Update necessary; Transmission 4.0.5 is outdated and is more and more blacklisted. 4.1.1 is the current version

[emk2203]

I get more and more errors with: "Tracker returned a warning: blacklisted client, update or change client".

A new image with the current 4.1.1 Transmission version would be helpful.

[ilike2burnthing]

@haugene / @pkishino merging #2991 and #2997 would achieve this for master and dev branches

[emk2203]

If neither @haugene nor @pkishino are free to do this atm, how can I apply this manually on my side? Do I need to fork, then merge these two? Anything else?

[haugene]

Heyyy. I'm more AFK than I intend to, again... Let's see.

[haugene]

Hey! The PRs (#2991, #2997) fix some Flood UI issues, but I don't think they will fix what @emk2203 is reporting. Because Ubuntu 24.04 is LTS it wont receive newer versions of Transmission via apt, and updating Flood won't give us a newer version of Transmission. So we'll still be at 4.0.5?

I've previously favored stability over bleeding edge but when 4.0.5 is being blacklisted by trackers, we need to find a middle ground I think.

Proposal: merge the outstanding dev changes into master (minus a debug flag), include the Flood fix, then figure out which Ubuntu base image gets us to an acceptable Transmission version. I think we might need to upgrade to 26.04 to get 4.1.1 🤔 It's not released yet, will be out in 6 weeks? We could maybe test a pre-release on the dev branch in the meantime...

[ilike2burnthing]

dev working fine here btw

[spacemanspiff2007]

I'm aware. But shouldn't this work:
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y ... transmission-daemon=${TRANSMISSION_VERSION}

Edit: I think this would need to be a build arg.

[ilike2burnthing]

Very few users are building their own images, just pulling from Docker Hub. You'd still need the base image to be 26.04 though.

[emk2203]

dev working fine here btw

Did you look for the version numbers of Ubuntu and Transmission? How did you pull the 26.04 version?

[haugene]

How did you pull the 26.04 version?

Just use the haugene/transmission-openvpn:dev tag of the image. And remember to pull it first, just to make sure. If you've not used the dev tag before it should pull automatically - but if you have then you might get an old dev tag.

Did you look for the version numbers of Ubuntu and Transmission?

Seems fine

docker run --rm haugene/transmission-openvpn:dev bash -c "head -n 5 /etc/os-release"
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu Resolute Raccoon (development branch)"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION_ID="26.04"
VERSION="26.04 (Resolute Raccoon)"
VERSION_CODENAME=resolute
➜  ~ docker run --rm haugene/transmission-openvpn:dev transmission-daemon --version
transmission-daemon 4.1.1 (56442e2929)

[ilike2burnthing]

Briefly tested with the latest image, so someone should definitely look into it more, but it's working.

---

Console into container and run:

sed -i 's/noble/resolute/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources
apt update
apt install -y transmission-daemon

Restart container.

You're now running Transmission v4.1.1 on Ubuntu 24.04.

---

@haugene this is definitely untested, but in terms of incorporating it into the Dockerfile, if you don't want to be on the bleeding edge:

-RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
-    dumb-init transmission-daemon openvpn privoxy \
-    tzdata dnsutils iputils-ping ufw iproute2 \
-    openssh-client git jq curl wget unrar unzip bc \
-    && rm -rf /tmp/* /var/tmp/* /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
-    && useradd -u 911 -U -d /config -s /bin/false abc \
-    && usermod -G users abc
+RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
+    dumb-init openvpn privoxy \
+    tzdata dnsutils iputils-ping ufw iproute2 \
+    openssh-client git jq curl wget unrar unzip bc \
+    && sed -i 's/noble/resolute/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources \
+    && apt-get update && apt-get install -y transmission-daemon \
+    && rm -rf /tmp/* /var/tmp/* /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
+    && useradd -u 911 -U -d /config -s /bin/false abc \
+    && usermod -G users abc

You could also revert resolute back to noble after installing Transmission if you wanted.

[spacemanspiff2007]

roll over to 26.04 in a few weeks time

Makes sense

That would require us to build multiple versions of the image so people could pull ready made images with different versions of Transmission.

Imho a build arg would be the cleanest solution and the least effort. Maybe only support the latest version of the last two minor versions, e.g. 4.0.6 and 4.1.1?
It would just require a small change in the docker file and calling the build pipeline twice with modified args.

[haugene]

Imho a build arg would be the cleanest solution and the least effort.

Yeah. I agree. I guess I'm still just traumatized from the times where we had an Alpine version and an Ubuntu version of the image. And we didn't have the same good support for multi architecture builds, so I'm pretty sure we had a Dockerfile for ARM as well.

