Transmission causes leopard slow death

[Weaselboy]

Just a data point. Using T 1.34 on Mac Pro with 10.5.5 and a Time Machine at default settings everything works fine.

I do, however, have my torrent DL folder excluded from TM backups.

[martin308]

Negative on TM for me, Im not having the problem with the default number of connections and 3 max downloads. Only seems to be a problem when I increase the number of connections

[verses]

Just to add a bit more info from me; I've always used the latest release (not development builds) of Transmission as soon as they were released and I've always stuck to the default number of connections. I'm running an Intel C2D Mac Mini with Leopard, which again is updated pretty much as soon as fixes are released.

It's quite possible that the fault disappearing when I disabled TM was a coincidence, I guess I could re-enable it and see if the problem comes back, although from other comments I guess it's looking unlikely to be the cause.

Cheers,

Verses

[Dantak]

Two cents:
Got fed up with Vuze so decided to give Transmission another try. I have the same problem. Leopard/never turned on time machine. I do allow an ass load of connections so I will try that but won't hold my breath.

[nextpope]

I had a similar problem with 1.34 and 10.5.4 on a G4 and it recently cleared itself up. I would dl to an external fw HD and time machine was set to ignore the directory. It had a blinking light. My cat attacked it one night (seriously). After plugging it in one of the volumes on the drive would not mount. I went to Disk Utility and ran the repair disk on all the volumes on the disk. Every volume had problems and the hfs_fsck fixed them all. Since then I have not run into this Transmission 1.34 killing Leopard problem any more (knock on wood).

[albyrw]

Hi, I need to add my voice to those with this problem. I'm running a brand-new (2 weeks old) 20" imac and 10.5.5 (before that, 10.5.4). Until mid last week Transmission ran perfectly, but after I changed the default prefs for permitted number of connections (global) from 200 to 500 and the per torrent pref from 60 to 100, I started getting the regular crashes that others have experienced. Running Transmission 1.34 (not the nightly). I found that when I logged in and ran my normal login applications (incl transmission) with activity monitor in the background and did nothing else, after a few minutes the menu bar extras would lock up and systemuiserver would crash. Gradually, one by one, other process would become non responsive (quicksilver, finder etc.) although if I was quick enough and force-quit the systemuiserver process in Activity Monitor then I could avert the complete lockup of the machine. When this happened, none of the apps would actually crash, they would become non-responsive though. The force quit window would come up but but be non-responsive and only a hard restart would help.

To troubleshoot, I removed all my third party menu extras and login items (incl transmission), then put them back one by one in isolation. It was transmission causing the problem, about 60-90 seconds after launch it would hang, beginning with the UI elements in the menubar. I tried reinstalling Transmission after trashing all torrents, prefs and cache files but the problem persisted. I also tried using another user account and got the same behavior, which makes me wonder if some kind of hardware damage has been caused. Then did an an archive and install, but still seeing the same behaviour. System is rock solid when not running transmission.

I've transferred my partially downloaded torrents to me G4 ibook and they've continued to run perfectly using 1.34, so am mystified why it's happening with the imac. I never had a problem running Trans on a PPC mac. But the problem definitely began after I changed those maximum peer connection prefs, the very next day.

Any thoughts anybody? The problem seems to persist through numerous builds and different system configurations. Something's up! Thanks in advance to the devs for all the work done so far, Trans is otherwise a terrific app. would love to be able to use it again.

cheers
alby

[albyrw]

stace: looks to be an issue with your hardware/drivers (as I expect this to be the case with many) http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php? ... ntry853549

I dont think you get it. This ISNT a network problem. This ISNT the old router killing bug. Other computers can connect and surf fine. What this is, is an entire system crash. EVERYTHING beachballs once it happens. First you notice the internet is dead. Then you check your menu bar or dock and that beachballs. You cant force quit anything. Every other app beachballs.

I dont know what else you want us to say. This IS NOT an internet or hardware problem.

I second what kidmidnight says, it's exactly the same symptoms that I've noticed. One of the first indicators that something's up is that other apps that rely on the internet suddenly start reporting that the internet is not available. Then the menu bar items stop responding and systemuiserver crashes. Then one app after another, the whole system becomes unresponsive, unless you make a lightning quick trip to activity monitor to quit systemuiserver.

Hope that helps devs, thanks!

FWIW, my torrents are all stored on the internal drive, and other users on my router have no access problems with the internet. Using a netgear wireless g router connecting with airport.

[KTamas]

I kinda fixed the problem... by taking the global connection limit down to a whoppin' 25. It even crashed with 40.......

