DSM-G600, DNS-323 and TS-I300 Hack Forum

As some of you may have noticed, Transmission 1.3 has been released a couple of days ago.

What's new?

* the Clutch web interface is integrated
* blocklist support for the daemon
* you can add and remove trackers to single torrents
* support for Web seeds
* proxy support
* you can specify which files in a torrent to download, and issue priorities (command-line only for now)
* many bug fixes and optimizations


The developers made extensive changes "under the hood" of Transmission, and revamped the RPC communication system completely. Instead via sockets, server and client now communicate via JSON packets over HTTP.
Transmission has now a small, built-in HTTP server for internal communication as well as for the integrated Clutch web interface.

What does this mean for us NAS users?

With the new version, setup on the NAS changes in some ways. For example, if you only have lighttpd and PHP installed because of Transmission/Clutch, you won't need it anymore. Transmission does it all by itself.

While Transmission itself is backward-compatible, i.e. it can use the configuration files of the old 1.2x versions, I suggest you start clean with a new configuration folder for Transmission to prevent any problems (it has been changed internally anyway).

export TRANSMISSION_HOME=/mnt/HD_a2/.transmission

NOTE: Transmission automatically adds "-daemon" to the above path, and settings will be stored there instead.

This is included in the startup script and most won't need anything else.
If you ever intend to start Transmission directly via command-line, Telnet users have to add the above line to their fun_plug script, while SSH users add it to the /ffp/etc/profile file.

Transmission also needs to know where to find Clutch:

export CLUTCH_HOME=/ffp/share/transmission/web

Again, this is included in the startup script, but you need to set it manually when using the command-line (same as above).

Remote access for Clutch

Communication between the daemon and any client (command-line or Clutch) is done via HTTP. By default, only processes running in the same environment (in this case the NAS) can "talk" to the server. But, you may want to configure it so that you can access it remotely.

Setup is somewhat complicated though.

1. You need to tell Transmission which IPs are allowed to access it. This is done in the form of an ACL (access control list).
An ACL is a comma separated list of IPs with a preceding + or - sign indicating access or block:

+127.0.0.0,+72.90.0.0/16,-128.0.0.0/8

This example list gives access to the local interface (127.0.0.0), all IPs starting with 72.90., and blocks access for all IPs starting with 128.
If you want to access Clutch from different computers at different places, and their IPs often change, you'll have to provide full access with "+0.0.0.0/0" (but of course you may exclude certain IPs).

2. You can also provide credentials in the form of login and password to make access more secure. Clutch will then ask you for both at every login before it shows you the interface.

To setup both an ACL list and login credentials, the daemon has to be started at least once from the command-line.

1. Make sure the environment variables TRANSMISSION_HOME and CLUTCH_HOME are set on your shell (you can check with the command "export | grep HOME").
2. Type "transmission-daemon -h" It will show you all available options, including those for ACL, login and password
3. Type "transmission-daemon -f -t -u <username> -v <password> -a +0.0.0.0/0"

You should see some text about Transmission starting. If there are no error messages, you can quit Transmission by pressing Ctrl-C.

Note 1: As you might have noticed, there's the -b parameter for activating the blocklist feature. Check the manual ("man transmission-daemon") for further instructions.
Note 2: The --port option refers to the port transmission-remote and Clutch communicate with the server on. It also defines the port to access Clutch on. The default ist 9091. It is NOT the port for BitTorrent data (this is either set with transmission-remote or in the Clutch preferences).


Transmission saves all these settings in the /mnt/HD_a2/.transmission-daemon/settings.json file, so you won't have to do this everytime.

You can now start Transmission normally with the startup script in /ffp/start.

Type http://<your NAS IP>:9091/transmission/web to access Clutch.


Why is he still talking? I want to download it!

If you've skipped to here without reading the above stuff, please go back and read it.
I wrote it all down to keep support requests to a minimum later on. If you run into problems, however, don't hesitate to ask here, I'll always try to provide help if I can.

To keep it clean and organized, please direct questions regarding Transmission itself (slow speed, corrupt downloads or bugs you may find) to the Transmission developers at www.transmissionbt.com
I'm not a programmer on the team, I just provide the builds that run on the DNS-323 and the CH3SNAS.

You may also find answers to your questions in the old Transmission thread.

Downloads:

curl-7.18.1.tgz
Transmission 1.40

IMPORTANT: You need to install the latest version of ucLibc in order for Transmission to work correctly. You can find it at fonz' repository. You also need to reboot the NAS.

Download both packages above, then install them:

# funpkg -r Transmission-1.22-ffp0.5.tgz   (This will remove the old version, but keep all config files intact)
# funpkg -i curl-7.18.1.tgz                (only if you don't have it installed already)
# funpkg -i Transmission-1.40-1.tgz
# wget http://www.inreto.de/dns323/fun-plug/0.5/packages/uclibc-0.9.29-7.tgz
# funpkg -i uclibc-0.9.29-7.tgz
# reboot

Start Transmission with:

/ffp/start/transmission.sh start

Done!

Have fun with the new version and report problems and experiences here.



EDIT: Updated to v1.33. The devs fixed some minor memory leaks and crash problems with malformed torrents. This version doesn't require libintl anymore so you can savely uninstall that package if you like.

EDIT: Updated to v1.34. Another tiny bugfix release from the Transmission devs. No major changes to report :)

EDIT: Updated to v1.40. This one brings quite a few changes: Uses fewer resources, RPC server performs better and is more secure, lazy bitfields, more accurate bw limits etc.
For a complete list check the Transmission website.

Last edited by KyleK (2008-11-10 22:30:51)