How to download torrents on Raspberry Pi

2019-08-28 | 298 words

If you use Raspberry Pi as a server, turning it into a torrent client/server is a great idea - it’s always online, so you can download day and night.

Installation and configuration of Transmission program

It’s simple, just install the Transmission program. We will do everything through the console, so even if you don’t have a desktop environment installed and control Raspberry Pi via SSH, it doesn’t matter.

sudo apt-get install transmission-daemon

After installation, it will start as a service. We temporarily turn it off with the command:

sudo systemctl stop transmission-daemon

And we start configuring. Open the configuration JSON file in your favorite editor nano:

sudo nano /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

Make a few changes:

Save the file with the Ctrl + X combination, then Y. And we’re done.

PS. Personally, I created a subfolder called downloads, i.e. /home/pi/share/downloads. And I changed the permissions on it so that Transmission could write to it. I gave generous permissions again - we are on a local network.

chmod 777 -R /home/pi/share/downloads

What now?

Now we have the Transmission torrent client running on Raspberry Pi. We will control it through the web interface. On your computer or mobile device, enter the address of our Raspberry Pi on the local network:

http://raspberrypi:9091/transmission/

Enter the chosen username and password and we’re there. Start the torrent by clicking the first button, enter its URL and that’s it. In the picture, you can see me downloading a Linux distribution completely legally. What did you think??