transmission-daemon ignoring settings.json

Question

Since I upgraded my ubuntu server installation from 16.04 to 16.10, the transmission-daemon service seems to be ignoring settings.json.

The symptom is that the web interface gives me:

403: Forbidden

Unauthorized IP Address.

Either disable the IP address whitelist or add your address to it.

If you're editing settings.json, see the 'rpc-whitelist' and 'rpc-whitelist-enabled' entries.

but in /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json we have, unchanged from before the upgrade:

"rpc-whitelist": "127.0.0.1,192.168.23.*",
"rpc-whitelist-enabled": true,

/var/lib/transmission-daemon/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json also points to /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json:

jast@achilles:/etc/transmission-daemon$ sudo ls -l /var/lib/transmission-daemon/.config/transmission-daemon/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep  5 12:56 settings.json -> /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

syslog after doing service transmission-daemon restart (I think it should usually be also tellung me what ips it adds to the whitelist:

Jan  7 13:16:37 achilles transmission-daemon[4087]: Closing transmission session... done.
Jan  7 13:16:38 achilles transmission-daemon[5025]: [2017-01-07 13:16:38.552] UDP Failed to set receive buffer: requested 4194304, got 425984 (tr-udp.c:84)
Jan  7 13:16:38 achilles transmission-daemon[5025]: [2017-01-07 13:16:38.552] UDP Failed to set send buffer: requested 1048576, got 425984 (tr-udp.c:95)
Jan  7 13:16:38 achilles transmission-daemon[5025]: [2017-01-07 13:16:38.552] UDP Failed to set receive buffer: requested 4194304, got 425984 (tr-udp.c:84)
Jan  7 13:16:38 achilles transmission-daemon[5025]: [2017-01-07 13:16:38.552] UDP Failed to set send buffer: requested 1048576, got 425984 (tr-udp.c:95)

So where is it trying to get its config from now?

Solution 1

After updating 16.04 LTS, systemd would not load my config file for transmission-daemon from the correct location.

I found a workaround at: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=734467

I tried the drop-in *.conf file in /etc/systemd/system/transmission.service.d/ to override ExecStart. However, using ps -ef | grep transmission I could see the wrong config location was still being used after reloads and restarts.

Reluctantly, I edited

/lib/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service

to include the correct path by appending

-g /etc/transmission-daemon

to the ExecStart line.

[Unit]
Description=Transmission BitTorrent Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
User=debian-transmission
Type=notify
ExecStart=/usr/bin/transmission-daemon -f --log-error -g /etc/transmission-daemon
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Solution 2

I had the same problem just now; transmission-daemon.service decided to ignore my rpc-whitelist for whatever reason after I changed the user of the daemon. Jim Ladd's answer above is somewhat on the right track but editing systemd config files under /lib/systemd is a really bad idea because those edits wouldn't survive package upgrades. The correct way to edit a systemd config is to use systemd edit foo.service (which creates an override file in /etc/systemd/system/foo.service.d that works in conjunction with the existing config) or systemd edit --full foo.service (which creates /etc/systemd/system/foo.service that completely replaces the /lib/systemd/ version). To replace the ExecStart line, your override file should look like this:

# /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d/override.conf
[Service]
ExecStart=  # Clear existing ExecStart
ExecStart=/usr/bin/transmission-daemon -f --log-error -g /etc/transmission-daemon

Note however that overriding ExecStart isn't even necessary. transmission-daemon recognizes the TRANSMISSION_HOME env var, which works the same as -g, --config-dir. So, an easier override:

# A simpler and more robust /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d/override.conf
[Service]
Environment=TRANSMISSION_HOME=/etc/transmission-daemon

Solution 3

I had the same issue after upgrading from 16.04 to 18.04. @JimLadd's answer worked for me but I just wanted to add that you need to restart the daemon after editing the file using:

systemctl daemon-reload

Solution 4

This worked for me after latest apt update losing location of config file with:

Description: Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish (development branch)

Release: 22.04

Instructions from this site:

Install Transmission Bittorrent Client on Ubuntu 15.x

Modify the transmission systemd script variables to use the right settings.json file (updated and fixed)

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d/local.conf

Add these lines to /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d/local.conf:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/transmission-daemon -f --log-error -g /etc/transmission-daemon

Ctrl+X, Y and Enter to Save

thanks to Alessandro for the suggestion.

View more solutions

Comments

[Phillip -Zyan K Lee- Stockmann]

can you - for future reference in case the cited source is changed/removed - please add a relevant excerpt from your link?

[4ae1e1]

This is on the right track but an unsustainable overkill. See my answer at askubuntu.com/a/1138789/151158 for a simpler and idiomatic approach.

[miceagol]

This should be the accepted answer! I also had to add a line defining the user in override.conf, since I'm running Transmission using a different user than standard: User=username.

[FredericB]

The problem stills happening on transmission-daemon/stable,stable 2.94-2+deb10u2 amd64 (debian 10) but your solution too :)

[David]

Hello. Since Ubuntu 22.04 does not exist yet this can not be an answer. Sorry.

[Mike Latta]

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish will be released on April 21, 2022. I'm currently running the development branch as I stated in my post. I'm not having any issues with running the latest version of TransmissionBT after following the instructions I found and noted. in my post.