Transmission causes leopard slow death

[manlix]

I have the same problem. I never occured before. But some days ago i installed transmission 1.32 and that was when it begun. If i start my six torrents in transmission now the network dies in 10 seconds and all other applications becomes unresponsive and i'll have to do a hard reset.

There must be some problem in Leopard. An userspace application shouldnt be allowed to fuck the whole network up? Is Apple aware of this?

The only thing i can see in my logs is hundreds of lines with this

Aug 10 21:02:55 beard [0x0-0x19019].org.m0k.transmission[942]: compactLen is 12, n is 2, and strlen(added_f) is 0!!!
Aug 10 21:02:56 beard [0x0-0x19019].org.m0k.transmission[942]: compactLen is 6, n is 1, and strlen(added_f) is 0!!!
Aug 10 21:02:59 beard [0x0-0x19019].org.m0k.transmission[942]: compactLen is 18, n is 3, and strlen(added_f) is 2!!!

[iHEARTleeching]

+1 I too have this issue. Happened after version .32 I have been doing the nightlies for a while, and as they started failing (IE. Lepoard slow death, with beachball spinning, and ending in me having to power off). I then tried the 1.32, and the issue persisted.

Transmission is a great app, I love it to death. But this is making me a sad panda, since I can't torrent. So, unless more logs are needed, I will stick to 1.22. I am of course willing to post log-files, and generally try various new nightlies, if needed. But, if the dev's know what they are looking for, I don't want to spam the forums with stuff you already know

Btw, I noticed it in the nightlies a while ago... Hard to say when, I wouldn't think more than a month ago, but that's an estimate. Anyway, I got hold of v1.22 (since that seems like the most stable version around at the moment) waited a day or two, and then got the new nightly and it appeared fixed. So, I didn't think more of it... Maybe that helps.

Best regards /Deyardly

PS. Sorry, this might have been mentioned and shot down. But I'm thinking if it might have something to do with Airport Extreme? I use Time Machine via Wireless on a regular harddrive in a standard incasing with USB. I don't download torrents to the Wireless Time Machine drive. If it has been mentioned I didn't see it, 6 pages is a bit long, just wanted to make my voice heard on the issue. + I'm kinda drunk atm. So, I will read tomorrow, or saturday

[pseudosudo]

I'm on version 1.32 on Leopard, this has been happening since early in the 1.x train.

I'm on a MBP 17" (latest generation), 4Gb of RAM (factory installed)

I've tried deleting preferences, deleting all of Transmission and reinstalling, but I've found something that suggests (IANAD) it's an I/O deadlock in the app that's blocking the network stack.

If you concurrently run (in Terminal)

while true; do sync; sleep 1; done

to keep the disk write cache flushed then the problem clears up entirely. I haven't had the time to learn how to use dtruss/dtrace yet to see if I can find the syscall that's blocking but the above solution has been working for me for over a week now. Of course this kills disk performance for everything, and I/O waits go through the roof, but the machine is usable and the torrents download just fine.

If anyone can point me to a debug build or a tutorial on dtruss/dtrace that can help pinpoint the problem I'll be more than happy to have a look.

I'd be interested in knowing if the sync helps anyone else

[Pirata]

This happens to me too on my MacBook Pro (2.16 GHz, 4GB RAM). Everytime it happens, I must reset my router to get internet connection back.

Can anyone point me to a transmission release that isnt affected by this problem?

EDIT: I just updated to the latest nightly (1.32+ r6551, updated 4 hours ago) and it seems to be working ok. At least, it is working without the connection issue for longer time than previous versions did.
EDIT 2: Nope, it keeps happening using latest nightly Sadly I'll switch to azureus while this is being solved

[rlxbt]

I'm glad I found this thread, since I've been having the same issue for the last few days, on a Mac mini (Intel Core Duo), Mac OS X 10.5.4, using Transmission 1.32 (6435), 100+ active transfers (100+ GB), DL and UL rate limited, connected via AirPort, torrents and data on an external USB drive. The system is a fresh install, no other apps are running at the same time.

