[LOCKED DUPLICATE] Transmission Problem - Memory Related

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 1:12 am

Hi all!

I'm new to this forum, and new to Macs, but I'm no stranger to PCs or using torrent clients and I can follow directions. I may not put all of this the right way, but here's what I've found lately...

(The simple explanation of my problem is that Transmission crashes my computer if I leave it running for a little while and the download rate goes above 300Kbps. This even happens if I turn limit seeding to 5K and limit download to 500K.)

(My mac is a PowerMac Dual G4 500, 20G/120G slave drive for torrents, 512MB PC133 SDRAM/(2) sticks of 256MB PC100 SDRAM, Hawking Wireless G USB2.0 w/window antenna running up to date OS X 10.411 with security update 004.

My Mac works fine, and according to Activity Monitor, its normal numbers are... ~281MB Used (of which ~146 is inactive) and ~742MC Free Memory, with a page file size of 2.81 GB. Disk Activity is at 149 MB Read/64MB Written.

When I turn on Transmission with 3 torrents trying to download and having to check existing data first, the free memory goes down to fluctuate between 10 and 13 MB free. My network connection goes from an average 1MB per second to 25-50 KB per second. And, because my torrents and incomplete files are stored on my slave drive, the Disk Activity goes from 149MB Read to 3.4GB Read within fifteen minutes or so.

Basically, Transmission seems to eat up all but 10MB of my RAM, work it's but off reading from my slave disk, clogs up my internet even if the program is closed and exited. Even if I force quit, my memory stays at 10MB free and my internet connection still stays limited to about 20K.

Here's some copied info from Console Log...

(The following is from the crash log from yesterday. I haven't gotten any other logs like this when my Mac crashes since I updated the security to 004. It still crashes when I use Transmission but according to crash log, it's not Transmission that causes the crash. Weird, and I don't understand it.)

Host Name: power-mac-g4
Date/Time: 2008-07-25 14:26:40.348 -0400
OS Version: 10.4.11 (Build 8S165)
Report Version: 4

Command: Transmission
Path: /Users/dr/Desktop/Transmission.app/Contents/MacOS/Transmission
Parent: WindowServer [55]

Version: 1.22 (6189)

PID: 509
Thread: Unknown

Link (dyld) error:

Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libcurl.4.dylib
Referenced from: /Users/dr/Desktop/Transmission.app/Contents/MacOS/Transmission
Reason: image not found

(This is from the panic log when it my computer did the mac version of the PC blue screen the first time today. The big translucent ominous power button with german text in it. You always know something bad is going to happen when you see warnings in German! Haha)
Sat Jul 26 10:34:11 2008
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x0028E51C): freeing free mbuf
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x0028E51C 0x005481C4 0x00579FF8 0x0057A2B8 0x0057BA80
0x005541AC 0x002D2400 0x00554304 0x00553268 0x00553130 0x0011E550 0x00156448 0x0015E7F8
0x0015AE44 0x001500B4 0x00150DA4 0x0013B964 0x0013BA78 0x0011DAD8 0x000A9714
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.Ralink.driver.RT73(1.1.6)@0x55c000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily(2.8.1)@0x472000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.5.0)@0x53d000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(1.7)@0x460000
com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.5.0)@0x53d000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2BEFF780)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC

(And this is from the panic log the second time it crashed today. )*********

Sat Jul 26 16:22:12 2008

Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 0): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x0000000056D3E4E4 PC=0x0000000000581AFC
Latest crash info for cpu 0:
Exception state (sv=0x2C50D500)
PC=0x00581AFC; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x56D3E4E4; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x005799EC; R1=0x175133E0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x00578EEC 0x00579FD0 0x0057A2B8 0x0057BA80 0x005541AC 0x002D2400
0x00554304 0x00553268 0x00553130 0x0011E550 0x00156448 0x0015E7F8 0x0015AE44 0x001500B4
0x00150DA4 0x0013B964 0x0013BA78 0x0011DAD8 0x000A9714
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.Ralink.driver.RT73(1.1.6)@0x55c000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily(2.8.1)@0x472000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.5.0)@0x53d000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(1.7)@0x460000
com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.5.0)@0x53d000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2C50D500)
previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...
Exception state (sv=0x2BF09C80)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xFFFF0003): 0x300 - Data access
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x000A8204 0x000ABB80
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2C50D500)
PC=0x00581AFC; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x56D3E4E4; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x005799EC; R1=0x175133E0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)
Backtrace:
0x00578EEC 0x00579FD0 0x0057A2B8 0x0057BA80 0x005541AC 0x002D2400
0x00554304 0x00553268 0x00553130 0x0011E550 0x00156448 0x0015E7F8 0x0015AE44 0x001500B4
0x00150DA4 0x0013B964 0x0013BA78 0x0011DAD8 0x000A9714
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.Ralink.driver.RT73(1.1.6)@0x55c000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily(2.8.1)@0x472000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.5.0)@0x53d000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(1.7)@0x460000
com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily(1.5.0)@0x53d000
*********

Ryoujin · Post by **Ryoujin** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:14 am

You might want to edit your name out of the logs

And please try not to put comments inside the actual logs, rather than that you can put them at the top or the bottom, but not in between.