I think I'll go try BitRocket.

[albyrw]

Good news, after deleting all caches, prefs and torrents and starting with a fresh install of Transmission and a new torrent, I managed to successfully download a whole file, about 200Mb over 3 hours, with the peer numbers set to defaults (200/60). Will try and test it out a bit more rigorously over the next few days.

[noelos]

Just another observation of the same thing. Started using a Mac Mini as the primary bit-torrent machine and as an HTPC. I experienced similar problems - it can lock up the entire machine and sometimes it will return to almost normal. When it's locked up I also get the beachballs and in addition, can neither ping nor ssh from the local network. - i.e. it has really screwed up the machine.

If it does manage to get back going, Bonjour services seem to be killed off (i.e. the machine no longer appears on the local network for file/screen sharing (except the Samba part which seems to survive).

As this machine was being reassigned for this to be its main role (this and HTPC), I decided to do a full clean reinstall of Leopard - added all available patches (10.5.5) and installed only a couple of apps - Transmission 1.34 being one of them. I also did not set up Time-Machine yet. However, the problem still occurs periodically.

Really looking forward to a fix for this one (or an alternative BT client)

[darkmac]

I just wanted to post up my setup, I'm running Transmission 1.34 on 10.5.5, on a Macbook Pro 2.4 4gb ram and 160gb hd. After a few hours of downloading I get the slow ui and then stuff stops responding. Not running Time Machine, as far as a router, I'm connected with an Airport Extreme N Base Station (Fast Ethernet). I've lowered the peer numbers and simultaneous downloads to see if that helps.

[KTamas]

I'm running BitComet now with 6 torrents (4 downloading, 2 seeding) full speed, lots of connections, so far stable as a rock. The fans are also MUCH more silent in my macbook. Still, I do miss Transmission.

[echu888]

I've had Transmission on my MacBook (C1D) for as long as I can remember. I don't use a lot of torrents, only occasionally, but since 1.33 and 1.34 I noticed this exact thing. I've never had any beachball / lockup problems with OS X, but Transmission was really killing it good. I also lowered the default number of connections but that did not help at all. A number of the other threads in this same forum area also indicate certain behaviors I was seeing - all network activity over time would die except for the torrent.

So, Transmission is a nice piece of software but this is absolutely a critical stop-ship status bug. Hope you guys can get it worked out. I gotta look for an alternative client in the meantime.

[albyrw]

Just to add that on on top of Trans persistently falling over on my 2008 iMac, I'm getting exactly the same fatal error on my backup machine, a G4 iBook, so it's goodbye Transmission. Hope the devs are noticing this, clearly it's a software problem and independent of hardware platform.

So after many days wasted trying to troubleshoot this problem (including an initial couple of days spent thinking it was a hardware issue with my brand new mac) I'm off to try some other client. Can somebody please post when Trans is a functional app again?

[tempel]

OK, I was hit by this problem for the first time today. I've done quite some "debugging" before coming here and finding this is not just me having this happen.

Here's a few notes and observations:
- I'm running 10.5.5 with Transmission 1.34 on an 8-core MacPro. I've never seen this problem ever before, using Transmission for way over a year.
- When the freeze happens, all network operations on the Mac die. I.e, I cannot even ping to that Mac any more. checking routing and interfaces (ifconfig, netstat -r) show no problems, though - the ethernet interface still appears to be UP.
- It is unrelated to an external network components: I had tried it with two different routers as well as connection to DSL via PPPoE with the modem connected directly to the Mac.
- It doesn't matter whether the Firewall is enabled or not.
- Usually, I can "fix" the freeze by putting the Mac to sleep via its Power button, and then awake it again right after.
- There'll be _nothing_ found in the system logs indicating what something gut stuck.
- Running the Mac in "Safe Mode" (boot with shift key down) doesn't help.
- After reading the comments here, I've changed my Transmission prefs for max connections to 200 / 60. I had them around 300 / 80 before. With the lower values it hasn't frozen for a while now, while it always froze after about 2 minutes earlier.
- Reducing the speed limits from 500 / 75 to 50 / 10 did not help, though.
- With the firewall enabled, I see a lot of messages in the system.log like this: "Stealth Mode connection attempt to ...", I wonder if that's part of the problem.

---update (1h later)---
I did get a freeze with the reduced number of max connections, but later. I also realized that lowering the second value doesn't have any effect for my current downloads as it only affects newly added torrents. I'd have to edit each one's max conn value individually.