[guide] upgrading transmission to 2.93

hello,
many torrent sites are banning the transmission client 2.92 and below. This is a problem becuase 2.93 is relativly new and is not in any repository or omv extras.
This is how i manged to get to 2.93. The guide was written for another site so might be a bit more generic, but hopefully, if you're a begginer to linux like me, you'll be able to follow it.

Are you trying to upgrade to Transmission 2.93 but,like me, are stuck in Linux hell of "simply compile from source" and then no instructions on how to do that?

I'm not a linux expert, but i am really stubborn.
So here's my guide.

Prerequisites:

You must have the ability to reach the CLI/Bash window of the computer you wish to upgrade.
You should at least know what the sudo, cd and ls commands do. If not, you'll struggle to follow this.
READ THE REPLIES TO THIS THREAD don't go blindly following the advice of some random on the internet. Wait for some other sucker to test my instructions and/or reply with how i could have done it better.

My system:
I'm using an ATOM intel pc running x64 bit architecture and kernel 4.4 of Debian.
I'm running Openmediavault on top.

I WILL NOT HELP YOU IF YOU BORK YOUR SYSTEM

Now this guide is in two parts, the first part is getting the new version from a repository, which; if it works, is much easier. and the second very long and very hard part where you really really have to compile from source. Which is the equivalent of building a car from parts with the help of a robot that sort of knows what its doing.


Part 1: trying a respository.

ok, so since this whole thing started there may have been an update to the repository to get you out of trouble.
My box is an x686 architecture device, and that is what the repository:

https://launchpad.net/~transmissionbt/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

says was updated on the 21 March 2018 (2.93-1ubuntu1~17.10.2)
I could be reading this wrong but if your device ISN'T a computer (it's a raspberry pi, or a firestick, or a nas box) running x86 or 64 bit archetecture this might not work for you and you're stuck with part 2.

anyway, lets add this repositry
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:transmissionbt/ppa

uh oh, did you get an error about command not found. don't worry do this to fix it
sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common

ok, try that first command again.

did it work? no? it gave you an error like this:
gpg: failed to start the dirmngr '/usr/bin/dirmngr': No such file or directory
gpg: connecting dirmngr at '/tmp/tmpyqcnq05k/S.dirmngr' failed: No such file or directory

ok, you need this
sudo apt-get install dirmngr

right, did that work? of course not. you probably got this error

Exception ignored in: <function WeakValueDictionary.__init__.<locals>.remove at 0x7fcdfd141510>
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3.5/weakref.py", line 117, in remove
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable
Exception ignored in: <function WeakValueDictionary.__init__.<locals>.remove at 0x7fcdfd141510>
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3.5/weakref.py", line 117, in remove
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable

so we're going to need to fix that too.

lets go to where python lives
cd /usr/lib/python3.5/

and edit the file that's being annoying
nano weakref.py

find line 109 (you can use ctrl+_ and type in 109)

change this

def remove(wr, selfref=ref(self)):

so it says this

def remove(wr, selfref=ref(self), _atomic_removal=_remove_dead_weakref):

and 117 change this

_remove_dead_weakref(d, wr.key)

with:

_atomic_removal(d, wr.key)

write it out (ctrl+o) and exit (ctrl+x)
lets try that command again

hmmm, that didn't work for me, just said i'ts already installed, but i don't trust it, so we'll remove it, and add back again
sudo apt-get remove dirmngr

and back in again
sudo apt-get install dirmngr

great, now lets update
sudo apt-get update

and try and install transmission
sudo apt-get install transmission

hopefully, it will then install 2.93-1 (or higher) and you're done!

but wait, when i try it, it still says 2.92 so something isn't right

restart, no change. ok, lets ask it where it thinks transmission is
which transmission-cli

mine says /usr/bin/transmission-cli

and when i go (note the capital v there)
/usr/bin/transmission-daemon -V

it says 2.92. so how it that possible?
perhaps i now have two versions of transmission, one installed in the 'correct' place running 2.93 and one in the 'wrong' place running 2.92
so two approaches to fix this, change the path so that it looks for the correct one, or copy the new version over the top.
i'm going for the latter.