At some point -- from a few minutes to a few hours after reboot -- the system becomes mostly unresponsive. Menu Extras hang (clock frozen, beach ball), apps are still running, but no more network traffic from/to the machine (while other Macs on the same network are fine). Launching new apps will fail (keep bouncing in the dock), the dock may freeze eventually, open apps will hang during UI changes (switching panes, opening dialogs), terminal freezes after hitting return after any command, etc. This may be consistent with the previous assumption that apps hang on disk i/o. A hard reboot is the only way out.

Most of the times (even though not all of the times), DirectoryService crashes. Maybe that's a hint.

I really liked the direction Transmission was going, and i *really* don't want to go back to Azureus. So I'd be more than happy to do more testing and/or provide more data that would help you track this down.

[livings124]

pseudosudo: any info you can give us would be greatly appreciated

[tyggy]

I'm glad it's not the bad iMac I just bought.

Please resolve this, Transmission team.

[rlxbt]

If you concurrently run (in Terminal)

while true; do sync; sleep 1; done

to keep the disk write cache flushed then the problem clears up entirely.

(...)

I'd be interested in knowing if the sync helps anyone else

for me, the issue still occurs.

[iHEARTleeching]

Interesting. I have just tried the latest nightly, and the problem appears fixed. At least I'm not having it, atm.

[Neon Jebus]

I've been seeing similar issues as listed in this thread and issues are still happening with the 1.32 nightly and 1.33 beta usage. I've tried to read on how to post bug information but since it hangs up the system it never crashes anything because I'm forced to manually turn off my system. At first I only noticed the freeze after being away from my computer and Energy Saver kicking in. As of tonight it's happening while I'm using the system.

I've also noticed a longer than normal boot time since the 1.32 update and my system takes almost 3 minutes to show my desktop icon for my Windows XP partition when it used to appear right along the icon for OS X. I'm sure it's not related but just figured I should mention anything I might notice that seems to be different since the 1.32 update.

[loopkid]

I have 23 Torrents each about 5 GB in size which I want to download.

- MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM
- Mac OS 10.5.4
- 16 Mbit ADSL internet connection
- Speedport W 501V Router
- Transmission 1.32 (build 6453)
- Download limit: 1024 kByte/s (capacity: 1700 kByte/s)
- Upload limit: 90 kByte/s (capacity: 130 kByte/s)

I can start up to six simultaneous downloads without problems. If I start more than six downloads then one of two things happens. Either the internet connection slowly dies with each added download inspite of the set limits or Transmission simply freezes and cannot be shutdown, not even with force-quit, which produces a zombie forcing me to hard reset my computer. Sometimes I additionally have to reset my router to get my internet connection back. The crashes never produce any crash log.

I love Transmission, please make this work!

[Zorg]

+1 here. Only started happening when I upgraded from 1.22 to 1.32. 1.33 hasn't fixed it either. I close down all apps (sometimes leave Firefox on), begin transmission, and everything looks fine. Then I wake up in the morning and it's frozen. I can do a couple of things like switch tabs in Firefox (if I left it open), like the user a few above me said, but as soon as I try to force quit, or access the Activity monitor, I get a complete freeze, Dock frozen up and all.

On a separate note, can anyone point me to a thread about Transmission's speeds? I want to know why Azureus and uTorrent seem to be able to reach consistently faster speeds. For me, Transmission can only achieve about 2/3 the speed of what the others can.

Cheers

[Gregster]

+1 Here, I've ran full diagnostics on my Imac and there is nothing wrong with it, glad I found this thread, this problem is real and needs fixing. Oddly enough to other Macs in the house don't seem to be affected, the macbook chugs along seeding for days without any problems.
I've been test driving other clients over the weekend and still prefer Transmission for its interface and speed controls
Lets hope there is an answer soon

G

[paulwoodsford]

iMac Intel 3.06, 4GB Ram
Leopard 10.5.4
Transmission ver 1.0 works fine can download all day 3 + torrents, and do everything else I want, No problems.

Transmission ver 1.2, 1.3 etc I can only download 1 torrent at a time otherwise ALL internet connection is loss. Closedown Firefox and re-open cannot surf anywhere. Reboot router, Belkin, and can get to homepage and then no further.
As I say, something changed between ver 1.0 and upwards.

[rlxbt]

for me, downgrading from 1.32 to 1.22 seems to have fixed the issue.