Is there anything in the Message Log within Console.app? Try to filter by writing Transmission at the top. And, by the way, the german thing you mention is also known as a Kernel Panic.

Now re-reading you don't mention what version of Transmission you are using, would it be possible for you to try a Nightly Build (link in my signature)?

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:43 am

Hey there, I've seen your replies whilst googling all of this stuff today, so I'm glad to hear from you!

I decided to go ahead and try the nightly build, which I'm running now.

The great news is that the memory issue isn't happening anymore. I sit and watch the activity monitor now, and even with eight torrents downloading with no speed limit, the free memory never falls below 500MB.

The bad news is that it still runs abnormally slow. There are moments when it spikes up to 4-500KBbs for a minute or two, but then it goes back downto the 20-30's. The only bright side of this, is that the network seems to back to normal speed when I pause transmission. With it running, it would seem that any network resources are completely spoken for by Transmission, leaving Safari nothing to connect with.

I'm guessing that since it's not eating up all the memory anymore, the network problem doesn't carry over when it's paused or exited. But I don't know much about macs and I'm no IT Pro. Hehe.

I do still have some interesting things happening in my logs though. Here's some more since I started running the latest nightly build r6406. (The last build I used was regular up to date 1.22)

Current Build - 1.22+ Nightly Edition 6406

Following log is from console.log and takes place since I rebooted after installing the Nightly Build.
Mac OS X Version 10.4.11 (Build 8S165)
2008-07-26 21:44:57 -0400
2008-07-26 21:45:06.594 SystemUIServer[161] lang is:en
2008-07-26 21:55:45.387 Transmission[282] Could not trash /Volumes/UNTITLED/Matisyahu - Youth (Australian Edition 2006) - Reggae By FEFE2003.rar
Jul 26 21:56:27 g4 crashdump[286]: ??? crashed
Jul 26 21:56:27 g4 crashdump[286]: crash report written to: /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/???.crash.log
2008-07-26 22:05:47.416 System Preferences[312] ### Error:-308 File:/SourceCache/SharingPref/SharingPref-106/FileSharing.m Line:393
2008-07-26 22:07:22.004 Transmission[374] Could not find image named 'NSAddTemplate'.
2008-07-26 22:07:22.030 Transmission[374] Could not find image named 'NSRemoveTemplate'.
2008-07-26 22:11:53.042 Transmission[396] Could not find image named 'NSAddTemplate'.
2008-07-26 22:11:53.085 Transmission[396] Could not find image named 'NSRemoveTemplate'.
2008-07-26 22:18:31.934 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x3ed4cc0]
2008-07-26 22:18:31.946 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x3ed4cc0]
2008-07-26 22:22:24.565 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x5660850]
2008-07-26 22:22:24.567 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x5660850]
2008-07-26 22:25:22.974 Transmission[396] Unable to get port status: connection failed (timed out)
2008-07-26 22:25:43.722 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x3ed4cc0]
2008-07-26 22:25:43.723 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x3ed4cc0]
2008-07-26 22:28:03.475 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x3ecd150]
2008-07-26 22:28:03.476 Transmission[396] *** -[Torrent torrents]: selector not recognized [self = 0x3ecd150]

Omega · Post by **Omega** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 3:09 am

This is the info I would look into

com.Ralink.driver.RT73

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 3:30 am

Well, since I started using the nightly build, I haven't gotten anything else in my logs about the ralink driver. But I will keep an eye open for it and check to make sure my driver is up to date.

I updated my wireless card driver and utility when I changed versions of Tranny to the nightly build though, so maybe that corrected that error with ralink.

I'm going to open up Tranny again and see what happens download rate wise.

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 3:39 am

Just ran Tranny nightly build 6406.

Had eight torrents going, maxed out around 500KBps for a few minutes, then went down to 60-70KBps and stayed stable there.

During the time it was up, Safari could not connect to any servers, so I had no internet at all.

Something strange seems to be going on. Once I pause all the torrents, my Safari gets back to work as fast as usual.

Ryoujin · Post by **Ryoujin** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 3:47 am

If you run your torrents uncapped, the internet internet speed to other applications might get affected. Try capping Transmission's download speed to something around 80% of your actual speed (or around there). Make sure that your ports are open too.

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 4:03 am

It's telling me that my port is closed. I can't port forward either, because I'm on an open network to which I don't know the router login/password.