stop transmision
sudo service transmission-daemon stop

lets find all my transmission-daemons
sudo find / -type f -name "transmission-daemon"

that might take a while
but i get

/etc/init.d/transmission-daemon
/etc/default/transmission-daemon
find: ‘/proc/1387’: No such file or directory
find: ‘/proc/1390/task/1390/net’: Invalid argument
find: ‘/proc/1390/net’: Invalid argument
/var/tmp/transmission-2.93/daemon/transmission-daemon
/usr/local/bin/transmission-daemon
/usr/bin/transmission-daemon

now for those of you playing along, you probably got somethign different. The reason is i've already tried part two of this guide and have pretty much littered my system with failed attempts. the 'correct' install location is

/usr/local/bin/

and not /usr/bin

so, with the new files in /usr/local/bin lets copy them accross
sudo cp /usr/local/bin/transmission-show /usr/bin/transmission-show
sudo cp /usr/local/bin/transmission-remote /usr/bin/transmission-remote
sudo cp /usr/local/bin/transmission-edit /usr/bin/transmission-edit
sudo cp /usr/local/bin/transmission-daemon /usr/bin/transmission-daemon
sudo cp /usr/local/bin/transmission-create /usr/bin/transmission-create
sudo cp /usr/local/bin/transmission-cli /usr/bin/transmission-cli

now when i tried that last one (transmission-cli) i got an error (cp: cannot stat '/usr/local/bin/transmission-cli': No such file or directory) which means source file not found.
we're going to ignore that.

ok, so reboot
reboot

is everything working? ahHAHAHAHA no of course not.
on my home client i'm getting "connection refused" and when i log back into the server and run
sudo service transmission-daemon status

i get

● transmission-daemon.service - Transmission BitTorrent Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: timeout) since Mon 2018-04-30 19:52:07 AEST; 5min ago
Process: 555 ExecStart=/usr/bin/transmission-daemon -f --log-error (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 555 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Apr 30 19:50:36 mediafiler systemd[1]: Starting Transmission BitTorrent Daemon...
Apr 30 19:50:40 mediafiler transmission-daemon[555]: sendto: Network is unreachable
Apr 30 19:50:42 mediafiler transmission-daemon[555]: [2018-04-30 19:50:42.197] UDP Failed to set receive buffer: requested 4194304, got 425
984 (tr-udp.c:84)
Apr 30 19:50:42 mediafiler transmission-daemon[555]: [2018-04-30 19:50:42.198] UDP Failed to set send buffer: requested 1048576, got 425984
(tr-udp.c:95)
Apr 30 19:52:06 mediafiler systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: Start operation timed out. Terminating.
Apr 30 19:52:07 mediafiler systemd[1]: Failed to start Transmission BitTorrent Daemon.
Apr 30 19:52:07 mediafiler systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: Unit entered failed state.
Apr 30 19:52:07 mediafiler systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.

the important bit here isn't Network is unreachable, but that timeout error at the end
this is a bug in the build instructions which carried through to the ppa repository (which was built using the build instructions) see this rather salty exchange here for more info
https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/537

but lets not worry too much about that, how do we fix it? like this:

make a directory
sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d/

make a file in that directory and open it for editing
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/transmission-daemon.service.d/override.conf

write in that file

[Service]
Type=simple
User=debian-transmission
Group=debian-transmission

write out and exit
reboot
reboot

and we're done.

unless you couldn't get the repository to work, in which case, you'll need to "simply compile from sauce" which my guide is in part 2 below.

good luck.

Part 2

Part 2: compiling from source:

I tried following these instructions
https://github.com/transmissio…iki/Building-Transmission
which are massively out of date and will give you errors.
and so, this is how i did it, and how i got round the errors.

FIRST FIRST FIRST COPY DOWN YOUR SETTINGS FOR TRANSMISSION, YOU WILL NEED THEM LATER.

first, connect to your box and bring up the console.
I have logged in as root, but i've used the sudo command anyway so apart from being asked a password occasionally this should work whether you are logged in as root or not.
If one of the commands says permission denied, try putting sudo in front of the command and try again.
anything in a block quote should be entered in its entirety

first up, let update apt
sudo apt-get update

if you get loads of errors check that your box can reach the internet.
next up lets check the install of transmission
sudo apt-get install transmission

if you get this error:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency treeReading state information... Done
transmission is already the newest version (2.92-2+deb9u1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.

then carry on, if you don't then congratulations, someone has updated your repository since i wrote this and you can upgrade the easy way.

