Alternate Transmission Web GUI

Note

These directions are way out of date. Do not use these! I have since switched to a different process or tool since writing this particular article, but keeping it up for posterities sake, until I can properly replace it.

What have I changed to you ask? Anything building I’ve tried switching over to Ansible to handle in a much more programatic way. Others might be tools that I just don’t use at all anymore, due to changing DNS hosts.

The command line tools for Transmission also come with a directory that runs a web-based GUI for Transmission. Not only does this allow running a torrent program on a headless server, but say you have hardware that the graphics card isn’t too quick. Rather than install the GUI Desktop version, install the command line version! Plus, if you run a reverse proxy web server in front of it, you can access it from anywhere.

Using Kettu’s Web GUI for Transmission

First, clone endor/kettu’s custom-built web GUI

git clone https://github.com/endor/kettu.git ~/git/kettu

Note

I keep all of my cloned git repos inside of one, singular directory:

~/git

This way, I don’t have to hunt all over my system for where my repos are located and it makes it easier to keep them updated. Then, I symlink the library to wherever the developer wants or requires it or where its easiest to run.

The other way of handing this is to clone your PROGRAMS into the /opt directory - so /opt/couchpotato, /opt/NzbDrone, /opt/plexpy and so on. Then clone your working repos for projects seperately into ~/git/[repo]

Transmission Web GUI File Locations

Next, we need to link the clone repo to the spot that Transmission expects. Since I don’t care for the look of the web GUI that comes with the tool, I just delete the entire directory, then symlink the github repo in its place, but naming it web.

Note

Transmission’s web GUI is located at /usr/share/transmission/web in unix systems.

If you’re using macOS and their main Transmission App downloaded from their site - the Transmission GUI app, NOT the Command Line tool - the web files are located at /Applications/Transmission.app/Contents/Resources/web/, Because even their full-fledged desktop tool comes with a web GUI.

First, before making any changes, its always a good idea to stop transmission before doing ANYTHING to it. It not only will revert any changes made to its config file if its still running, but if it does that, who knows how mad it’ll get over its web GUI files going missing.

sudo service transmission-daemon stop

Then, we remove the existing web directory, and then symlink-in the replacement.

sudo rm -r /usr/share/transmission/web
sudo ln ~/git/kettu /usr/share/transmission/web
sudo service transmission-daemon start

Then, of course, confirm that the web interface has changed over. Of which, it usually is running at http://localhost:9091