Transmission add-on crashing on ReadyNas Duo

The Duo has enough resources to run Transmission, but you have to limit the settings a bit. To change these settings, you will have to disable Transmission, then open this file:
\\IpOfNAS\addons-config\Transmission\transmission-daemon\settings.json
Change the following settings:
"cache-size-mb" should be a few MB (~2 or so)
"peer-limit-global" should be around 50
"peer-limit-per-torrent" should be around 5

Then start Transmission again and it should work better.

Thanks JarnoG. Seems to work fine so far.

Thanks will try these settings also.
I have already turned off DHT too.

JarnoG wrote:
"cache-size-mb" should be a few MB (~2 or so)

is this cache meaning 2MB? not sure what the "~" mean?

i set mine up as follows

"cache-size-mb" 2mb
"peer-limit-global" 50
"peer-limit-per-torrent" 5

and transmission responds faster now but the torrent downloads are slow

perfectdark wrote:
i set mine up as follows "cache-size-mb" 2mb "peer-limit-global" 50 "peer-limit-per-torrent" 5 and transmission responds faster now but the torrent downloads are slow

That's bad news for me, as those kind of peer limits are too constraining. It looks like I'm stuck with 2.22, which I've been using for a couple years, as it's the latest version I seem to be able to run on my Duo that's stable. Anything after that routinely disconnects on me.

The standard settings (and the ones I use) for 2.22 are:
"cache-size-mb" 2
"peer-limit-global" 240
"peer-limit-per-torrent" 60

For 2.42 it's:
"cache-size-mb" 200
"peer-limit-global" 240
"peer-limit-per-torrent" 60
but even setting the cache to 2 doesn't stop 2.42 from disconnecting on me.

I hope an update is in the works which fixes these stability problems.

for the "cache-size-mb", you should set it to 2, not 2mb, but apparently, Transmission doesn't mind much if it's running. The "~" means "about", you can try increasing it to 4 or maybe even 8 to increase the download speed. A higher number means less writes to the disk, which results in faster download. But it also means that it will be short on ram memory quickly and start swapping to the disk, which will result in slower downloads again and might result in Transmission crashing.

The "cache-size-mb" is the maximum cache used per peer, so if you are downloading from 50 peers, and it is set to 4MB, you will use up 200MB of ram for caching. The Duo only has 256MB, so if it has much other stuff running, the memory will be full quickly. If you set the cache size to 8MB, Transmission will want to use 400MB of ram, which the Duo doesn't have, so the swap will be used. If 240 peers with 2MB each worked in 2.22 and it doesn't work in 2.42, then apparently, there's a problem with running Transmission while swapping a lot.

JarnoG wrote:
The Duo only has 256MB, so if it has much other stuff running, the memory will be full quickly. If you set the cache size to 8MB, Transmission will want to use 400MB of ram, which the Duo doesn't have, so the swap will be used. If 240 peers with 2MB each worked in 2.22 and it doesn't work in 2.42, then apparently, there's a problem with running Transmission while swapping a lot.

Thanks for this explanation. But I'm running 1GB of memory, and it still disconnects with 2.31 and 2.42.

I found some interesting comments at https://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12746 regarding settings.json settings in 2.42. Might there be some applicability to the problems many of us have experienced with it?

• "max-peers-global": 200, invalid for 2.42--remove • "open-file-limit": 10, invalid for 2.42--remove • "peer-limit-global": 100, "peer-limit-per-torrent": 20, Reduce both by 50%. • "upload-limit": 100, "upload-limit-enabled": 0, Both are invalid for 2.42--remove • "utp-enabled": true, Try setting to false. Daemon must be quit before making changes.

If I recall correctly, I read on the transmission forums somewhere that the "max-peers-global" and "open-file-limit" haven't been used since version 1.4 or so. As far as I know, they are ignored and will not cause problems. The "upload-limit-*" have been replaced by the "alt-speed-*" and "speed-limit-*" in version 1.5. (see the link given in the topic your link to)

It also says that "open-file-limit" is used in version 2.31 and older, so, if 2.31 crashes for you too, that might not be the problem. You can try to reduce the queuing and peer limits to see if this works.

JarnoG wrote:

If I recall correctly, I read on the transmission forums somewhere that the "max-peers-global" and "open-file-limit" haven't been used since version 1.4 or so. As far as I know, they are ignored and will not cause problems. The "upload-limit-*" have been replaced by the "alt-speed-*" and "speed-limit-*" in version 1.5. (see the link given in the topic your link to) It also says that "open-file-limit" is used in version 2.31 and older, so, if 2.31 crashes for you too, that might not be the problem. You can try to reduce the queuing and peer limits to see if this works.

Thanks for the clarification. Here's what the Transmission forum says https://trac.transmissionbt.com/wiki/EditConfigFiles

2.31 (and older) open-file-limit: Number (default = 32) 1.4x (and older) Peers max-peers-global: Number (default = 240) max-peers-per-torrent: Number (default = 60)

This is all way too confusing for a simple plug-and-play Mac guy like me. Why on earth can't we have a settings.json file installed that's actually compatible with the version of Transmission being installed? Also, why can't it be compatible with the specific ReadyNAS model it's being installed on? Why all this confusion?

What I still don't understand is why do my settings work fine in 2.22, but the same settings fail in 2.31 and 2.42? e.g.
"cache-size-mb": 2,
"peer-limit-global": 240,
"peer-limit-per-torrent": 60,

It amazes me how many people are having the same basic Transmission UI disconnect problem and (from what I've seen) no one has yet to identify the root cause and how to quantitatively troubleshoot and fix it. So far all I've seen is everyone taking this shot in the dark approach of reduce this and that setting. Oh, that didn't work? Well lower them some more. Still didn't work? Well, try reducing something else and see if that works. It shouldn't be so mystical and abstract.

Since 2.22, quite a few new features are added to Transmission. Each feature requires more from your NAS, which means that each feature might be one to much. Most new features can be disabled, but since Transmission includes those features to be used, they turn them on by default. The old parameters are still in the settings.json file to make sure nothing unexpected happens and that a downgrade to an older version goes smoothly.

The Duo is a machine that has limited resources because it is not intended to be a high performance server (that is what the Pro series, and to a lesser extend, the Ultra series are for), but a simple solution to host files on a home network. This means that it might not be able to cope with all the new features and other resource-eating-functionalities without some tweaking. What tweaks work for you depends on the demands you put on them. I don't know why you require a high peer limit, but that means that you have to squeeze other features.