Why why why won't Transmission seed?

[mr ed209]

Got into Transmission from Vuze/Azureus because I heard it was less of a memory hog, better options, etc. I have to say I've followed all the guides to set it up correctly for my network speeds and so on but I have never had so much trouble getting a torrent to seed once downloaded.

Basically, I have around 20-30 different torrents now sitting in my 'Seeding' group which simply won't seed. I might get a connection to 1 peer if I'm lucky. I've set the upload limit to 105 as that is suited to my connection speed, and I have nothing else uploading, but everything just sits there "waiting to seed" or "seeding to 0 of 0 peers".

But these are torrents that had dozens of peers when I was downloading, and according to the info on each torrent mostly still do. I mean sure there's some that in the last week or so have pretty much lost all peers and are seed-heavy, but that's because they've been sitting there doing nothing and in the meantime everyone else has got them and stopped being a peer. But what about the torrents that show 14 seeders and 48 peers or similar ratios? Or 292 seeds and 245 peers? Surely there's some peers in there that would like a nice fast uploader to connect to? How come they're just sitting there doing nothing? Is it something to do with my ratio which is slowly slipping south way below the 1.0 mark (I've got my seed ratio set to 2.0 but I'll be lucky if a torrent ever seeds to that).

I swear I never had this problem with Azureus. Things seeded with very few problems.

Any ideas?
Cheers.

[jpbl68]

Have you tried this http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... -speed.htm? That's the only thing I can think of. I was having trouble seeding, I tried to follow that guide (unsuccessfully it seemed) and it eventually it worked. Transmission seemed to either react slowly to it or it fixed itself somehow.

[mr ed209]

Thanks - I will give it a try. I already had the correct upload speed inserted but I did change my maximum number of connections as a result of those instructions, so we'll see!

[another_matt]

I'm having the same problem and have tried all the steps in the troubleshooting. I even dumped 1.75 and returned to 1.54 with no luck. It just will not seed. I see a peer pop up for a second or two and then drop off. It's very annoying and killing my ratios. Can anyone fix this?

--
10.5.8 on a Dual G5 2.7

[Jordan]

Care to share the URL of a torrent where Transmission won't seed for you?

[another_matt]

Sure, Can I PM it to you?

[theoldGP]

I've been having this exact same problem.
The download goes fine but it just won't seed! I lose all of my peers right as the download is completed.
(By the way it only occurs on one of the websites I go to for torrent usage.)
Can I PM it to you as well?
Thank you.

[theoldGP]

Oh I tried to send you a PM, but it said you've disabled it.
Can you please help me anyways?

[pulphead88]

I am having this exact same problem. Just updated my OS to Snow Leopard and now Transmission just will not seed. I've troubleshot the problem for hours but to no avail. Just downloaded the beta of 8.0 and still nothing. What is the deal!? Please help!

[mr ed209]

Hi all,

Just coming back in to say I'm still experiencing this problem and not having enough patience is definitely not the issue. Some of these torrents sit there for days and do nothing.

These are torrents from both public and private trackers. The private trackers almost never upload while they're downloading, and once they're downloaded sit practically dead, refusing to upload to anyone in the swarm. The public trackers (your P'bays, for example) will upload some while downloading but it's sketchy at best and once the download is complete they will usually sit silent as well, again regardless of whoever is in the swarm. I'll get "Seeding to 0 of XX peers" where XX can be anything from 0% upwards of the allegedly available peers, but is usually 0. Regardless of how much of the swarm Transmission claims it can connect to (presently 0% across the board), it never uploads to them once the download itself is complete. Downloads are absolutely fine. The mods at the private tracker site itself say they are fine with the latest versions of Transmission so it's not like the client isn't compatible.

Here's my setup:

- Running Transmission 1.76+ build 9843 (latest successful artifact available from the nightly build page) - EDIT: I'm now using the 1.80b3 (9787) and it has the same issue.
- OSX 10.6.2, iMac 2.4GHz
- The Glasnost test says there's no indication my ISP (O2 Broadband in the UK) is interfering in any way.
- Settings are: download with a maximum of 5 active transfers, seed with a maximum of 3 active transfers, no download rate limit, upload set to 110 KB/s, global maximum connection 322 peers, maximum connections for new transfers 129 peers, use PEX, use DHT, prefer encrypted peers, randomise port (green light for open), automatically map port.

I've just selected one of my 'dead' seeds and found one that's got 12 seeders, 38 leechers. It's "Seeding to 2 of 2 peers" with an upload speed that sits mostly at 0 KB/s but occasionally floats up to all of 8 or even 20 KB/s for a few seconds, then back down to 0. This is my best performing upload right now! One with 97 seeds and 68 leeches won't connect to anyone. Meanwhile my two downloads (both DLing from around 60 of 120 peers at present) are seeding as they DL just fine although their UL speeds constantly vary from 0 up to 60KB/s but I guess that's normal.

EDIT: One of the downloading torrents from a public tracker has completed. According to the inspector there are 8878 seeds and 4257 leechers. The interface reads "Seeding to 15 of 95 peers - UL: 1.9KB/s". Occasionally it will leap to 16 or 32KB/s, but then drops back down to 0 or thereabouts. Another from the same tracker has 2487 Seeds, 1331 leechers, and I'm seeding to 15 of 25 peers at a constant rate of 0KB/s or 16KB/s, usually the former.

These trackers are all scraping and announcing (um... I don't know what that actually means...) just fine according to the Inspector.

Thoughts much appreciated. Really want to fix this! At the moment I'm on the verge of going back to Azureus or trying another client.

Cheers.

[mr ed209]

Update: the private tracker still won't upload ever. I just tried uTorrent, set it all up nicely, let it download something from a public tracker, and now an hour since it downloaded and started seeding, it hasn't seeded more than a handful of bytes. So, I'm trying with a private tracker too. We'll see.

By the way I've been using different builds of Transmission by just installing the app over the existing one in the Applications folder. I just tried going back to 1.76 official build and it hung like crazy, gave me the spinning beach ball over and over and over. Is there a 'better' way of changing from version to version?

[mr ed209]

For a clean install, use Spotlight to find all Transmission support, permission, and cache files, and delete them as well as the app.

Excuse my ignorance, but what should I search for in Spotlight? There is nothing with the word Transmission in it that has anything to do with Transmission other than the application itself, according to Spotlight.

[essiw]

download AppZapper or something similar and drag Transmission into it should solve the problem too

[mr ed209]

download AppZapper or something similar and drag Transmission into it should solve the problem too

I've got Hazel, which is supposed to find the files and it didn't. I did a Spotlight search for Transmission and it found nothing, but I dug around in the usual places and found several Transmission files with the name in the file name. Can't understand what it is about this application...

[Weaselboy]

Update: the private tracker still won't upload ever. I just tried uTorrent, set it all up nicely, let it download something, and now an hour since it downloaded and started seeding, it hasn't seeded more than a handful of bytes. So, I'm trying a private tracker too. We'll see.

By the way I've been using different builds of Transmission by just installing the app over the existing one in the Applications folder. I just tried going back to 1.76 official build and it hung like crazy, gave me the spinning beach ball over and over and over. Is there a 'better' way of changing from version to version?

I know there were seeding problems with some of the recent Transmission releases, but the more recent nightlies http://transmission.xpjets.com/ seem to have fixed it. I am using nightly r9842 with no problems. Give a new nightly a try.