Possible SOLUTION: Transmission Crashing Mac OS X

[jesebbach]

Well, I just read your input, and it doesn't seem to work with my theory — or maybe it does : the trouble in your case isn't with writing, it's with reading, but it's the same : the drive can't keep up with all that it seems... (well, Iguess it could keep up if it wasn't doing anything else, like downloading or anything, at the same time). Or at least, Transmission is trying to write to fast... I noticed that Transmission doesn't use much RAM (which is usually cool), but maybe that's the problem ?

What do you think ?

[MacProBob]

Perhaps. The RAM issue is interesting. I have 10 GB so that'd be more than enough to spare some for a 'cache' of sorts.

I personally think there is a flaw in the program because the code writers didn't think that people would be dealing with the enormous amounts of data and the sheer number of transfers. It's almost like Transmission is setup to go full bore without consulting the system and saying, "Alright, how much bus speed can I hog, or hard drive bandwidth, etc." I think that's where the problem lies.

It could be everyone is a little different because of fluctuating machine specs, so different limitations of different machines cause different issues. By doing the nightly releases thing, no code is really being rewritten, code is simply patched.

I can't wait for Fringe tonight. It's been to long.

[jesebbach]

same here, I have enough RAM — but my activity panel show only 50 Mo or 100 Mo max of the RAM used by Transmission : like it wasn't even there, or that the application just managed the window... Maybe there's another processus somewhere else that I'm missing (dont know exactly how the app works, but...), but, most of the time, I have at least 1/3 of my RAM that is completely FREE — not used, not even inactive... — and approximately 1/8 that is inactive (which means that it could be reaffected anytime).

That's strange : maybe, wanting to use as less as possible the RAM ressources, the developpers went too far ?

By the way : have a good time with FRinge...

[jesebbach]

Thanks x190, I'll try that...

Just, at first glance, in the thread you gave us, nobody seems to have a definitive answer... It's a lot of tweeking here and there, but doesn't seem to deal with the real problem.

I'm sorry, I just reread what I wrote, and it can sound... well... not very nice. But it's not my disposition at all : on the contrary, I just want to contribute to the app so that it can run as smoothly as possible — without going into the code or even in the system.

Another thing that I have failed to mention, and that I'm experiencing right now (because I'm installing the 2.20b1) — and I think it's related — is that TRansmission takes ages to quit ! Especially when there are transfers going : it's been 20 minutes now, and it's still not completely off...

[jesebbach]

Well... here's an update (with the 2.20b1, but not the sysctrl tweaks, which I don't feel confortable doing, too scared to mess it up).

Transmission does freeze from time to time (a bit more often than I would like — about twice every hour) but it's not a permanent freeze. Eventually, it will unfreeze and go back to working ok. But it's still 3 to 5 very annoying minutes from time to time.

By the way, could it be posssible to add an option to increase manually the amount of RAM dedicated to Transmission ? Or something like that ?

[MacProBob]

The option to control RAM went the way of the dodo with OS9. It used to be an operating system thing. If I am correct, there's no way to do it within the program as it would conflict with the OS.

If you don't want TBT to hang when quitting, pause all transfers first, wait a few seconds, then quit. I've found that eliminates much of the waiting time although it still takes a little while.

[jesebbach]

Thanks ! That's actually a good idea...

THat being said, and I don't want to speak too soon, but the new beta 2.20b2 seems to be working a lot better ! (and, just as I write that, there's just one little glitch, but the glitches are now more rare and much less serious)... Maybe you've solved it ! at least, you're on the right track... Thanks a lot for everything.

How about you, MacProBob ?

[MacProBob]

I haven't upgraded yet. I'm still running 2.13. I decided I'm not going to try the betas because of glitches and such. I don't have the time to waste when things go awry.

On 2.13, there have been no issues once I implemented the changes I indicated above. Running like a top.

[jesebbach]

I hear you...

[jesebbach]

It seems to run much better with the new beta update 2.20b3 !

Don' know what was the matter — and we may never know. But, as long as there's no longer any problem, thats fine by me.

By the way : I just had one little problem that worried me and that seems to be almost the same : I added by mistake a large download and wanted to pause it right away (it was a mistake) — and Transmission froze for some time. But it was ok after a maybe one hour...

[stimplit]

FIXED:

After wondering why transmit would crash OSX 10.6 for ages. I tried going to the latest nightly build, then back to 1.13 from 2.20 and nothing would fix it. The odd thing is, the day before it was fine and now it would constantly crash my OS. No "terminate task" window, just a forced off would fix the issue.

So then I went through general computer care, fixed permissions, cleared system caches etc. and then, just out of curiosity I ran a De-fragmentation check on my hard disk. Macs are not supposed to fragment [or so the myth goes] but my 200GB hard drive has 98% fragmentation on the free space!

I removed 50% of the data onto another drive, but my OS was still heavily fragmented. Rather than spend ages trying to defrag it I decided it would be quicker to format my laptop's drive, and restore my profile from timemachine. Five hours later, my computer is MUCH faster, I think I hadn't noticed the progressive speed decrease since it must have been very slow and progressive over the last 3 years.

Transmission now works perfectly, in fact everything is now much faster. To check my hard drive for fragmentation i used iDefrag which is free if you are just checking the state of your drive. And I also used Grand Perspective, another free app, to see where all my disk space was being used.

Hope this helps someone!

Sincerely,

Sebastian.

[mangaphreak]

I too used to have extreme freezes and crashes with older versions of Transmission until maybe one and a half year ago (not sure which version it was) it all went away and Transmission became usable again -- until the final release of 2.20 a few days ago…!

What happens now 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 life 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…!

Not sure what's going on here but I sure hope for a bugfix release soon because right now Transmission has become completely unusable…!

[stimplit]

ok i take it all back, brand new install of mac osx, latest build of transmission, if i have more than about 3 torrents actively downloading then my computer is doomed to crash.

Zero fragmentation now, all local on the laptop drive, so no funny FW stuff, I do notice that the problem is at its most frequent when the amount of downloading I could be doing is less than I actually am doing. In other words, if my network download is maxed out at 160kps and it is juggling more torrents than it knows what to do with, so torrent 1,2,3 get some bits, then 2,5,10 then 1,7,3 get some bits and then FREEZE.

Can't quit the program, have to power down, loose all my work on all other programs running... VERY critical problem!

I hope someone can fix this cause it means that for now all I can do is run one torrent at a time that is "new" or else risk it freezing before it is done or I wake up.

[MacProBob]

So... I upgraded to 2.20

I'd been busy lately so less traffic. Q'ed up a bunch of files this morning, came home tonight.

POOF! Trans was back to its old tricks. Had to do the hard reset and go from there.

I've reverted back to 1.9

We'll see how that goes. Updates to follow. Anyone else?