Install Transmission Torrent Server

Quite often you hear the word “torrent” or “torrenting” and think stealing. Well yes sadly this amazing technology has been turned into something used to steal but that is no where near 100% the truth. Torrent servers are a great place to share legal information, or large files such as Linux ISO’s. We here at The Server Admin have another project called LinuxMirrors.net in which we offer torrent hosting for Linux ISO’s. We use Transmission as our torrent platorm of choice, and this is what we do to help share.

With a torrent host, you do not need a public facing system/server/vps, all you need is a device and a internet connection and your off to the races.

Now because we are only hosting legal ISO’s you should be able to host your torrent server with any provider. We are going to assume at this time, you have a vps/server with a provider because you want a full 24/7/365 system only with that killer highspeed connection. So lets get going.

With the above statement, we are going to set this up with Debian/Ubuntu.

When I am issued or setup a new system the first thing I do is change my root password, as is often sent via email or displayed in a browser window. Plus lets be honest those autogenerated passwords are insane to remember!

passwd

Now let us get a firewall setup right quick as well.

apt install ufw
ufw allow 22
ufw allow 80
ufw allow 443
ufw allow 9091
ufw allow 51413
ufw enable

Now lets update and upgrade our system.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

After the updates, we now need to install the transmission torrent server.

apt-get install transmission-daemon

Now after the install completes, stop the transmission daemon.

systemctl stop transmission-daemon

Now its time to make a few changes to the configuration file.

nano /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

You’ll need to adjust several settings:

• "download-dir": Set the directory where the downloaded files will be stored.
• "rpc-username" and "rpc-password": Set the username and password for remote access.
• "rpc-whitelist": Define which IP addresses can access the web interface.

Save the changes and exit the text editor.

Now lets start back up the transmission daemon.

systemctl start transmission-daemon

Accessing the web interface.

Transmission comes with a web interface that can be accessed through a browser:

http://your_server_ip:9091

Replace your_server_ip with your server’s actual IP address. Log in with the credentials you have set in the configuration file.

That is it, you now have a torrent server running where you can now share files.

Happy Torrenting!! Legally of coarse!!