There were so may different cases 🙈 But a build arg for the transmission version is probably fine. To make that happen we need to be able to install different versions though. So that probably means adding the PPA? It's not maintained by the transmissin devs, so it doesn't feel as solid as pulling from official sources.

[ilike2burnthing]

Other option is we go back to building Transmission ourselves.

[haugene]

Other option is we go back to building Transmission ourselves.

Yes. It's just so slow 🙈

[ilike2burnthing]

Benefit is though that it happens in the background, checking periodically for updates, no need for admins to push a new release (or at least not for dev).

[emk2203]

Pulled the dev version with docker pull haugene/transmission-openvpn:dev, then docker-compose up, got a version with Ubuntu 22.04.5 and Transmission 4.0.5. How can I get the most recent version?

[haugene]

Hmm. Didn't see this message before I posted this. But... Try pulling again? It should be that image and tag 🤔

[emk2203]

Hmm. Didn't see this message before I posted this. But... Try pulling again? It should be that image and tag 🤔

I had to to some housekeeping and remove TONS of stale stuff. Afterwards, with an adjusted docker-compose.yml (dev tag added to image), everything works as expected, with the correct versions. I thought it should work with no tags in the docker-compose.yml, but then only latest version gets pulled, even if the dev version is already present.

Anyway, it works now. No issues, and the default web view of the torrents is enhanced in 4.1.1. The pesky warnings about blacklisted client are gone.

[haugene]

I'll keep it on the dev image for now. Let me know if you run into some issues or misbehaving container. If not, we'll probably roll it out in a month or two. I'm not in a rush, unless more people start struggling with blacklisting - that might speed things up :)

[emk2203]

Sounds great, will do. So far it runs perfect (knock on wood...).

• The 4.1.1 native web interface is a major improvement. Modern optics, a couple of annoying bugs removed like missing close button for the settings.
• Container stable under light to moderate load (ca. 30 torrents).
• Reboots have the container restarted reliably.
• VPN stable. I monitor this with a trap torrent and there's no change in IP address.
• Port opening works (PIA)
• Watch folder without issue. If anything, smoother than before.

All in all, very satisfying upgrade.

[Forage]

Now with 26.04 released, can the upgrade be taken into consideration again, please? I'd like to take advantage of the Transmission improvements.

[haugene]

Hey! Yes, it's time to update the base image to 26.04 👍 Sadly that might not solve all problems - have a look at @gdlx recent comment below. I could bump the image to 26.04 now, but that will only bring you to version 4.1.1 which seems to be blacklisted a lot of places - is that worth it? Or would it make things worse? We need a proper fix here.

[gdlx]

Transmission 4.1.1 is now blacklisted almost everywhere, but 4.1.2 and 4.1.3 are out with the bug highlighted as fixed in 4.1.2.

Is it possible to update the dev branch with 4.1.3 ?

[ilike2burnthing]

Similar to my example above (but for :dev), console into container and run:

sed -i 's/resolute/stonking/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources
apt update
apt install -y transmission-daemon
rm -rf /tmp/* /var/tmp/* /var/lib/apt/lists/*

Restart container.

---

@Forage also see above.

---

@haugene might be a good argument for returning to my auto-build action for :dev, so that in times of (understandable) absences, new builds are still pushed out.

[haugene]

Hello again. Thanks for labeling my absences as understandable, I think they're a bit too long for that - sorry everyone 🙈

Reading this issue again I think it's safe to say that my preferred strategy of "stick to LTS of Ubuntu, and whatever Transmission apt gives us" is going to fail. Or has already failed. One thing is lagging behind on Transmission features, which is what I thought would happen. But when 26.04 was released few months ago and Transmission 4.1.1 is already blacklisted then we can't two years to get it fixed.

We could do a PPA, but I'm leaning towards building Transmission from source again...

[wadey]

I have a PR open that builds 4.1.3 from the Ubuntu source package: #3028

[haugene]

Also a good one @wadey! I have the same problem over in the transmission-wireguard image as well. So I created a transmission-base repo and trying to run the first build there now based on this PR: haugene/transmission-base#1

I think both these solutions would do the trick both in the short and long term. Yours has fewer lines of code, which is good. But the separate base image lets us respond to Transmission releases directly and not have to wait for them to show up in Ubuntu apt repositories at all.

I've been reluctant to maintain a separate base image, but I think we might need it.

[haugene]

I've now pushed a change that builds the :dev image from the common Ubuntu+Transmission base image suggested here: haugene/transmission-base#1

Anyone up for testing it? Seems to run fine on my machine. If this seems to be a good fix then I'll merge the transmission base image PR, get a proper release there (to not depend on a dev image of the base) and then we can merge it here and get Ubuntu 26.04 and Transmission 4.1.3 on the latest release.

[wadey]

I've switched to your dev branch, and it is working well for me so far.

EDIT: I'm using linux/amd64