transmission freezing mac mini

[WidowMaker]

hey all, I have a g4 mac mini that until a week ago was running transmission fantastically... fast forward to after the recent update and transmission now freezes the computer constantly... any ideas

[mangaphreak]

This is the worst release of Transmission in a very long time -- at least for me…!It seems to have re-introduced a bug/problem that I (and several other people) have regularly had to struggle with until maybe 12-16 months ago when for some reason it went away and Transmission became usable again -- until the final release of 2.20 a few days ago…!

What happens is basically that as soon as I have a few more torrents running the whole thing freezes up after a while…! And by a few more I mean more than 2 or 3 and by freezes up I mean that not only Transmission freezes but it takes down my whole system…! (2 GHz Intel Core Duo Mac mini)

There is no way to force-quit Transmission in that case, there is nothing I can do to bring it back to live or save other stuff -- the only thing I can do is to physically shut down my Mac by holding down the Power key…!

This hasn't happened to me with any other app and even with Transmission I haven't had any similar problems for a very long time, even the previous betas ran smoothly until I updated to the final version of 2.20 and the troubles began…!

@x190: Transmission has been working without any problems for a long time now with the settings I've had before so I don't think it has anything to do with number of connections, transfers or downloads…!? And it seems that WidowMaker didn't have any problems either until the very last release…!? And as for keeping Transmission up to date -- that's what caused the trouble in the first place, I'd say…!

EDIT: I guess I was too optimistic -- it happens with even only two downloads running at once…! I have no idea what happened between the betas and the final version of 2.20 but for now Transmission has become completely unusable to me…!

[livings124]

mangaphreak: Can you try x190's suggestions. Transmission 2.2 is better at connecting to peers, and as a result your network might not be able to handle it with the current settings.

And thanks for the half-star review on macupdate. Always appreciate that.

[mangaphreak]

mangaphreak: Can you try x190's suggestions. Transmission 2.2 is better at connecting to peers, and as a result your network might not be able to handle it with the current settings.

Shouldn't this have shown with the beta versions of 2.20 then…?! It worked just fine until I updated to the final…
If by "network" you mean my internet connection, that's a 50 Mbit VDSL line that should be quite capable and it has been until two days ago…!? Could you maybe explain what you mean by 2.2 being better at connecting and how and why that would affect the whole system or lead to those insane crashes respectively…? Thanks…!

BTW, doesn't reducing the number of connections slow down my downloads…? Or am I mixing up things here…?

And thanks for the half-star review on macupdate. Always appreciate that.

Well, what kind of rating would you expect for an app that constantly and repeatedly just keeps crashing and dragging the whole system down to hell with it…?!
I had way higher ratings for previous versions but this is such a disaster…! Thanks for your sarcasm though, it's aprreciated as well…

[livings124]

Nothing serious has changed from the beta. It's likely luck of the draw. Reducing the number of connections refers to decreasing the number of allowed peers, meaning your network will be dealing with less traffic.

I had way higher ratings for previous versions but this is such a disaster…! Thanks for your sarcasm though, it's aprreciated as well…

Your history only shows the one review.

[mangaphreak]

Sorry, I've been away over the weekend, hence my late reply…

Your history only shows the one review.

That's weird, I was sure that I had rated previous versions as they came out -- although I might confuse that with my Versiontracker reviews…!? Anyway, I wanted to make clear that I generally like Transmission…! I use it on my Macs, I recommend it to other people and what not, so I'm not here to troll but because I usually like and enjoy using the app it's just more of a disappointment that I am now having such a horrible experience…!

Nothing serious has changed from the beta. It's likely luck of the draw. Reducing the number of connections refers to decreasing the number of allowed peers, meaning your network will be dealing with less traffic.

Okay, but that doesn't really answer my question, or maybe I'm just not getting it -- will it also reduce my download speed then…?!
And why did everything work just fine with the settings I had for the last two years or so and has gone all down the drain once I updated to the new version…?!

These may sound like dumb questions, but I'm not a coder, hacker, programmer or bittorrent expert, just a regular user trying to understand what's going on, why this is happening to me and how I can fix it -- but also how a potential fix might influence my user experience from that point on…

There's another issue though that I'd like to address and again I admit that I don't fully understand what is going on under the hood but anyway: I just think this shouldn't be happening…! What I mean is that no matter what the problem is (whether it is faulty code or the wrong preference settings) and no matter what settings I actually type in there never ever should an application crash so badly…! Sure, it might freeze up or even crash or so, that's all annoying but acceptable, but repeatedly completely killing my whole system so that the only remaining option is to turn off the machine using the power button I don't find acceptable at all…!

I've never experienced such horrible freezes with any other application over the years and there should be some kind of failsafe within the code to prevent this from happening, no matter what -- again, spoken from a layman's point of view…

Anyway, thanks for your support on here and I hope I will son be able to use Transmission on my Macs again…!

