Transmission causes leopard slow death

[kidmidnight]

i gotta agree with parodyr. it really does sound like the network stack.

[Trimalchio]

Not sure if this is related but I had an assertion fail right before another crash, also the assertion doesn't really make any sense

Mar 10 01:57:29 Rincewind Transmission[5014]: *** Assertion failure in -[Torrent usesGlobalSpeedLimit], /var/tmp/pea/svn.transmissionbt.com/trunk/macosx/Torrent.m:419
Mar 10 01:57:29 Rincewind Transmission[5014]: upload and download globallimit setting should have the same

Don't know if this will help but just happened to notice it.

[TheBang]

Now, the fly in the ointment. As I mentioned earlier, I've been running with download limits off. Per my last post, I once again enabled download limits for this testing. I haven't crashed. There appear to be specific circumstances or configurations that trigger it. Obviously, that is why it affects some people and not all. Since I was last crashing, I've updated to 1.50 final, I've updated VMWare to 2.0.2 (from 2.0 and 2.0.1; although VMWare seems to symptomatic and not causal), and I've done OS updates, but I'm not sure which.

Well, I finally crashed again. Besides the download rate limit criteria, I think an additional criteria to trigger the bug is the number of peers you're connected to/downloading from. I'm generally not on highly trafficked torrents. Usually only 10-20 peers, and maybe a few torrents at a time at the most. And I've been running with Download Limit set this whole time with no problems. Tonight, I was on 2 torrents, each with about 100 peers. I was connected to about 150 peers myself, downloading from about 100 of them, and I suddenly had the spiral of death. Restarted the computer and turned off download limits and have been fine.

[funkahdafi]

Are there any news about this? Anything at all from the developers? This bug has been around forever and it seems to be the most active thread here.

[Trimalchio]

This bug is so annoying...
So I've been having crashes, always in ~1hr after i start transmission. I tried putting my speed limit back to 140/90 which is what i'd had it at while it was stable and suddenly transmission is stable for weeks. I ran it for a while with every torrent under the speed limiter equally, then i tried to give one torrent (a particularly large and slow one) a torrent specific upload limit, and that seems to also not cause it, but I just had another crash, could be a few torrents I just added or maybe because I turned the speed limiter off earlier today. I'll keep experimenting but this bug is really getting on my nerves. Anything the developers need done regarding it I'm willing to do.

[livings124]

Run a nightly build and post a crash log, as described in the forum sticky.

And I assume you have tried lowering the number of connections and decreasing the number of active torrents at one time, as discussed earlier.

[kidmidnight]

Once again, there is no crash log generated or you would have had tons of them by now.

Lowering the connections and decreasing active torrents might lower the chances of it happening, but from what we have figured out by trial and error is that changing the speed limit (particularly the download speed) is what causes the network stack to shit itself.

[funkahdafi]

Once again, there is no crash log generated or you would have had tons of them by now.

Lowering the connections and decreasing active torrents might lower the chances of it happening, but from what we have figured out by trial and error is that changing the speed limit (particularly the download speed) is what causes the network stack to feces itself.

I can confirm this. After disabling all speed limits, I don't see any more crashes.

But now my internet connection is unusable while downloading torrents because transmission maxes it out. So my choice is to either have no internet or a crashing machine. Or use another torrent client.

[molestrangler]

Same here, 1.52 hangs with the spinning beach-ball SystsemUIServer hangs then its Fusion (if I am running it) from then on, Leopard slowly dies. Apps start to fail including the dock and then finally Finder. I stop using transmission and Leopard stability returns!

I have to look around for a different client to get stuff done!

VMWare had 115 of these in its crash log:

02/04/2009 07:16:30 kernel vmnet: bridge-en2: SendToVNet mbuf dup/copy failed: 12.

[kidmidnight]

Seriously, parodyr has it right. Crashing the network stack would cause all the slow death symptoms. However transmission is changing speedlimits is what kills it.

[funkahdafi]

VMWare had 115 of these in its crash log:

02/04/2009 07:16:30 kernel vmnet: bridge-en2: SendToVNet mbuf dup/copy failed: 12.

I have these too. Maybe it's related? VMWare and transmission not getting along...?

Is anyone who does not have VMWare installed experiencing crashes?

[ScottishCaptain]

+1. Same issues.

Transmission hangs, can't quit the process. Have to restart, that hangs as well, hold power button, etc. Last time this happened it really f*cked up my Mac. Oddly enough, uTorrent just did something stimilar- tried to quit it, hanged, then had to hold the power button on restart.

I'm not sure what's going on here. Issues are present in 1.42 through to the latest (1.51). There's absolutely nothing in the console or dmesg that suggests any of the issues present in this thread- aside from the UI starting to lock up until the entire system is useless.

Let me know if there's anything I can post (not sure what though- Console.app seems clean of errors and there's no crash dumps). I am indeed running VMware Fusion. Can anyone else confirm that they're running Fusion (or rather, have it installed) when this issue occurs?

-SC

[kidmidnight]

NO, never installed or used vmware or parallels or any other virtual machines. It has everything to do with transmission borking the network stack.

[oraguru]

Hi Guys

after a long time, I'm back and I definately have the 'slow death' and crashing of Leopard solved in my case...

I have 2 Mac's (1x MacMini and 1x iMac 24")... The MacMini is in the cellar and all it does the whole day is downloading with Transmission 1.51+... On the iMac I have the same Transmission running too, but this machine crashed reguralry with the same symphtoms you described... BUT my Mac Mini only crashed with files >4GB when the dl was finished...

So I started to study the console messages and every 4-5 min I had a crash of a aslmanager and other file problems... and after that Transmission always crashed.. I started to compare both machines (Leo 10.5.6 on both). Since weeks I have problems with TimeMachine on my iMac too, it just hangs and I have the same problems reported in the console.. .

So what was the difference ? Sunday I found out. On my iMac I have iDisk locally with autosync out to the MobileMe cloud. I turned that off (switched to manual) on my iMac and since last Sunday (today is Friday) my iMac runs extremely smooth and fast... I even use the 'speed limit' option, no Problem! both of them run 24h, I hve 2 internet connection with failover (15Mb and 10Mb).. I get dl rates of 2Mb...

Maybe it helps for others, turning off iDisk helped for me...

Cheers

G

[kidmidnight]

Glad you think you have it fixed but I'm sure you dont. As has been said, a number of times in this thread, idisk has nothing to do with this. I dont have and never will have an idisk or mobile me account and it still happens. The trouble is it is so intermittent that sometimes its hard to replicate.