transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

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Bluerose5
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:55 am

transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by Bluerose5 »

I was about 90% through downloading a torrent when I needed to do a reboot. When I turned the computer back on and went back into Transmission to resume downloading I got the message:

Error no data found! Ensure your drives are connected or use "set location"

I'm not sure why this happened as the drives were never physically disconnected, but maybe perhaps I launched Transmission before they were mounted. In an attempt to fix this, I restarted the computer and allowed the drives to mount before starting Transmission, but I still got the same error about the missing data.

In attempt to fix this, I tried the following:

Right clicking the torrent in Transmission, then clicking "Set Location", selecting 'data is already there' radio button, and then navigating to the folder where the data is. (I made sure I pointed Transmission to the parent directory where the data was downloading to. To double check where Transmission thought the data was, I right clicked the torrent in Transmssion, went to properties, and looked at LOCATION, which showed exactly where I told it to set the folder to.

After setting the location to where the files were I right clicked on the torrent and clicked 'Verify Local Data', but nothing seemed to happen after that and the error remained.

I also did the above actions with 'Move Data File To' the location, with no results either.

STILL NO LUCK.

So, the only thing I can think of at this opint is something I read on another site about the files. Someone mentioned that if I did not download ALL the files set out in the torrent file, that Transmission might think it's not the same when trying to reconnect. In my case when I was prompted to choose which files I wanted to download from the torrent, I did not choose everything (omitting to download some files).

Could this be the reason this is not working? Is there another way to make this work without having to re-download the whole thing (this is a 100+gig torrent, and I dont want to lose my ratio, and time spent getting the files)

Using Transmission v.2.82 (14160) on Ubuntu 14.04

Thank you
Smitty
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2016 8:39 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by Smitty »

this bug happens on transmission for windows and on my Qnap (linux), not sure why but i think it might be a .resume file corruption.

Quick question: would this happen because of not using the default folder in the torrent when adding it or because the .resume file gets corrupted somehow ?

it would make sense if the resume file gets corrupted that transmission would loose the path we entered but in my experience, set location doesn't work either.

i've had this issue and used set location and the torrent still remains stopped or unverifiable on many occasions but some luck on others.

Might i make a suggestion ?

i've had some luck in the past with this issue by stopping transmission, deleting the .resume file and restarting transmission then verifying.

it's some work to do that on another device, and even in windows. maybe we can automate this?

Here is my suggestion: when this error happens, i'm guessing the torrent file is not corrupt but the resume file is, so if the devs would please add a choice in the context menu to "fix this error" transmission would then stop the torrent, delete the resume file and re-run the add new torrent wizard with the existing torrent file like if it was new, we could then choose the destination folder and verify automatically for us.

its basically what we do, finding the torrent and re-adding it, but if the torrent file itself is fine we could use it instead of deleting it and doing the procedure long hand.

Basically taking the "work" out of workaround. the only thing the user would need to do is add the torrent in the same spot it was originally.

Transmission would look there as it usually does (if not exist then look in temp folder) and verify.

that would, in my opinion, be the 1st step towards a quick fix for this on the user side. if that fails then we'd be left to actually do the work of finding the torrent again and re-adding it long hand.

Despite this bug, i want to thank the devs for many years of good torrenting with transmission, and i hope many more.


cheers,
Smitty
tuxolero
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:05 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by tuxolero »

I have stumbled on a workaround:

After you corrected the location, just click on "start now" in the torrent's context menu.

And BTW, transmission-gtk (on Linux) is also affected.
Smitty
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2016 8:39 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by Smitty »

this bug affects all platforms. this needs fixing at the source.

please devs, look into it?
tuxolero
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:05 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by tuxolero »

Maybe the priority is not that high, because a simple workaround exists ?
BTW:
Does my workaround (see my psot right above yours) work for you ?
Smitty
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2016 8:39 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by Smitty »

Tux, the workaround you found, its basically what it says right in the error message: use set location and restart the torrent, yes i've tried that, every time it breaks. but it doesn't restart. it just goes back to stopped.

that trick doesn't work. the sure thing that works is deleting the torrent, re-downloading it and re-adding it.

the thing is, the torrent, the resume file and the data are all there on the same drive, all folders accessible to everyone and with 0x777 permissions (all read, all write, etc).

the only thing i can't do is analyse the resume file to see what's going on in there.

but i haven't compared the torrent with a freshly downloaded one either, so if there's a change in there that's causing this bug, we'd need tools.

There is something corrupting the .resume files because when i use winscp to delete that file and restart the torrent, it works... i'd say maybe half the time.

i think its time to go back to the basics and check every line of code, making sure the torrent handling functions and .resume syncing functions aren't the culprits.

in most cases i see, they start fine, then after a while they stop, broken like that.

no idea why.

The drives don't spin down so its not that. They don't disconnect from the nas, if they did i'd have the errors listed in the logs.

it also happens on the windows platform, so different hardware same problem.
tuxolero
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:05 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by tuxolero »

OK, that's really bad.

I think by "restart" they mean "restart transmission" and that's what I always did before finding the workaround. And for me, the full restart worked 100%.
The workaround I described just helped me to avoid the full restart. And for me, "Start Now" on the torrent works 95% of all cases.

Therefore I assume the problem described here is a different one than I had.

Edit:
Looking at the feature requests and the bug tracker, it very much looks like the development team really needs people to join in and help them.
Smitty
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2016 8:39 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by Smitty »

it might be the same problem as you describe since the symptoms are the same, maybe you just happen to be luckier.

For me the safest option is to redownload the torrent and verifying.

99% of the times just clicking start on the torrent didn't work for me.

i did manage, a few times (<10) to restart a stopped torrent by deleting the resume file and verifying. if it starts to verify then it worked.

What ever it is, its an annoying bug for sure.

btw: if you look at the bug tracker here, it jsut the frontend, a seperate team than the one building transmission, for that you'd need to head over to http://www.transmissionbt.com
supplant
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2017 1:49 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by supplant »

How does one use or install the patch? If I open it, it automatically opens in TextEdit.
cfpp2p
Posts: 290
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 3:14 pm

Re: transmission torrent won't reconnect to data folder

Post by cfpp2p »

supplant wrote:
How does one use or install the patch? If I open it, it automatically opens in TextEdit.
Patch and compile source yourself or already done here
https://sourceforge.net/projects/transmissiondaemon/
and here
https://github.com/cfpp2p/transmission
older compiled Mac version
https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/532#comment:221
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