transmission-daemon changes config folder on reboot

Question

I am not sure why but transmission seems to be changing my settings on reboot. The folder where the settings are being held is /etc/transmission-daemon.

I run the command

sudo service transmission-daemon stop
then

sudo transmission-daemon --config-dir /folder/I/want

sudo service transmission-daemon start

However on reboot it switches to the etc folder, and I have to do the commands again.

My solution now is a bash script that does

sudo service transmission-daemon stop

sleep 4s

sudo transmission-daemon --config-dir /root/.config/transmission-daemon

with a cron

which works

However there should be way to get my changes to stick without the bash. When I put in the config command. I am just not sure how

Answer 1

This command

sudo transmission-daemon --config-dir /folder/I/want

doesn't alter any permanent configuration. It runs transmission-daemon and only this instance uses the directory you specified. Note the program places itself in the background, so it seems excessive to run sudo service transmission-daemon start just after.

Although the documentation says that $HOME/.config/transmission-daemon is the default location for daemon settings, it also says:

Some Linux distributions' start script for transmission-daemon use different location.

In Ubuntu /etc/default/transmission-daemon is the right place to modify --config-dir permanently. Relevant lines tailored to your request are:

CONFIG_DIR="/folder/I/want"
OPTIONS="--config-dir $CONFIG_DIR"

Note: the syntax is simple and straightforward; I expect it to fail if the path contains spaces. To use any valid path (with spaces etc.) one may fix it somehow (obligatorily with /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon or so) but this would be against the KISS principle. You can simply perform a trick I present down below.

---

An alternative permanent approach is to make your default config path a symlink to the desired real location:

sudo mv /etc/transmission-daemon/ /etc/transmission-daemon.old/
sudo ln -s "/folder/I/want" /etc/transmission-daemon

I tend to think that modifying config files is the right approach in general, the way it's meant to be, something by design; while a symlink may go as a cheap trick. This trick, however, can be very powerful and foolproof. As you can see it can compensate for some limitations of beautifully simple config syntax; or it can save you from learning some awfully complex config syntax, if you ever encounter one.