so what we're going to do is download the source code for the latest version of transmission, then compile it (turn it from human readable text into a program that can be run on the computer)
first though, all the things you need to compile transmisison are broken.
and... some of the things that the things that compile transmission need are also broken.
So let start at the bottom and do a bit of Yak shaving.
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev pkg-config build-essential checkinstall

off it will go, it should complain but not give you any proper "i can't do this because of reasons" errors

now we're going to move to the tmp directory
cd /var/tmp

let's download libevent
wget https://github.com/libevent/li…event-2.1.8-stable.tar.gz
and now we can extract that file
tar xzf libevent-2.1.8-stable.tar.gz
and move into that folder
cd libevent-2.1.8-stable/
now we compile libevent
CFLAGS="-Os -march=native" ./configure && make
ok, this is where it started to go wrong for me, checkinstall is a program that does something, and maybe soemone can reply with what it does, but it doesn't seem to be required to get Trnasmssion upgraded so lets move on.

So now we've got the things that the things that compile transmission need working (probably) lets get come out of this folder
cd /var/tmp

and go and get yet more stuff (if you're on ubuntu or another 'richer' install you may have all of these things, i didn't)
sudo apt-get install libevent-dev
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev
sudo apt-get install intltool

ugh, never ends.
ok, lets see if that was enough.
lets go get transmission.
wget https://github.com/transmissio…/transmission-2.93.tar.xz

oh look, it's an xz file that your computer can't work with. sigh.
let get xz utils
sudo apt-get install xz-utils

and now we should be able to extract transmission
tar xf transmission-2.93.tar.xz
and move to that folder
cd transmission-2.93/

man, did i mention you should have got a beverage before all this?

let see if we can compile it
CFLAGS="-Os -march=native" ./configure && make && checkinstall

did it take forever and give you a bucketton of warnings? good.

it will then fall into checkinstall which is that program from before. It will give you a load of questions. When it asks about the package description type
transmission293

then press enter twice

it will spend a lot time doing things, you're actually watching another program now called checkinstall. Yes that one that failed earlier.
did it end ok? Yes? good, you can skip this bit (jump to welcome back), if it failed miserably do this bit:

if your checkinstall ended with this

/bin/mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/usr/local/share/transmission’: No such file or directoryMakefile:405: recipe for target 'install-dist_dataDATA' failedmake[3]:
*** [install-dist_dataDATA] Error 1make[3]: Leaving directory '/var/tmp/transmission-2.93/web/images'Makefile:475: recipe for target 'install-am' failedmake[2]:
*** [install-am] Error 2make[2]: Leaving directory '/var/tmp/transmission-2.93/web/images'Makefile:497: recipe for target 'install-recursive' failedmake[1]:
*** [install-recursive] Error 1make[1]: Leaving directory '/var/tmp/transmission-2.93/web'Makefile:508: recipe for target 'install-recursive' failedmake:
*** [install-recursive] Error 1
**** Installation failed. Aborting package creation.
Cleaning up...OK
Bye.

Then this sucks. so lets fix it.
lets go where checkinstall config lives
cd /etc/

and open up the config file
sudo nano checkinstallrc

somewhere in this config file we need to make a change...

find the bit that says
# Are we going to use filesystem translation?
TRANSLATE=1
and change it to say
# Are we going to use filesystem translation?
TRANSLATE=0

now write out (ctrl+o) and exit (ctrl+x)

back to the folder
cd /var/tmp/transmission-2.93/

and lets try that again
CFLAGS="-Os -march=native" ./configure && make && checkinstall

and welcome back, you should have got

**********************************************************************

Done. The new package has been installed and saved to

/var/tmp/transmission-2.93/transmission_2.93-1_amd64.deb

You can remove it from your system anytime using:

dpkg -r transmission

**********************************************************************

ok, that worked, you've proven you can get the new one installed. you're probably still running the old one, so lets stop that and remove it
sudo service transmission-daemon stop

and (after a few seconds)
sudo apt-get remove transmission transmission-daemontransmission-common transmission-gtk transmission-cli transmission-qt

you'll get a few grumbles but you should see 2.92 get uninstalled.
now lets put the new in again

sudo service transmission-daemon start
oh dear, did you get

Failed to start transmission-daemon.service: Unit transmission-daemon.service is masked.
so to fix that we'll
sudo systemctl unmask transmission-daemon.service

and

start it again.
sudo service transmission-daemon start

is it working? you can tell with
sudo service transmission-daemon status

(i see Active active (exited) which i think is good. Now if you're using the normal transmision (not just the deamon) you can fire it up and put your settings in THAT YOU COPIED DOWN IN THE FIRST STEP.

woohoo you're done.