ok, trac would not allow me to report the bug, no response on irc, and the "how to report a bug" sticky does not actually get around to stating how to report a bug... presumably just post it here.
I have searched, and this appears different from the other bugs relating to "too many open files" error.
had to quit using 1.42 because of a frequent crasher http://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/1632.
unfortunately, 1.42+ versions rarely start properly for me, there are a number of odd problems related to "too many files".
sometimes I get this:
(transmission:8457): Pango-WARNING **: error opening config file '/etc/pango/pangorc': Too many open files
which results in no fonts, but otherwise apparently functional...
other times it will fail to open a bunch of .torrent files, resulting in disappearing/stuck torrents and other weirdness.
and sometimes it just wont open icons...
in any case, pretty broken, and I think I will have to compile 1.42 with the patch for the 1 crasher, or attempt to switch back to [trusty-but-not-so-lightweight-client-which-can-also-move-completed-files] because I really cant figure this out...
after starting 1.5b3 / current svn a few times, the total number of torrents dropped several times, as it appears it would not try to start those ones again. even at half the full number of loaded torrents, the problems persisted.
switching back to 1.42, none of these problems exist, but it will soon crash.
I am on ubuntu 8.10 amd64.
I have checked ulimits, and increased them. file limit is at 32768.
I do have over 1000 torrents in the client, but many are paused, and I have low connection limits, so I dont actually see transmission opening more than 300 files in reality at the very most (using 'lsof -p `pidof transmission` | wc -l') (... actually that includes sockets too, cant remember the other lsof switch right now, but more like half, in any case, much less than 1024, or 32768 or whatever), and when it works, it works great with very little burden.
have been using gtk client, but have tried switching to the daemon, and was still affected by these issues.
I do not remember when I first saw this. maybe a month or so ago, when I first had trouble with 1.42.