Headless Transmission on Mac OS X

INSTALL.md

1. Go to https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action and search for "Command line tools" and choose the one for your Mac OSX

2. Go to http://brew.sh/ and enter the one-liner into the Terminal, you now have brew installed (a better Mac ports)

3. Install transmission-daemon with

   brew install transmission
   

4. Copy the startup config for launchctl with

   ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/transmission/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
   

   If transmission isn't starting, you also might need to modify the startup plist file:

   ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.transmission.plist at the line:

   <key>NetworkState</key> to <key>RunAtLoad</key>

5. Start transmission (will then always auto-start) with

   launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.transmission.plist
   

6. Change settings (I set rpc auth to false) with

   nano /usr/local/var/transmission/settings.json
   

7. Visit http://127.0.0.1:9091/transmission/web/ and you're done

How to change the settings? The file /usr/local/var/transmission/settings.json doesn't seem to exist?

First start the daemon, it will then create a settings file in /Users/userID/.config/transmission-daemon/

Edit: Moved the change settings step down

Hi,

My transmission daemon isn't starting. When I try to start it manually (launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.transmission.plist) I get:

/usr/local/Cellar/transmission/2.84/homebrew.mxcl.transmission.plist: Operation already in progress

Any guesses? I've changed to "RunAtLoad".

Is it possible to use the GUI Transmission app to control the daemon?

@joaodrp same problem, transmission not starting by launchctl. But transmission-daemon started manually is working fine.

First of all i got:

13/08/15 22:44:05,359 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (homebrew.mxcl.transmission) The NetworkState key is no longer respected. Please remove it.

Ok, valid plist is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>homebrew.mxcl.transmission</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/usr/local/opt/transmission/bin/transmission-daemon</string>
      <string>--foreground</string>
      <string>--config-dir</string>
      <string>/usr/local/var/transmission/</string>
      <string>--log-info</string>
      <string>--logfile</string>
      <string>/usr/local/var/transmission/transmission-daemon.log</string>
    </array>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
  </dict>
</plist>

Ok, this is great, but any way i could have my existing transmission install work with this?

You could also do this with the following command: brew services start transmission

@dannymichel You could use the remote GUI.

awesome, thanks!

This was very helpful, thanks! Worked perfectly right out of the box.

Xcode command line tools can be installed by running xcode-select --install. Even better, the Homebrew install script will do it via the same method if they don't exist. Therefore the first two steps can be condensed into just one (as seen on brew.sh):

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Thanks for the guide. 👍

Thank you a lot for this guide, was struggling a lot with rtorrent on OSX before I saw this. Thanks!

Thanks a lot, It was very helpful to me.

Much appreciated.