However, I've been reading about this all evening, and I've tried most of what I've found so far. I've checked port scanning websites to check my port that way, with no luck.

My Network and Sharing settings are all good to go too. Not sure what else I can do about that port without being able to port forward... Although I have checked the port status before when I wasn't having issues with Tranny, and it has always been green. Only now am I having issues.

Still though, it's nice not to have a total system crash everytime I try to run it! Haha

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 4:06 am

I forgot to mention...

I tried getting a debug report while toggling the "AutoMap" option on my port setting.

Like someone else on here, I get nothing in my debug report about the toggling. After a while, I got something about scraping but that was it.

Ryoujin · Post by **Ryoujin** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 4:52 am

raynda wrote:It's telling me that my port is closed. I can't port forward either, because I'm on an open network to which I don't know the router login/password.

There's not much you can do about it then.

raynda wrote:Although I have checked the port status before when I wasn't having issues with Tranny, and it has always been green. Only now am I having issues.

Do you mean Transmission? If that's so, that's rather an unique nickname

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 4:54 am

LOL

I was just writing a followup post to say that everything is ok. I was able to find an open port using Network Utility and verified that it was open with that "comeseeme" thing that checks ports' status.

Anyhow, I put that port number in Transmission's port field and toggled off "AutoMap" and my download speed went way, way up. Went from 30-ish to steadily 390-430KBps.

It did that for about ten minutes, and right as I was posting about how everything was solved, I got a kernel panic shutdown. And the weird thing is that there's nothing in my panic log about it.

The only thing I could find in Console that was going on when my mac crashed was the following information taken from system.log

Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[54], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[55], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[56], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[57], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[58], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[59], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[60], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 dc-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[61], InUse=1, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=1
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[62], InUse=0, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=0
Jul 27 00:32:50 ds-power-mac-g4 kernel[0]: TxContext[63], InUse=0, bWaitingBulkOut=0, IRPPending=0

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 5:36 am

Ok, now it's eating up all my memory like it did before.

Sigh. lol

Back to square one I suppose.

Ryoujin · Post by **Ryoujin** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 6:02 am

raynda wrote:It did that for about ten minutes, and right as I was posting about how everything was solved, I got a kernel panic shutdown. And the weird thing is that there's nothing in my panic log about it.

Having too many kernel panics isn't something that is good at all; your computer might really have an issue.

There are two options here: the first one would be taking your computer to a Genius (from an Apple Genius Bar) ~or~ you could create a new user in the computer you use and try using Transmission over there.

There's probably something in your computer that is causing the issue, I really doubt it's Transmission because there would be a ton of people already reporting kernel panics by now, so it must be something that was recently installed. Maybe disconnect anything that is not essential from your computer (like printers, scanners and such).

Weaselboy · Post by **Weaselboy** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 3:50 pm

Ryoujin wrote:
raynda wrote:Although I have checked the port status before when I wasn't having issues with Tranny, and it has always been green. Only now am I having issues.
Do you mean Transmission? If that's so, that's rather an unique nickname

I thought I had stumbled into the wrong forum for a moment there.

raynda · Post by **raynda** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 8:58 pm

I have a theory for what's going on. Maybe any Mac experts, particularly anyone who has had and upgraded a PowerMac G4 Dual 500 can help me out here too.

My slave drive is a 250Gig drive, but OS X only recognizes 128 Gigs, as per the limits on the machine.

After reading a little bit about how hard drives work, it seems that they may be memory-dependant when it comes to transferring files. If there's something wrong with the way my computer reads and writes to my slave drive, then that would explain the huge memory surge when it has to verify the data of resumed downloads.

It might also explain why I get a kernel panic when Transmission has been downloading for a while, especially why this happens after the speed goes way through the roof.

Maybe Transmission is grabbing all this data from the internet, and it is struggling in the process of writing it to my slave drive. After enough data is backed up in this process, perhaps some sort of theoretical dam breaks, and the system crashes.

I'm going to test my theory by installing a PCI controller card and hooking the slave drive up to it.

If that doesn't work, I can only think of two things to explain it if it's not a Transmission problem...

1. The Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card I recently installed is having some issue. Seems unlikely because it is Mac compatible, and I haven't read anything bad at all about the compatibility on good old google. However, my Wireless Hawking USB Adapter is connected to it, so maybe something is not meshing in there...

2. The RAM in this system all shows up "OK" in System Profiler, but it's two different speeds of memory working together. One stick is 512MB PC133/133 MHz SDRAM, and the other two sticks are 256MB apiece, and they are PC100/222S. Maybe the 512 stick reads ok but has compatibility issues, or maybe it's a bad idea to have two different speeds of memory working together?

Ah well. I'll let you guys know what I find. Maybe this will help someone else out one day, lol.