If you’re using transmission’s web interface to manage your torrent downloads, and you are doing this remotely (from outside your LAN), you might want to add some privacy.
As previously posted there are ways to use magnet links with transmission’s web interface. This webinterface works well when you are on your local network aka LAN and don’t have to fear prying eyes.
The moment you’re using the transdroid android app or your laptop in a coffee shop the commands and responses of your transmission daemon at home can be read by anyone.
Luckily the transdroid android app offers an SSL option. All you have to do is configure a proxy on your transmission daemon machine.
Here is how:
Install nginx (a lightweight http/https server):
chromium asks for permission to open a magnet link i posted a how to on a similar solution about one and a half years ago. this time we configure xdg-open to do the same.
note: if you are using ubuntu you might want to try the solution of the previous post. the approach discussed here was needed for a gentoo system, which comes with xdg-open part of xdg-utils.
the setup is as follows:
we have a remote server that runs transmission. the desktop system runs gnome.
the use case: we click a magnet link on the desktop system and the torrents starts downloading on the remote transmission server.
first we need to make a default application that we can hand our magnet link to:
we use the script we know from my previous post:
#!/bin/bash
test -z $1 && echo "need magnet link!
$0 <magnet link>" && exit -1
HOST=127.0.0.1 #YourRemoteHostNameOrIP
PORT=9091 #YourPort(default is 9091)
USER=User
PASS=pass
LINK="$1"
# set true if you want every torrent to be paused initially
#PAUSED="true"
PAUSED="false"
SESSID=$(curl --silent --anyauth --user $USER:$PASS "http://$HOST:$PORT/transmission/rpc" | sed 's/.*<code>//g;s/<\/code>.*//g')
curl --silent --anyauth --user $USER:$PASS --header "$SESSID" "http://$HOST:$PORT/transmission/rpc" -d "{\"method\":\"torrent-add\",\"arguments\":{\"paused\":${PAUSED},\"filename\":\"${LINK}\"}}"
put this script where you like, we will refer here to /home/user/Scripts/magnetLinkTransfer.sh, make it executable, and configure it according to your transmission setup on your remote machine. you might also need to install ‘curl’, which is used by this script.
second we need to define this new ‘application’ in /usr/share/applications/:
add the file “magnet.desktop” in the folder /usr/share/applications/ with the following content:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Magnet
Type=Application
Comment=Open a magnet link remotly with the help of a script
Exec=/home/user/Scripts/magnetLinkTransfer.sh %U
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/magnet;
lastly we need to add our new ‘application’ in “.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list”. add ‘x-scheme-handler/magnet=magnet.desktop’ to the default applications in that file, like this:
[Default Applications]
# there might be more other default applications defined, leave them unchanged.
x-scheme-handler/magnet=magnet.desktop
that should be it! now when you click a link in your browser it should either work, or ask you if it is ok to start “xdg-open magnet:…”, as seen in the picture. you may set the check box to avoid future confirmations.
Transdroid Screenshot on ICS (Android 4.0) i’m using bittorrent for downloading. more precisely the transmission daemon on my home server for the heavy lifting (downloading torrents). to administer the downloads the web frontend is perfect. in the background runs the transmission daemon which handles the torrents and accepts requests of all sorts of clients. you can even pass magnet links you clicked, from your desktop to the remote daemon with a little hacking.
To get the same comfort for your android device (phone or tablet), you need an app. i’m using transdroid, which currently is NOT available in the google play store (former android market). get the latest transdroid apk here. Transdroid download link Before you install transdroid you might want to read a little about the app on the transdroid website. Further you need to allow apps from ‘unknown sources’ in your android settings. Download the app via the link above or the QR-code (get a qr-code reader here).
i’m using transmission for my regular bittorrent needs. it has a nice simple interface and can even be run as a daemon on a server. therefor it even offers a nice looking web interface.
Note: if you are running gentoo or a system that uses the xdg-utils with xdg-open, you might want to look at this howto.
since my working machine is not always running but my server is, this is where transmission is set up. Transmission Web Interface
the web interface provides a nice mask to setup your torrents. you can upload a .torrent file (to your remote machine) or just an URL of a torrent or most recently a magnet link. this is very handy since you don’t need to handle any .torrent files locally. just copy that link and you are done.
when you are running a torrent client directly on the machine you pick out your torrents clicking on the magnet link will most likely start the download immediately without having to copy that link. this kind of comfort was missing with the remote version of transmission.
