Installing Clutch, the web GUI for Transmission

 

This guide is deprecated!

As of version 1.30, transmission contains the clutch web ui by default, so there is no need to separately install it. Just get your transmission running on your MBWE and point your web browser to http://your-mbwe-ip:9091 (if you're using the default rpc port) to use it.

 

However, I'll keep the guide up in case someone needs it for an older version of transmission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Now you have probably transmission up and running on your MBWE (if you don't, head back to the Installing Transmission part).

If you have used any other torrent client on any graphical operating system, you will probably find it a bit awkward to use unix shell commands to control and monitor your downloads.

No worries, there is an excellent GUI called Clutch available to be used with transmission. The GUI is web-based so you'll be using it with a web browser.

 

Also, clutch is really simple to install.

Prerequisites

Enabled SSH access.

A text editor and the know-how to use it. I recommend installing nano, but vi will also do just fine.

A web server on your MBWE. You should have lighttpd on it by default.

The how-to

  1. Make sure you are in superuser mode.

    # su

  2. Install PHP. If you have installed it previously, you can skip this step.

    You can install PHP either by using optware or by building it from source. Again, if you have upgraded your MBWE to firware version 2.00.15 or newer, you probably don't have a c compiler anymore and are forced to go the optware way.

    Because all the good guides on building PHP from source seem to be down as of writing (drop me a note if you find one), I suggest you go the optware way. I have built PHP from source, but unfortunately don't recall all the steps required to make it work. Sorry.

     

    So:

    # ipkg install php php-fcgi

    After installation is done, you'll have to edit your /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf. First find this line:

    index-file.names = ( "nasMaster.pl" )

    And change it into this:

    index-file.names = ( "nasMaster.pl", "index.html", "index.php" )

    Then find this:

    "nasMaster.pl" => ((  "socket" => "/tmp/lighttpd.fcgi.socket",
  "check-local" => "disable",
))

    And change it into this:

    "nasMaster.pl" => ((  "socket" => "/tmp/lighttpd.fcgi.socket",
  "check-local" => "disable",
)),
".php" => (( "bin-path" => "/opt/bin/php-fcgi",
  "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket",
))

    Note that if you built PHP from source, the path to php-fcgi (or php-cgi) will be different.

    Now restart lighttpd with

    # /etc/init.d/lighttpd.sh restart

    You can test PHP by creating a test script:

    # echo "<? phpinfo();?>" > /usr/www/lib/test.php

    ...and navigating with your web browser of choice to http://[path-to-your-mbwe]/test.php. The page should output information on PHP.

  3. Install Clutch. You can do it two ways, either using optware or just by downloading the source tarball and extracting it into your www document root.

    If you installed PHP using optware, you'll probably want to install clutch that way, too. If you built PHP from source, I suggest using the tarball directly.

    First, the optware way:

    # ipkg install clutch
# ln -s /opt/share/www/lighttpd/clutch /usr/www/lib/clutch
# chmod -R 777 /opt/share/www/lighttpd/clutch/remote/data
# echo /root/.config/transmission/daemon/socket > /opt/share/www/lighttpd/clutch/remote/data/socket.txt

    Done. Note the path to the transmission socket file in the last step; if you're not using the default location, you'll need to use your location here.

     

    Next, the tarball way:

    # cd /tmp
# wget http://www.clutchbt.com/Files/Clutch-0.4.tar.gz
# tar xvfz Clutch-0.4.tar.gz
# mv Clutch-0.4 /usr/www/lib/clutch
# chmod -R 777 /usr/www/lib/clutch/remote/data
# echo /root/.config/transmission/daemon/socket > /usr/www/lib/clutch/remote/data/socket.txt
# rm Clutch-0.4.tar.gz

    Done. Again, note the path to the transmission socket. Also, check from the Clutch homepage that youäre using the latest version (0.4 as of writing).

  4. You're done. Navigate to the address http://[path-to-your-mbwe]/clutch with your web browser to see your Clutch WebUI.

     

    Note that if you're running the torrent_helper script (see Adding extra functionality on Transmission), transmission-daemon isn't running if you don't have any active downloads.

    For further usage information on Clutch, see the Clutch wiki.

     

    Also, you might consider starting lighttpd on demand in order to free up a lot of memory (at least compared to the total memory of your MBWE) when not using it.

Continue to Adding extra functionality on Transmission