rTorrent + FreeBSD + pf = freeze?

[cpghost]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 04:08:53PM -0800, Peter Kieser wrote:
> This problem has been going on for at least the past 2 years. I've had 
> the exact same issue with rtorrent locking up or restarting machines 
> running FreeBSD, regardless of the hardware used.

All I can say is that the machine that runs rtorrent itself
doesn't crash (on me), no matter how much traffic it gets.
BUT the FreeBSD router that NATs this traffic via pf does
crash... and just as you've observed: more frequently lately
than before. A crash once or twice a week is common now, while
it was once every 4 to 6 months last year... That router also
acts as a mail- and webserver, so it is not only dedicated to
routing. Maybe that's significant.

I don't know what it is, but it seems to happen more often
when there's disk activity *on the router* than when the disks
are mostly idle. Perhaps disk and net subsystems concurrently
using a non-locked resource and killing each other?

Have you tried to run rtorrent and the router on two different
FreeBSD machines? Does it lock the router, or does it crash
the rtorrent box only, or both?

-cpghost.

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