless machine

If you can give a clear description of the steps required for an undocumented platform, and provide a sample start/stop script, please open a ticket (set Component to Wiki).

Setup

1. After setting up your server and configuring it properly, you should install transmission-daemon either from source, by downloading one of the Binaries or using your favorite package manager. Check if you can start transmission-daemon?.
2. Now we'll set up a new user called "transmission". For the sake of security you shouldn't set a password. Try:

   $ adduser --disabled-password transmission
   

3. Switch to the new user's shell and start transmission by calling

   $ sudo su transmission
   

   (or without sudo if you're root).
4. Now start transmission by calling:

   $ transmission-daemon -f
   

   Shut down the application after a few seconds by pressing CRTL-C.
5. Configure it using your favorite text editor (see below)
6. Copy the appropriate init script for your platform to their appropriate location
7. Check that the new user's home folder is owned by the user transmission

Configuration

There are two configuration files you can edit:

• The init script (read the respective wiki page for more information)
• Transmission settings.json file (eg. /home/transmission/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json )

init script

Normally, there is no need to modify this file. However if you don't want to run transmission-daemon as user 'transmission', you'll need to change USERNAME to whatever user you want Transmission to run in.

If you've installed the Web Interface in a non standard location, you can set that path here too.

settings.json

Note: Only if you've run Transmission once (and Transmission is closed) the configuration directory and files will be created. As mentioned in Setup, point 4.

Normally, all settings are good-to-go out of the box. However, you'll want to look at setting a speed limit for your connection, and maybe you want to have Transmission downloading to a different location (default: /home/transmission/Downloads). Have a look at the Editing Configuration Files page.

Using Transmission

You can use transmission in two ways now:

• Use your system's init cli to start or stop Transmission
• Let your system start Transmission on boot

Have a look at the Scripts page for more functionality.

Troubleshooting

Failed to daemonize: Permission denied

Make sure that /dev/null has write permissions for the user you are running Transmission as.