Transmission will not start on boot

[TravisT]

Just updated my freenas today to 8.0.3 RC3 x64. I also decided to make transmission work so I could use it as a torrent server.

I found several install threads which all seemed to have the same procedures. I followed them and got everything installed, but transmission wouldn't start on it's own. I started manually and could not connect because of the whitelist issue. The settings.json file was not saving where I listed for it to save in the /conf/base/etc/rc.conf file. I kept seeing errors in the logs that said:

Code:

Couldn't save temporary file "/root/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json.tmp.IszrtZ": Read-only file system (bencode.c:1712)

I then manually started transmission with the -g option and told it where to save the file. The settings.json file was created and I could edit it. After doing so, I was able to connect to the web browser.

It doesn't seem that my /conf/base/etc/rc.conf file is being read on startup. I also noticed that there were a couple threads about delaying the startup of transmission, but the file it references (/conf/base/etc/local/rc.d/transmission) don't exist on my system.

I also saw something mentioned about a multimedia build of freenas, but don't know what this is referring to.

What am I missing here?

 

[jorevf]

transmission

Well, the file should be in /conf/base/etc/rc.d and it's copied to /etc/rc.d during start of freeNAS.

This is how I did it..

created the transmission group and user

copy web transmission directory to /usr/local/share
bin files to /usr/local/bin
home directory to /conf/base/etc/transmission
start script to /conf/base/etc/rc.d

added home path and some of the working directory things into rc.conf in /conf/base/etc

changed owner of the transmissions files and directories to transmission / wheel

besides adding the lib files.

And now when it reboots, it works just fine..

 

[jorevf]

Well, the file should be in /conf/base/etc/rc.d and it's copied to /etc/rc.d during start of freeNAS.

This is how I did it..

created the transmission group and user

copy web transmission directory to /usr/local/share
bin files to /usr/local/bin
home directory to /conf/base/etc/transmission
start script to /conf/base/etc/rc.d

added home path and some of the working directory things into rc.conf in /conf/base/etc

changed owner of the transmissions files and directories to transmission / wheel

besides adding the lib files.

And now when it reboots, it works just fine..

And I also did a little script that updates transmissions files into /conf/base/etc/transmission/home so that it resumes / restart / starts waiting torrent files incase of a reboot..
That script is run via crontab 4 times every hour..

 

[TravisT]

Thanks for the reply. I really don't want to make too many changes to the inner-workings of freenas, mainly because I rely on it to work without any problems and I don't know linux (or freebsd) very well. I'd love for this to be more integrated into FreeNAS, and I know it's in the works.

I'm really looking for a torrent server that I can easily map to my windows shares so the files can be managed from the windows side of it without much if any interaction with the command line. Think WAF. I also recently stumbled across flexget, and really like the idea of this, although I haven't used it yet.

Any suggestions?

 

[LAYGO]

After finally getting Transmission going, let me tell you it meets all your requirements!
- windows shares: very plausible, I took a cue from ProtoSD & the Serviio in a jail tut to get that done (there is a caveat, see below)
- managing from windows: Transmission-remote-gui is awesome. It's nearly identical to uTorrent except for the ability to label & has a less flexible scheduler

CAVEAT:
Something I stumbled upon while setting up Transmission in a jail & mapped to a share is that since I'm doing it from a Jail, accessing the file from the freenas share changes the owner:group if you touch the file. I noticed it when I modified the settings.json from the share vs nano & Transmission failed to start because of a permission issue on settings.json. Keep an eye on your log files.

From your error, it sounds like a permission issue, but that it's read only (nature of the beast w/FreeNAS) & I noticed Transmission touches the settings.json each time its run. If it can't write to it, it's probably not allowing it to start.

I can manage Transmission from remote gui, local/wan web gui, and an Android appp: Transdroid.

 

[TravisT]

That's good to hear. I would love to get this going and working well, but I'm getting frustrated because of my little knowledge of linux. I ended up setting up a ubuntu vm on my ESXi box so I could mess around a little without screwing up freenas. I got transmission installed, along with flexget. Both are working by themselves, and I'm pretty sure I can get the two to work well together.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to mount ubuntu to my freenas AD integrated shares. I want the torrent files/folders to be accessible from windows so I don't have to mess with linux all the time. Right now, I'm at the point where the folder is mounted, but I can't access it (permission denied). This seems to work in the gui just fine, but not in the command line. If I can get this to work and setup transmission/flexget to read/save from this mounted share, then I think I'll be golden.

That seems like a big if right now...