[Bug 235470] [NEW] system freeze when downloading torrents

[Messelink]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: linux-image

Outline

I'm using a linux box as a masq router for my internal network. It uses
the onboard network adapter (eth0) for the external connection and an
PCI NIC card (eth1) to connec to a HUB for the internal network (and
thus no wireless connections). The box has also several server
applications running (like apache etc.) and I use it to download files
with BitTorrent (through the TorrentFlux WebUI frontend). Thus all has
working flawless under Gutsy. I'm running my own firewall script (will
attach).

System Overview

Abit AN7 motherboard with on-board ethernet
Athlon 64 2400+
512 MB RAM and 1GB swapfile
PCI NIC
SATA harddisk

Problem

Since the upgrade to Hardy having torrents active for a while causes the
system to freeze completely, without any possibility to recover (needs a
hard reset) and nothing in the log files. I've not seen blinking
keyboard lights. One time I was able to press CTRL-ALT-BCKSPC and X
stopped but I did not return to the login screen. After that I was able
to use ALT-SYSRQ- REISUB to restart the system, but normally (or maybe
if you just wait long enough) there is just a blank screen without any
"response". It's also not possible to contact the server from the
internal network or ping it. When not running torrents the system seems
to run rock solid.

Solutions tried

Running different torrent clients: I'm getting the same results for all torrent clients I tried (BitTornado, BitTornado-CLI, Transmission, Transmission-CLI, Deluge).
Running different kernel versions: I'm getting the same results for all kernel versions I tried (2.6.24-16-generic, 2.6.24-16-rt, 2.6.24-17-rt, 2.6.25-1; through adding different repositories).
Running without the firewall script (and thus no masq-ing) and running torrents through the TorrentFlux-b4rt web frontend together with transmissioncli: the system did not freeze but the webserver is not accessible (either from the local host or from outside). I did a 'sudo killall transmissioncli' and a restart of the apache server, but this did not solve this. The RAM is not completely used and the swapfile is hardly used. Also the highest processor usage in 'top' is 1.3 percent. However, it also shows a  load average of 49.09, 49.18, 49.12. I can start a vncserver (Xtightvnc) and log into the server (I'm writing this from the box atm) and also the box seems to run masq-ing fine (I restarted the firewall script).

Further information

Please see the attached files. I feel confident to provide any other
information or try anything to get this reolved, just let me know. The
only thing I can think of to try is to switch the two network cables and
configure the box the other way around (eth1 to the outside and eth0 for
the internal connection).

** Affects: linux-meta (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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system freeze when downloading torrents
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/235470
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