[Jordan]

You're not going to like this answer, but it sounds more like a system problem to me. A single application shouldn't be able to take down a healthy system.

[spegelboll]

I'm quite sure that it's not related to the actual system. I can confirm the same behavior from two of my computers; one 27" iMac and one Hackintosh, both are under a year old and are working very well, except when using transmission.

Full speed on my 100/100 connection when downloading smaller torrents, usually around 2-4gb, works like a charm. But downloading larger torrents (one large torrent is enough to freeze the system) freezes my computers completely (need to shutdown with the power-switch). There is a work around: limit the speed to around 1mb/s OR limit the connections to around 20.
But to limit the connections will almost always limit my speed to around 2mb/s, which makes it almost as bad as limiting the speed. So there's definitely some problems with the latest release, since large torrents have been working just fine before.

I really admire your work, and I really like Transmission, but I do agree with mangaphreak - there should definitely be no behavior of an application that can freeze the whole system.

Hopefully you can find a solution to this.

[kidmidnight]

its the slow death bug again, and yes 2.2 is screwing macs up again. The transmission developers will stick their fingers in their ears and say that their program doesnt cause it but its been proven time and time again that it does. Everything was fine for a few releases before this one.

It crashes my iMac. The other computers in the house can still connect fine to the internet.

[george]

Limit # of global connections, connections for new transfers, active transfers, and global speeds. I use 100/10/10 and 60% of tested available bandwidth. Depending on your router even 100 global connections might be too high. Keep your version of Transmission up to date.

Hi. New to Transmission.
I found this post and am trying to make adjustment as per your suggestions but I cannot find where some are located.
*I did find and set limit for global connections to 100.
*I did find and set limit for new transfers to 10.
*I cannot find settings for active transfers.
*I cannot find settings for global speeds.
*How do I find "tested available bandwidth?"
Thanks for any help.

[r0n1n]

*I cannot find settings for active transfers.

Preferences>Transfers>Management>Queues

*I cannot find settings for global speeds.

Preferences>Bandwidth

*How do I find "tested available bandwidth?"

You can test your bandwidth speed at http://www.speedtest.net/

[george]

r0n1n and x190:
Thanks for the help.
Re the bandwidth limits, I got a reading of 5.07 Mbps for download and 0.26 Mbps upload.
Using the conversion site tool, I then entered in Prefs>Bandwidth as follows:
Global limits: Download Rate [633 KB/s. And Upload rate [32 KB/sec.
As per your suggestion, I entered the same in Speed Limit Mode.
Sound right?

[ftzdomino]

I had this exact same problem when my global connections had a limit of 600. The problem was very repeatable, always happening within a few minutes of starting transmission if there was a heavily seeded torrent in the list. I could not run top, ssh into my mini, or kill apps via hot keys. Everything just stuck on a beach ball. The only way out was to power cycle it. Other devices on my network worked fine, so I don't think it was an issue with overwhelming my router.

Setting a maximum connection limit of 200 fixed the issue. Does OSX break if you exceed a certain number of TCP connections?

[minibixx]

HI all,

So obvisouly I created an account because of this issue...

Here goes :

I use a MBP dbl core 2.53 Ghz with 4Go 1067 Mhz DDR3
I also use Transmission 1.71 (went back to it more than a year ago when I started having problems with newer versions) and have been totally delighted with it until yesterday.

I have a 12Mb internet connexion and download straight to my internal 250 (lame) Go HD
I did download many (8 to 10) big torrents (3 to 9Go each), and I could download 25go a day with no issue

2 days ago transmission started to act weird (DL speed keeps getting extremely high (over 1mb/s), than to Zero for douzens of seconds, then high (around 400/500 kbs) Then Zero etc etc...) I could still get my dowloads in a pretty decent time and it didn't affect the computer that much.

But yesterday I had to make 6 hardshutdowns (computer completely freezes when using transmission). I though it was only when using multiple programs (vlc or chrome together with transmission). So this morning I tried with only transmission and the same problem keeps happening. Have to force shutdown the mbp each time by pressing the on/off button.

I'm trying right now to change my limits (I had 150 max connections and 1000 Kb/s and I'm now trying 80 connections with 200 Kb/s with 3 maximum downloads... working for the last 30 minutes or so...)

Will post again with final results... But I sure wish I could have more than 3 downloads at any time and more than 200 kb/s...
Just thought I should share my experience.

Go Transmission !!!

[minibixx]

(Update)

Well it's not freezing for now, (couple of hours in) but :

It still goes near the limit (my limit is 200 kb/s), goes up to 150, 160 for 5 or 6 seconds, then goes to ZERO for 20 sec to a minute... back and forth. It is downloading yes, but it's really not what you would expect. I'm actually thinking of finishing the 3 active downloads and have a try on utorrent (which I used on my Pc and was quiet happy with it)