TWEAK: Transmission Blackhole Directory

Now that our transmission torrent client has queuing capabilities, how about adding a few more tweaks on the side. This post aims to add a couple more tweaks to those who want to modify the behavior of the transmission torrent client, namely [1] add torrents paused and [2] watch or monitor a "blackhole" directory. Of course, these tweaks are applicable to the transmission torrent client in general, but this feature is purposed for the Popcorn Hour C-200 Network Media Jukebox (PCH-C200).

The tweaks above are dependent on having the LTU 0.76 package installed via CSI and (optional) queuing of torrents. Instead of the LTU package, you may substitute it with another version of transmission from CSI. And although optional, this tweak works best with transmission queuing script.

Add .torrent(s) paused. By default, torrents are started as they are added. You can, however, override this behavior. You can add the directive "start-added-torrents" and give this a value of "false". Locate settings.json for transmission. This is usually inside your home directory under a folder .transmission.

On the PCH-C200, this depends on the version of transmission but if you are running version 2.33 that came with the LTU 0.76 package it is located on the path /share/.transmission. Stop the transmission torrent client first, then edit the file settings.json.

Add this line:

"start-added-torrents" : false

Blackhole directory. If you have automated scripts that download torrents, you will want transmission to automatically download those torrents. The way for transmission to do that is to monitor a directory. In transmission lingo, the term used to refer to this directory is the "blackhole" directory.

The directive "watch-dir" points the transmission torrent client to watch which directory. Mix this with "watch-dir-enabled" and give it a value of "true". When these directives are present, transmission will watch and monitor the directory for .torrent files.

Again on the PCH-C200, this depends on the version of transmission but if you are running version 2.33 that came with the LTU 0.76 package it is located on the path /share/.transmission. Stop the transmission torrent client first, then edit the file settings.json.

Add these lines:

"watch-dir": "/share/.transmission/blackhole",
"watch-dir-enabled": true

The directory /share/.transmission/blackhole can be another directory of your liking. It is just easier and less complex to put transmission related files under one folder. Also, this directory does not exist by default, so it needs to be created.

After making the changes above, you may start transmission torrent client. You will know that the above tweaks work when you list the contents of the blackhole directory. The .torrent files that have been downloaded or copied there are now renamed .torrent.added. And when you check the transmission via its transmission-remote binary or its web interface, the newly added torrents are queued (paused).