[solved] torrent clients crashing snow leopard?

[CorrodedSpoon]

Same thing happened to me this morning. I'm running 1.76 and 10.6.2.
I was getting great bandwidth and all of the sudden transmission froze, as did all of the menu bar items (clock and iStat graphs just sat there doing nothing), Camino, Finder, and iTunes.
Keynote was working for a while after, but then it froze too. I was forced to hard restart after a Finder failed to restart from force quit.
I ran Glasnost and my ISP came up clean.

Interestingly, in the times Transmission decides not to freeze, I get no tracker responses or "Got a redirect, trying again in 5 seconds" and then nothing.
uTorrent has no issues so I know that the trackers aren't the problem.
My latest attempts to coax some functionality out of the Snow Leopard, Transmission combination result in it freezing about 6 seconds after staring up. It will occasionally come back to life, but only for a few seconds, and then it will die again. It does successfully force quit, so I haven't had to do anymore hard restarts, but that's not really good news.

Also, after watching activity monitor, the number of recent hangs increased from 1 to 2 within a minute while it was frozen, yet it seemed to be opening new ports to different trackers while it was hanging.

I hope some of this is new information and can help out.

[CorrodedSpoon]

An update you might all like:

The nightly build 9664 is working fine. Not a single sign of the freezing (and I've been provoking it with repeated application switches, lots of unnecessary scrolling, lots of clicking, and anything that seemed to cause the crashing before).

Now the only issue is the lack of tracker responses. None of the current 35 transfers have had a good announce or scrape.
It may just be me, though, so I would still try the build out.

One more thing: Now transmission has two help menu bar options. One is the fancy leopard/snow leopard one pretending to be spotlight, and the other only has the option "Transmission Help".

[hippy dave]

thanks - just downloaded 9667 so here's hoping for no crashes...

[hippy dave]

no luck, had a couple of crashes already since installing.

[CorrodedSpoon]

On my machine it refuses to get any tracker responses of any kind, so it is functionally the same.

Oh well. I guess we wait for 10.6.3 to see if that helps.

[CorrodedSpoon]

1.80b1 works. It doesn't crash and it uploads and downloads.
It hung couple of times but recovered quickly, so consider giving it some time if it starts to hang.

[arggasasao]

after I installed the new instalation of snow leopard 10.6.2, the transmision crash my system completely.
My internet, sometimes, goes offline, and when that happens the transmision chash my whole system.
i tested the transmision 1.9.2 / 1.8.3 versions

[hippy dave]

have still been having this problem very consistently since my last post. i updated to 10.6.3 last night tho, i don't know how optimistic i should be about that possibly finally fixing it, but we'll see. it's made it overnight without crashing at least, but i won't be confident until it's been up for a couple of days or more.

[hippy dave]

no, it didn't even last a day without crashing. sigh.

[hippy dave]

i tried the proposed fix in that thread, the network settings tweak, and it didn't help. i do usually have speed limit turned on but i'm sure i still had the same problem when i tried keeping it off. global connections = 200, per torrent = 60, dht is enabled. as i've said, this problem isn't exclusive to transmission, it occasionally happens when it's not running.

the only other idea i could find on google is this metafilter thread which suggests that it could be a rare os x problem with wifi (no solution offered there yet tho). i've yet to properly test out whether this is my problem, as it wouldn't be convenient to only use a wired ethernet connection for long enough to be sure - tho i might do it at some point. otherwise, might get my hands on a 3g dongle as an alternative for testing.

[hippy dave]

ok thanks, i'll give that a go.

[hippy dave]

yup, that's why i've kept this seperate thread, i've never been sure if what i'm experiencing is the same thing as what the other thread's about.

[hippy dave]

On Transmission's side, if your interested, try the following. Disable DHT and Speed Limit mode. Set connections to 100 global (or less, if you suspect router issues), 10 per torrent with 10 max active torrents. Limit upload speeds to 60% of tested bandwidth.

since doing the above, my system stayed up for about 2 days, which is longer than usual tbh. but when i activated it this morning it went straight to the dark screen overlay with the power button symbol and the text in multiple languages, needing a hard reboot. it only crashes this way rarely, usually it's the semi-gradual lockup that i've reported earlier in this thread (at which point i sometimes notice that various textual things on screen are missing random characters, tho this isn't very common). still needs a hard reboot.
and this afternoon i had the latter style of lockup, not the power button symbol one.

[hippy dave]

still getting nowhere with this
have tried a new user account, have tried using ethernet instead of wifi, still getting regular crashes whether transmission is running or not (tho more frequently when it is).
logs don't tell me anything, smart status is "verified", tho i'm going to try and test the hard drive more thoroughly.

[Fayneloves]

On Transmission's side, if your interested, try the following. Disable DHT and Speed Limit mode. Set connections to 100 global (or less, if you suspect router issues), 10 per torrent with 10 max active torrents. Limit upload speeds to 60% of tested bandwidth.

since doing the above, my system stayed up for about 2 days, which is longer than usual tbh. but when i activated it this morning it went straight to the dark screen overlay with the power button symbol and the text in multiple languages, needing a hard reboot. it only crashes this way rarely, usually it's the semi-gradual lockup that i've reported earlier in this thread (at which point i sometimes notice that various textual things on screen are missing random characters, tho this isn't very common). still needs a hard reboot.
and this afternoon i had the latter style of lockup, not the power button symbol one.

Looks to me like you may have issues unrelated to Transmission. You need to do some troubleshooting. Look at your Console Logs for any pertinent info. Run Disk Utility on permissions and filesystem. Check 'Smart' status. Boot from Install Disk holding down the 'D' key and run Hardware Check. Google for info on Safe/Single User boot. As mentioned before, check out any apps that may have installed kext's. Disable unnecessary login items. Try running Transmission from a different account. If you find pertinent entries in T's 'Message Logs' or your 'Console Logs', please post. Back up your data!

Of what "hippy dave" have experienced, I am experiencing as well. I updated my Transmission and Snow Leopard to 10.6.4, however, the system start locking up my screen and then, I lost control of the computer.

For your information, I am currently using Macbook Pro (15.4" 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo 2 4G RAM 2008 Edition). I am using Snow Leopard (as mentioned). Like "hippy dave", I also do some basic things most of the time like adium, mail etc. However, to my surprise, even with the basic elements in place, Transmission would lock my system.

I don't think it's with the router or the wi-fi issue. In the past, I have used Transmission to download torrent files overnight, without having to deal the crashing problems. Transmission was working perfectly, therefore, I have been using the software. However, with recent events of crashes, it begins to irritate me and annoys me as my files are delayed. My settings for Transmission are by default, set by the software. However, it still gives me problem. I've tried looking what actually crashes it in the Console ,but to no avail.

Perhaps someone can suggest the best way to solve this problem? Or (optional) the developers suggest what might be the causes for the errors and try fix it? It would be greatly appreciated.