Hi all

By way of intoduction: I am no techie but, having run a medium traffic site on my own VPS for 12 months, I guess I’m not a totally tech-dummy either. My VPS is Centos 5.5 and I do most admin with Webmin + a little ssh console stuff. The site’s primary purpose is to host a fairly large MediaWiki installation – software I am now fairly proficient with. VPS is in Ireland and I’m in UK running a small network of windows and linux boxes for different things.

A few months ago I started to host a mirror on the vps. It requires regular updates from large zip files provided exclusively via the bittorrent protocol. I was used to downloading torrents to my home network and began by doing the same with the big zip files and then uploading to the VPS – total waste of bandwidth and time. Enter a clear need for suitable headless server bittorrent software with remote admin for the VPS.

It turns out Centos is NOT the best when it comes to the cutting-edge stuff but I’m stuck with it. I started with the Standard Bittorrent client. Soon became fed up with no Magnet facility or workable remote Web or other GUI – plus other niggles. Tried to graduate to Rtorrent + RUtorrent Web UI. Won’t bore you with the time that wasted – though it had to do with with the near impossibility of compiling Rtorrent with RPC capability on Centos. Anyway, here I am with a working Transmission installation – but issues.

I have the daemon running and the web UI working OK. I can download the files that triggered the need in the first place very well (12Mb in about 30 seconds when unrestricted !!). My problem is that the installation does not seem to want to to do any seeding and neither will it resolve Magnet links. I can’t find any clues in the logs either. The Transmission log simply reports that the seeding has timed-out after the set interval of inactivity and the torrent is paused. If I download the same files to my home machines there is plenty of seeding activity going on so it’s not that there is no demand.

Also, loading a magnet link gets stuck on ‘retrieving metadata’ at 0.00% forever.

Whilst I can currently use it for what I need it’s hardly in the spirit of p2p protocol not to share ANY of it.

Any pointers, observation, suggestions welcome.

Source: New installation problems – Transmission