John Mee – Some programmer in Sydney

Problem

You’re using transmission remotely and you don’t want to download every file in a particular torrent, just some of the files in it. (V1.34 web interface doesn’t implement this functionality).

Solution

Use transmission-remote to view and (de)select specific files.

Method

Show me the running torrents (and your id numbers for them)

transmission-remote -l

Show me the files in torrent 2 (and your id numbers for them)

transmission-remote -t 2 -f

Don’t download any of the files in torrent 2

transmission-remote -t 2 -G all

Download files 1 and 3 in torrent 2

transmission-remote -t 2 -g 1,3

See the transmission-remote man page for more detail.

Example

john@laptop:~$ transmission-remote -l
ID Done ETA Up Down Ratio Status Name
2 0% 17 hrs 0.0 15.6 0.0 Downloading Neighbours
john@laptop:~$ transmission-remote -t 2 -f
Neighbours (318 files):
# Done Priority Get Size Name
1: 0% Normal Yes 174.8 MB Neighbours/Pilot - [DVD]/001 - The Neighbours Chronicles - [DVD].avi
2: 0% Normal Yes 174.9 MB Neighbours/Season 1 - [DVD]/002 - The Stakeout - [DVD].avi
3: 0% Normal Yes 174.9 MB Neighbours/Season 1 - [DVD]/003 - The Robbery - [DVD].avi
john@laptop:~$ transmission-remote -t 2 -G all
localhost:9091 responded: "success"
john@laptop:~$ transmission-remote -t 2 -g 1,3
localhost:9091 responded: "success"
john@laptop:~$ transmission-remote -t 2 -f | head -7
Neighbours (318 files):
# Done Priority Get Size Name
1: 0% Normal Yes 174.8 MB Neighbours/Pilot - [DVD]/001 - The Neighbours Chronicles - [DVD].avi
2: 0% Normal No 174.9 MB Neighbours/Season 1 - [DVD]/002 - The Stakeout - [DVD].avi
3: 0% Normal Yes 174.9 MB Neighbours/Season 1 - [DVD]/003 - The Robbery - [DVD].avi
4: 0% Normal No 174.9 MB Neighbours/Season 1 - [DVD]/004 - Male Unbonding - [DVD].avi
5: 0% Normal No 174.8 MB Neighbours/Season 1 - [DVD]/005 - The Stock Tip - [DVD].avi


Problem

Transmission doesn’t include any scheduling functionality to start/stop/trottle torrents during the day/week.

Solution

Don’t run the gui client. Instead (or as well) invoke transmission-daemon from the command line and use crontab to apply the schedule via transmission-remote

Method

1. Install the transmission-cli package corresponding to your Operating System
2. Start transmission-daemon eg:
   transmission-daemon -f -g /home/torrentuser/transmission-config -w /home/torrentuser/incoming
3. Test it is running by opening a browser and visiting http://localhost:9091
4. Play with transmission-remote to get a feel for what you can do. eg: start and stop all torrents…
   transmission-remote -t all -s
transmission-remote -t all -S
5. Setup your schedule in Cron with crontab
   eg: to start all torrents at 2:02AM every day and stop them at 11:58AM…
   crontab -e
02 02 * * * /usr/bin/transmission-remote -t all -s
58 11 * * * /usr/bin/transmission-remote -t all -S
6. optional: You might also play with at for scheduling once off tasks