I'm having stability issues with Transmission on my Duo. The web GUI loses connection with the add-on and the green little indicator in the Duo's web GUI goes gray. I interpret this as the process crashed or stopped in some way. I can restart the Transmission but as soon as I try to do something, e.g., deleting a torrent, Transmission crashes again. I've enabled DHT but shouldn't the Duo have enough power to run Transmission anyway? Or can't I expect this add-on to run on this relatively weak system? I haven't upgraded the RAM either.
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.
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.
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.
• "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.
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.
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.
I was successful in adding back all my previous torrents. Smooth sailing. And then... After adding just one more newly created torrent, the dreaded I then disable Transmission, changed to the following settings: "peer-limit-global": 50, "peer-limit-per-torrent": 5,
Still no go. I then deleted from the queue all my torrents and attempted to add just the one newly created torrent again. Within seconds the dreaded message appeared again! To say the least this is maddening. I have never ever experienced anything like this with 2.22.
To me it seems that you've got one torrent that gives the problem, while all the others work just fine. When you're in the webGUI of Transmission, go to the settings window and disable PEX, DHT and LPD on the Peers tab and UTP on the Network tab. Those are extra services that Transmission uses to improve downloading. It might be that the torrent uses one of these services which then causes Transmission to crash.
I did have PEX enabled. Nothing else. I've disabled PEX and Removed all torrents. Then I opened two small torrents. They verified okay and everything looked fine. Then I created a third 1.5GB torrent and attempted to open it. The dreaded Connection Failed message appeared almost immediately.
UPDATE: The problem does indeed appear to be with one particular offending torrent, or at least that's where I'm at now in my troubleshooting.
I create my torrents with Transmission for Mac. The weird thing is I can create it and even open it in Transmission-Mac, and it verifies fine. However, after I reinstalled Transmission 2.22 on my Duo I noticed that it wouldn't verify to any more than 93.7%. What I've narrowed it down to are the file names contained within the torrent. Some of them are accented characters. The Duo handles that just fine. In fact, I'd originally used Transmission on the Duo to download the same files from another torrent site. I wanted to reshare them to a different (private) torrent site, so I took the same exact unmodified files and created a new torrent to upload to the new site. That's where the problems began. Apparently Transmission-Duo has no trouble downloading torrents where the included files have accented characters. But trying to create a new torrent with the same files and have Transmission-Duo verify them will choke the verification process on the accented character names.
What I don't understand is why 2.22 at least functions and shows that the file won't fully verify apparently due to the file names (changing the file names to un-accented characters resolves that problem). However, 2.42 chokes and dies within seconds of opening the torrent file and commencing the verify process.
I'm out of options, maybe someone else has a few more suggestions. It seems to me that there's a problem with only a few of the torrents you created while most is working just fine. If it is not to much of a problem, you could just stop seeding those few torrents.
Thanks JarnoG for all your help. I edited my previous post. You may have missed those comments.
I'm back to 2.22. I like the features of 2.42, and I'd like to be able to use it. But it's far too buggy for me. I may try 2.5 when it's available for the Duo. Maybe they'll have resolved some of these weird problems.
Just read all the thread because I have the same problem with Transmission 2.42.
Everything began fine : installation was OK, using web interface was ok, and I downloaded few files. But regularly, i have a "Connection failed" error message and the service stops (green light turns to gray).
My question is : does 2.22 supports magnet url to set the torrent file ?
Sometimes I feel I is a real noob, but how should I edit the \\IpOfNAS\addons-config\Transmission\transmission-daemon\settings.json ? Should I logon vid SSH, and then go to that directory. But then...
you can just edit the settings.json file via whatever protocol you like using a text editor that supports unix-files. I use Notepad++ and edit the file over CIFS.
If you don't see the addons-config share, you can create a share for it and set permissions for whatever user you like. This might give Transmission permission-problems though. You can also find the directory on the c. You will have to log in (using CIFS) as admin and go to \\ipofnas\c\addons-config\Transmission\transmission-daemon\ to find the settings.json file.
The first option lets you edit the file without having to log in as admin, but might give permission problems for Transmission. You don't have that problem with the last option, but you will have to log in as admin
