Set Up Seedbox With Deluge: Server & Thin Client Config.

Updated: 08 Mar 2016

From the official Deluge wiki, about the server/thin-client setup:

Deluge can be setup in such a way that a Deluge daemon, deluged, can be running on a central computer, server, which can then be accessed and controlled by other computers, clients, using one of Deluge’s UIs.

To put it simply, we’ll be running the Deluge daemon deluged (headless, i.e. no GUI) on a server and connect to it remotely via Deluge (with GUI) installed on our computer. The latter acts as an interface to the daemon running on the server.

We’ll be running the Deluge daemon (deluged) within a Docker container on the server. Here’s the command I use to create the docker container for this purpose:

docker run -d -i -t --name="deluge" -h="deluge" -p 54321:54321 -p 54321:54321/udp -p 54322:54322 -p 54322:54322/udp -v /home/pinky/torrents:/torrents -e "LANG="en_US.UTF-8"" -e "LANGUAGE="en_US:en"" --restart=always ubuntu:trusty /bin/bash

Make sure your firewall is configured to allow traffic through the port(s) mentioned in the command. Going by the example above, I’d just have to run this command on the host:
sudo ufw allow 54321 && sudo ufw allow 54322
As for why these ports are necessary, you’ll learn as the tutorial progresses.

Then attach to the running docker container:

docker attach deluge

First things first:

Generate the default locale(s):
```
  locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
```
Create a new sudo user; then impersonate the user:
```
  adduser --home /torrents/deluge dinky
  adduser dinky sudo
  su dinky
```
Reason: In Docker containers, the commands are run as root user by default. This could cause permission issues with shared volumes. For example, when I start Deluge as root user in the container, the files and directories Deluge creates (e.g. the config. directory), for some weird reason, cannot be modified on the host by the user that runs the Docker container. No issues with running Deluge as a non-root user, hence preferred. (I even use the same username as the host user running Docker; with a simpler password of course.)

Install Deluge (Server Setup)

To install the latest Deluge packages available for Ubuntu, let’s add the official PPA to the sources:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deluge-team/ppa
bash: add-apt-repository: command not found

The error message says that the apt-add-repository command is not available in the base Ubuntu image. You’ll first have to install it. Also install vim as we might need it later, even if not in this tutorial.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install software-properties-common vim

Now add the official PPA and install the Deluge daemon and console packages:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deluge-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install deluged deluge-console

Start the Deluge daemon; this creates the config directory and populates it with the default files:

deluged -p 54321 -c `/torrents/deluge`/.config

The default Deluge daemon port is 58846. It’s through this port that the Deluge daemon on the server and the thin-client on computer connect and communicate with each other. But we’ll use a different port (between 49152-65535 is recommended) to keep any easy attacks at bay. The -p flag in the command above allows us to define the port the daemon will listen on.
We also used the -c flag to set a different config. location for our Deluge instance (default is ~/.config/deluge). As you can see, I’ve asked for the config. to be stored at ~/.config as the default location in our case would be /torrents/deluge/.config/deluge, which doesn’t look very pretty. All our torrents and downloads will also be stored under /torrents/deluge directory as we’ll configure in the thin-client later.
Similarly, you can run multiple instances of Deluge simultaneously, if you need to, by passing different ports and directories while starting the daemon each time.

Basic Deluge Daemon Config.

Add new user to the authentication file located in the config. directory:

echo "dinky:PaSsWoRD123:10" >> /torrents/deluge/.config/auth

Start deluge-console:

deluge-console -c /torrents/deluge/.config

To connect to the daemon, use the connect command in deluge-console::

connect 127.0.0.1:54321

Normally you could just run deluge-console and you’d be automatically connected to the locally running Deluge daemon instance. Since we are using different port and config. location, we need to provide that information in two commands as shown above.

In the same console screen, configure the daemon to allow remote connections, then verify the same, and exit:

config -s allow_remote True
config allow_remote
exit

Now would be a good time to restart (stop, then start) the daemon for the config. changes to take effect:

killall deluged
deluged -p 54321 -c /torrents/deluge/.config

If you get “command not found” error on running killall, you’ll have to install the psmisc package first. To do so, run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install psmisc

Client Setup

Pre-requisite: Deluge GUI installed on your PC. Download it here.

Configure the client to connect to the Deluge daemon on the server:

Go to Preferences > Interface and disable Classic Mode.
Restart Deluge and you should see the Connection Manager. You can also access it from Edit > Connection Manager.
Create a new entry with the Add button:
- Hostname is your server’s IP address.
- Port should be the one the daemon will be listening on (and as per our example earlier, it’s 54321).
- Username and Password are those we added to the deluged config auth file (dinky and PaSsWoRD123 in our case).
If this was successful a green indicator should now appear as the status for the daemon you just added. Click on Connect and the Connection Manager should disappear.
Expand Options and modify the additional settings to suit your specific needs.

You are now connected to the remote daemon on the server from Deluge (GUI) client on your PC.

Disconnect Properly:

If you don’t disconnect from the remote daemon on the server properly, you could end up stopping the daemon each time you close the Deluge client on your PC. This is how it’s done:

Go to Edit > Connection Manager (or Ctrl+M).
Select the remote host that you are currently connected to.
Click Disconnect (or simply hit the Enter key).
Proceed with closing Deluge client on your PC; the remote deluge daemon will continue to run on the server.

Deluge Configuration (Using Thin-Client)

With the basic stuff out of the way, we are ready to deal with the actual configuration.

(This may come at a later time. Meanwhile, take a look at my notes on configuring rTorrent. It should be of some help with figuring out the configuration for Deluge as well.)

Sources & Further Reading