package deluge for headless operation

[Tom Metro]

I installed deluged, deluge-web, and deluge-console and followed the headless setup instructions here:
http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/UserGuide/ThinClient

expecting that most of the described steps would have been done for me by the Ubuntu packaging, but discovered they had not.

My conclusion is that Deluge is packaged for the more typical user running a combined client-server setup on a local machine. Thus deluged doesn't auto-start, for example, because it is assumed the typical user will have it start on demand when the GUI starts.

It should be easier to get a headless setup going.

Traditionally I'd say the deluged package should prompt the user on install to select the mode, but my understanding is that interactive prompting at package install time is discouraged. Besides, for a useful headless install, it seems you really need deluge-console (to manage some of the config settings) and deluge-web (even if you don't need a web UI, some 3rd party Deluge clients use the JSON API it provides).

My recommendation is that:

1. fix the issues described in Bug #1096267 so the deluged and deluge-web packages are up to modern standards.

2. figure out whether the deluge-web package should behave like a plugin for the GUI (if you install the web UI from within he GUI, does it even use this package?) or as a standard service package with appropriate startup scripts.

3. create a "deluge-headless" package that depends on deluged, deluge-web, and deluge-console, and reconfigures them to run as services and start automatically. It should also include a SetUID wrapper (or similar) for deluge-console, so it can be used to manage deluged running as the deluge user (whatever the deluged package uses). (Perhaps, if the package properly configures deluged, there will be no need for deluge-console, and it can be eliminated from the deluge-headless dependencies. I'm too new to Deluge to know if deluge-console is ever needed after you've enabled remote access. Can deluged be fully administered from the GUI client thereafter?)

deluge-headless may still require a prompt at installation time to create login credentials for a remote user, as creating a default one is probably discouraged. The setup guide above suggests modifying the auth file directly to do this, which seems to imply ths is not something deluge-console can do. It would seem a fairly trivial script (deluge-user) could be included in the package to manage the auth file.

In theory a working headless Deluge setup should be accomplished with something like:
  % sudo aptitude install deluge-headless
  % sudo deluge-user --add --user remote_user --pass remote_pass --level admin
  % ssh otherhost
  otherhost% deluge-console
  >>> connect deluge_server remote_user remote_pass
  Connected to deluge_server:58846

(deluge-user could support a simple interactive mode, where running it without arguments would dump the current list of users in the auth file, and give you options to delete/modify them, or add a new user. This way the user doesn't need to learn the command line syntax of a tool they'll rarely ever use. The only remaining challenge is making sure users know they need to run deluge-user post install.)