ECC Ram and Transmission

[UF8FF]

Greetings all,

I'm quite new to error correcting and servers in general so I'm not sure if my problem lies with transmission, permissions, the RAM, or just a bad download... I grabbed a movie that had plenty of seeders and after the download I was playing it and the movie froze at one point. I then grabbed the mkvalidator tool and it found that the segments weren't adding up. This has happened to one other movie as well -- would this be my RAM not doing its job? or is this likely just an issue with the torrent itself or something going wrong during the torrent process? Could it also be an issue of CouchPotato trying to move it? All SMART tests have been passing and I did burn in testing before adding data etc. All parts are currently about 3 weeks old.

I guess my biggest worry is that my RAM is not good -- but what would that *actually* look like?

 

[Allan Wilmath]

It is very unlikely to be your ram. If your ram was bad enough to cause the error you describe it should also crash reliably. However, ram is very easy to test. One of the easiest things to test in fact. Many of the Linux distribution install discs have a memory test you can use without installing. Just boot and look for the option on the boot menu. This should be on a Windows install disc as well. Not sure about Unix.

The kind of errors that can be caused by ram are single bit, which are the ones that ECC can correct. Usually not significant compared to the contents of a blurry file. A problem with the network that is causing corruption is more likely. The torrent might also have some sort of problem.

 

[UF8FF]

Thanks for the response, that helps ease my nerves a bit. It has been doing great with absolutely everything else, so I'm guessing it's either network related or torrent file as you said. Might still look at couch potato's permissions and make sure those are all ok.

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

I recently had some experience with ZFS + bad RAM + transmission in a server at a family member's house.

Processes crashed occasionally, ZFS found lots of errors, and large files downloaded with transmission were almost always corrupted. ZFS would say so, and if I tried copy the file on the command line it would give me an error at a certain point in the file. The same spot where videos would stop playing if being viewed.
I ran memtest on the two sticks in this system and both came up as bad right away.

Swapped it for other non-ECC RAM and things have been stable since.

 

[UF8FF]

So I found another corrupt MKV today. This time I ran mkvalidator on the original file (in downloads) and the file that was renamed and moved by couch potato (in Movies) and the original was just fine and valid. But the one in movies was not. So do y'all reckon I have an issue with couchpotato or what else could cause something like this?

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

So I found another corrupt MKV today. This time I ran mkvalidator on the original file (in downloads) and the file that was renamed and moved by couch potato (in Movies) and the original was just fine and valid. But the one in movies was not. So do y'all reckon I have an issue with couchpotato or what else could cause something like this?

I suggest you run memtest

 

[UF8FF]

Alright, started memtest last night and it passed both loops. I might run it again tonight just in case. I have started a scrub right now just to see if there are issues there. Now, I did just replace my motherboard yesterday as well (from C2550 to C2750) so if my DIMMs had an issue I guess that's possibly fixed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

Alright, started memtest last night and it passed both loops. I might run it again tonight just in case. I have started a scrub right now just to see if there are issues there. Now, I did just replace my motherboard yesterday as well (from C2550 to C2750) so if my DIMMs had an issue I guess that's possibly fixed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

hmm, yeah. so now to explain why transmission is corrupting your files?
deos ZFS show the corrupted files when you run 'zpool status -v'?

 

[UF8FF]

hmm, yeah. so now to explain why transmission is corrupting your files?
deos ZFS show the corrupted files when you run 'zpool status -v'?

None. But we will see after this latest scrub too. The scrub says it'll be about 4 hours. I'll post back when that's done. Part of me is happy it's not the hardware, but part of me is annoyed because now it's confusing as to what is causing it! All my stuff is about 30 days old though so I'm sure if I have any issues with it I can exchange most of the parts I have if needed.

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

None. But we will see after this latest scrub too. The scrub says it'll be about 4 hours. I'll post back when that's done. Part of me is happy it's not the hardware, but part of me is annoyed because now it's confusing as to what is causing it! All my stuff is about 30 days old though so I'm sure if I have any issues with it I can exchange most of the parts I have if needed.

you might also want to try installing a second instance of transmission and try downloading a large file to see if you can reproduce it. Possibly the transmission program files got corrupted but ZFS doesn't know about it. Which I'm guessing can happen more with non-ECC. But the fact that it passed a few passes of memtest maybe shows it was just a one time glitch?

 

[UF8FF]

you might also want to try installing a second instance of transmission and try downloading a large file to see if you can reproduce it. Possibly the transmission program files got corrupted but ZFS doesn't know about it. Which I'm guessing can happen more with non-ECC. But the fact that it passed a few passes of memtest maybe shows it was just a one time glitch?

Yeah, I'll keep my eyes on it. Weird, but I don't want it to let me stress out too much. I'll copy the jail and do another to see if it happens again. Thanks for the help, Josh!

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

Yeah, I'll keep my eyes on it. Weird, but I don't want it to let me stress out too much. I'll copy the jail and do another to see if it happens again. Thanks for the help, Josh!

yeah, it's not worth the stress. if you can easily afford a new mobo+RAM+CPU for ECC that's a safe bet

 

[UF8FF]

yeah, it's not worth the stress. if you can easily afford a new mobo+RAM+CPU for ECC that's a safe bet

well I'm not rollin in the dough haha, but being within warranty is helpful.