Transmission Mac hung process accessing disk

Ask for help and report issues with the Mac OS X version of Transmission
Post Reply
prohtex
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu May 11, 2017 11:15 pm

Transmission Mac hung process accessing disk

Post by prohtex »

I've been using Transmission Mac GUI for many years. I've always had issues with the GUI locking up (general unresponsiveness, beachballs) but this has improved in recent releases, so I moved to an external thunderbolt RAID and added more torrents (800 or so, each in the 20gb-50gb range). At any given time 95% of these are completed and seeding.

I've encountered 2 problems which I have not been able to resolve. First, when new torrents are added, the GUI goes through a very predictable series of hangs. I generally add 1-3 torrents at a time, using the "Display a window when adding" option. These populate in the main window, and sometimes begin to download. Then, there is a series of "hiccups" of intense disk activity on the external drive. These last 10-30 seconds, and cause all network activity to hang (all torrents stop seeding/downloading). Adding a few new torrents ALWAYS causes 5 or so of these "hiccups." I have the "keep incomplete files.." option set to a directory on the boot drive (internal SSD), so I don't understand why Transmission is seeking so aggressively on the external disk. There is always a hiccup when the download completes, but this I understand (the file is being moved to the external disk). But why when adding as well? Adding new torrents is a painful stop and go process and usually only resolves after 10 minutes or so.

More crucially, after about a week or so, Transmission takes down the whole system. First, all network activity in the application stops. No seeding, no downloading. The external drive shows light activity. Transmission indicates all torrents are seeding fine, yet nothing is happening. The application is responsive, and the external disk can be accessed fine with the Finder and command line tools. Nothing seems amiss, yet some Transmission process is hung accessing the disk. Attempting to quit Transmission causes it to hang. Attempting to spindump Transmission in Activity Monitor causes Activity Monitor to beachball. Transmission can be force quit. From here, things get ugly. Attempting to unmount the volume in the Finder or with "sudo umount -f" causes the system to hang. First, the disk icon goes grey in the Finder. Then, the Finder beachballs. The dock beachballs. The terminal will work for some time, and top shows kernel_task using resources. "sudo umount -f" hangs indefinitely. Attempting to reboot the system from the GUI or with "sudo reboot" initiates and then hangs on a black screen. This hang does not resolve and the only recourse is to hard power down the machine, while the hung process is still accessing the external disk.

I have reproduced this issue on 3 different machines (two Sierra, one, El Capitan), with 4 different enclosures and drives from 2 different manufacturers. I am very confident this is not an OS or hardware related issue. I'm happy to provide logs or to take other troubleshooting steps. Any help is much appreciated.

I have not yet tried to run Transmission as a daemon as I am pretty keen on the GUI, but would give that a go if necessary.
sarcastic
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2017 1:09 am

Re: Transmission Mac hung process accessing disk

Post by sarcastic »

Well said. This is exactly what I'm experiencing. I don't have these problems with Qbittorrent. I wonder what it is with Transmission that is causing all of these issues.
It's a really well-designed app when it works.
darmok
Posts: 119
Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:14 pm
Location: New Jersey, USA

Re: Transmission Mac hung process accessing disk

Post by darmok »

prohtex wrote:800 or so, each in the 20gb-50gb range
wow. and I'm having difficulties with just 150 or so!
when new torrents are added, the GUI goes through a very predictable series of hangs. ... Adding new torrents is a painful stop and go process and usually only resolves after 10 minutes or so.
I see exactly the same thing. It seems to start occurring after ~80+ torrents.
after about a week or so, Transmission takes down the whole system. ...
yea. Well said. I've been experiencing this since 2014. I don't need the week tho - I can reproduce the problem right now.

When I quit Transmission, it seems to "mostly" quit, leaving a reminant. The process is longer seen in Activity Monitor, but it shows in Dock as active. If I force quit it from the dock, it changes to inactive. At that point, I cannot reboot normally as the logout sequence always fails, saying that Transmission is running. I end up forcing the issue by mashing the power button.

What vers of Transmission are you using?

I'm running an old nightly #6451, from when I last haunted these parts looking for a fix for problems.

Now switching to the current nightly, #6605 (Aug 27, 2017 7:23:07 AM). Will post more later.

- Dan.
darmok
Posts: 119
Joined: Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:14 pm
Location: New Jersey, USA

Re: Transmission Mac hung process accessing disk

Post by darmok »

Transmission #6605 SPODs and hangs, just like previous versions.
Post Reply