Transmission consistently stops working

Ask for help and report issues not specific to either the Mac OS X or GTK+ versions of Transmission
medman826
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:48 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by medman826 »

I flushed the DNS cache, and then attempted to get a debug log from curl. I had DHT, PEX and uTP disabled. Unfortunately, as the problem takes a whole day to reproduce usually, the log was around 300,000 lines. The problem definitely did still occur though, even after all that.

I haven't bothered with a debug log from Transmission, since the curl log was already way too big to be helpful.

EDIT:
I looked through the curl log to see if I could find anything useful, and it does appear that at a certain point hosts simply stop resolving. However, this is not consistent with the state of my internet connection when it happens. Even when Transmission is unable to resolve hosts any longer, the rest of the OS is still able to. I specifically pinged the trackers that supposedly stop resolving when the issue occurs and found that they actually do resolve.

Is it possible that this is a problem with curl? It seems odd that I am the only one encountering it if so.

I'll try a Transmission debug log now.
cfpp2p
Posts: 290
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 3:14 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by cfpp2p »

If it's specifically a problem with curl, UDP trackers might still work. Any information on that?

What version of curl?
medman826
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:48 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by medman826 »

How do I determine what trackers are using UDP?

curl --version outputs the following:

Code: Select all

curl 7.30.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin13.0) libcurl/7.30.0 SecureTransport zlib/1.2.5
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtsp smtp smtps telnet tftp 
Features: AsynchDNS GSS-Negotiate IPv6 Largefile NTLM NTLM_WB SSL libz
cfpp2p
Posts: 290
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 3:14 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by cfpp2p »

udp://tracker.example.com as opposed to http://tracker.example.com
a lot of public torrent use udp trackers
cfpp2p
Posts: 290
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 3:14 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by cfpp2p »

I think that that's an older version of curl. http://www.hmug.org/pub/MacOS_X/BSD/App ... rnet/curl/
but you'll need someone who uses Mac (I'm not) to tell you how to update if you don't know how.
http://curl.haxx.se/changes.html

I found a similar report for for windows and libcurl 7.30.0 but I don't know if that would have any relevance at all
http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2014-09/0128.html
medman826
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:48 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by medman826 »

I've installed curl 7.40.0 via homebrew, but it does not replace the system's default version of curl. If I'm not mistaken, Apple specifies a version for all machines running a particular OS to use. In this case it was 7.30.0, which means that anyone running 10.9.5 should also be using that version of curl. I could build Transmission to use version 7.40.0 instead by editing the LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS. It seems like it's worth a try.

@cfpp2p, the issue you mentioned does not seem quite the same. For me, all hostname resolves fail after a certain point. It's not just a few here or there.

As for UDP trackers... They work! Even when the problem is occurring, and no torrents using http trackers will announce, UDP trackers will announce properly, as well as leech and seed.

It does seem as though curl is the problem. I'll build Transmission to use curl 7.40.0, and report back with any results.

EDIT:
I'm having trouble locating the flags. Feeling kind of dumb... Could someone point me in the right direction? I just need to change the LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS.
cfpp2p
Posts: 290
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 3:14 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by cfpp2p »

If the udp trackers work it definitely indicates there is a problem with curl since UDP uses libevent for UDP.
medman826
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:48 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by medman826 »

Still need some help figuring out where to change the compiler flags. I have no experience with Xcode, nor the Transmission code, so I'm pretty lost. I'm not finding them anywhere.
cfpp2p
Posts: 290
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 3:14 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by cfpp2p »

This post looks awfully similar to me, but I'm not sure :?:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16699#p70174
medman826
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:48 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by medman826 »

I don't think it's the same problem just because for me all torrents from http trackers are unable to connect, not just the ones from a particular tracker.

Also, no luck with my special build of Transmission. I replaced the executable as x190 mentioned, but I don't know for sure if that means it actually uses curl 7.40.0. I don't know how to check.
medman826
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:48 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by medman826 »

brady7 and I confirmed that indeed our problems may be related, as posted by cfpp2p. We are both seeding torrents from the tracker he referred to in his forum thread.

@x190, that is an excellent idea. I should have tried this earlier. I will do this and post the results.
brady7
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:46 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by brady7 »

medman826 wrote:brady7 and I confirmed that indeed our problems may be related, as posted by cfpp2p. We are both seeding torrents from the tracker he referred to in his forum thread.

@x190, that is an excellent idea. I should have tried this earlier. I will do this and post the results.
For the 1st time in about a week, this particular tracker's torrents are all fine this morning, after leaving them running all night, ie do not show as "could not connect to tracker"; I downloaded a torrent from the site, & it came through fine, I did not need to quit & re-start as before. Will post again if it changes.

Thanks.
tmcdanel
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2009 4:19 pm

Re: Transmission consistently stops working

Post by tmcdanel »

Did you solve this problem?
This thread is very helpful. i seem to be having exactly the same problem eight years later.
viewtopic.php?p=80752&sid=8b678f69eb41d ... 6a1#p80752
Post Reply