Transmission causes leopard slow death

[cheule]

x190 in light of linenoise's findings, I think you bring up a good point (which is that Apple clearly isn't aware of the problem or at least how severe it is). I have submitted the problem through the normal channels (i.e. bug report submissions) but I'm afraid that my submission is below the background noise. Perhaps if enough people submitted, we can be heard above that background noise.

Here is the bug report submission link: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

[Ankit]

That sysctl thing seems to be working for me finally, thanks parodyr.

[ennui]

Three things:

1) I think this is only a problem for ultra large torrents. I've been running the latest Transmission every time a new build comes out for the last two months (seems like a weekly thing), and haven't had a problem until today, when I grabbed a 50GB (!!!) torrent. I only needed two ~7GB files out of it, but within minutes my entire computer came screeching to a halt. This happened 3 times before I gave up.

2) I do not have a sysctl.conf in my /etc/ folder, I even ran a "find / -name" for it with no results. The sysctl commands do work, but they did not stop my system from crashing once I started downloading again. Maybe there's nothing I can do for these ultra huge torrents?

3) Regardless of this being a problem with Leopard, are there no efforts being made to work around this? And I know this thread is months old so most people are/were running <=10.5.7, but I've been on 10.5.8 for a few days and this problem just showed up. So it's not fixed now.

[bilinsky]

Yes, I also think the main problem is for large torrent files, the disk seem to be quite active as well, maybe can be solved by increasing the cache size. I'm willing to help, however I have not much experience of coding for Mac OS X. Is it possible to run transmission in debug mode, or play with cache and disk I/O settings?

[Ankit]

Anyway, parodyr, what are the default settings for those sysctl commands? I want to see if stock Snow Leopard works without that fix.

Thanks in advance.

[d-_-b]

Snow Leopard 10A432, looks like a slow death again.

unresponsive system after ~15-20 minutes, dsl is gone, wireless is gone, can't even force quit apps => hard shutdown.
there were 2 not so giant downloading and ~70 seeding torrents with the transmission's global speed limits.

[John Clay]

I've been debating posting this, given the back and forth and number of useless commments in this thread.

For the majority of users, this is going to be a hardware problem with the Yukon ethernet chipset on the logic board. I've had it happen twice to my iMac, and each time a logic board replacement solves the problem. In conversation with Apple, they agree that the Yukon errors being spat out in the Console are indicative of a hardware fault.

Currently running 10A432 on two computers, with zero issues torrenting 24/7.

[Jordan]

Since this bug has now hit the big-time at reddit, I thought I'd post a short summary of the facts as I understand them:

• This appears to be a Leopard bug that is triggered by Transmission, World of Warcraft, and other network-intensive programs.
• Forum user parodyr has posted a workaround that people say works. You should try it too. And until you have, please stop posting about how it still occurs on a Tuesday, or when you installed new ram, or when you upgraded to 1.73 and plugged in a new external hard drive during a full moon, etc.
• A secondary, hackier, workaround is to disable download speed limits. Download limits appear to be a necessary ingredient for this issue.
• Yes we are working on ways to ameliorate this in Transmission's code. Patches are welcomed.
• Lastly -- and admittedly this is more opinion than fact -- everyone reading this should tell kidmidnight that it's probably a bug in his router.

Previously: a detailed summary of the thread up through Feb 20 2009.

[kidmidnight]

[Zolo]

Ok, so I tried the fix and this is still happening for me, even just with transmission and vlc running, and no speed limits either. I don't understand why this only happens to a select few people. If I were to wipe my hard drive and reinstall, then would it not crash like that? Or does it have something to do with your hardware? It's a very strange problem.

[Jordan]

It's probably hazardous to my health to ask questions in this thread anymore... but does anyone see a difference in the Slow Death bug in 1.74 beta 1? I made some changes that may lessen its frequency and I'd like to know if I'm on the right track.

Note I said "may" and "lessen". If it still doesn't work, don't flame me.

Just in case anyone new to the thread is wondering... the problem doesn't appear under Linux, so I can't do the testing on my own.

[Zolo]

Where can I find the new beta? The latest nightly is 1.73b.

[livings124]

www.transmissionbt.com

[kidmidnight]

Im scared to remove the fix!


Anyway, this should probably be its own thread but I have noticed one weird behavior in snow leopard. Transmission wont load more than one torrent file at a time. If i highlight a few and open them all at once transmission will only load the first one.

[Jordan]

Im scared to remove the fix!


Anyway, this should probably be its own thread but I have noticed one weird behavior in snow leopard. Transmission wont load more than one torrent file at a time. If i highlight a few and open them all at once transmission will only load the first one.

This is already a thirty-page thread, what are you thinking bringing in off-topic discussion?!?

Especially when your one on-topic sentence was a refusal to help test...