transmission-remote commands are erroring with Unexpected response: <h1>401: Unauthorized</h1>Unauthorized User: deflate, gzip

Question

I'm running the latest Raspbian distribution and just installed the transmission packages.

However, whenever I run a transmission-remote command - say, to alter some base configurations - I keep getting the same error:

$ transmission-remote -DU -c required -p 9091 -w ~/torrents
Unexpected response: <h1>401: Unauthorized</h1>Unauthorized User: deflate, gzip

I can't find any good docs or tutorials out there to troubleshoot with, and I suspect I missed out on a step in the initial setup process which has resulted in this error. I'll already tried setting a username/password, i.e.

$ transmission-remote --auth myusername:mypassword

which succeeded, but it's still throwing the same "Unexpected response" error for all other commands.

Starting transmission-daemon doesn't work either:

$ service transmission-daemon start
[....] Starting bittorrent daemon: transmission-daemonstart-stop-daemon: unable to set gid to 110 (Operation not permitted)
 failed!

Does anyone have an idea of why this might be happening?

Cicatrix

Answer 1

It happened the same thing with me, what I did:

First off, remove all transmission in your distro;

apt-get remove transmission-daemon

Second, obvious, install again transmission, but You need to install transmission-daemon tand the packages like transmission-remote, that's what you will use.

apt-get install transmission-daemon

Stop the process:

/etc/init.d/transmission-daemon stop

Desactived the AUTH:

nano /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

edit this line:

rpc-authentication-required: false

Restart the process:

/etc/init.d/transmission-daemon restart/start

Execute this:

transmission-remote -l 

If it work, none message will be shown. Now, you use a magnet link for test:

transmission-remote -a 'Magnet link'

Success message:

localhost:9091/transmission/rpc/ responded: "success"

Links:

http://www.webupd8.org/2009/12/setting-up-transmission-remote-gui-in.html https://trac.transmissionbt.com/wiki

Jadotville

Still not working :( When I run sudo /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon restart, I get an [ ok ] Restarting bittorrent daemon: transmission-daemon.. But running transmission-remote -l still gives me the same Unexpected response... error. – Cicatrix

Ah, I managed to work it out. It turns out you have to stop transmission-daemon before editing the file, otherwise it will overwrite the file when you restart it. – Cicatrix

Yeah, aahh.. First you need stop the transmission and after rewrite the file right? Do u did it?! got it? What's happened now? – Jadotville

Yup, I got it to work in the end. I've just suggested an edit to your answer :) – Cicatrix

btw, you just need to reload. No need to restart. – Refugio

transmission has started but it is stuck at 0% download – Metts

do not restart the service, otherwise the configuration will be reset – Cockpit

Answer 2

transmission-remote --auth myusername:mypassword -l

this worked for me... just all in one line... log in plus your command...

Laureenlaurel

Answer 3

Note that --auth has to be before other options - not made obvious in the documentation or command-line help!

Idomeneus

Answer 4

I know this is old but I did the same silly thing

Make note of the "sudo"

sudo service transmission-daemon stop

edit your file settings.json file

sudo service transmission-daemon start

Also you have to use the --auth on every command so in your case you would put

transmission-remote --auth myusername:mypassword -DU -c required -p 9091 -w ~/torrents

Livery

Answer 5

Or you can just start it like:

transmission-daemon --no-auth

But make sure you stop it prior to running the command above. To stop it:

/etc/init.d/transmission-daemon stop

Of course, now everybody in your network can access your daemon, so make sure you know what you're doing.

Adrieneadrienne

Answer 6

this tutorial for transmission command

to download torrent link

transmission-remote -n 'transmission:transmission' -a eos-amd64-amd64-id-3.1.7-iso.torrent

to limit upload 5 kB/s

transmission-remote -n 'transmission:transmission' -u 5

for limit download 10MB/s

transmission-remote -n 'transmission:transmission' -d 10000

to check config transmission

transmission-remote -n 'transmission:transmission' -si

to check current session/status torrent

transmission-remote -n 'transmission:transmission' -st

Hakon

Answer 7

transmission-remote 127.0.0.1:9091 --auth=a:b {-l} {options}

SOURCE:

• Bad behaviour when transmission-remote authentication fails
• https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/174

Wack