I am looking for some guidance on how to troubleshoot to find the root cause of this quirk:

 

After shutting down cleanly, when I turn the machine back on it will have removed all of my .torrent files [happens every time].  There are other files on the same drive, the same share, heck even the same sub-folder where I have them stored, but the .torrent files are the only things to get deleted without fail when I reboot.

 

I am running on 5.0 rc3 right now.  I am using SNAP to have an applications drive, and am using Transmission from the UNPLUGGED collection.  It is configured to use that SNAP drive for its data and .torrent file storage.  I shut down cleanly using powerdown, which was installed through unmenu's pkg manager.

 

If I add a new .torrent file, I can verify that the file exists and is in the appropriate location via telnet session, and it will remain there for all of eternity....so long as I never shut down.  At that point, every one of them disappears.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated and if you need additional details, I would be happy to provide what's needed.  Needless to say, it is a slow and frustrating process to re-download and re-verify all of my files every time I shut down!

update to the latest rc, if it continues to happen post back

Thanks for the first suggestion.  I have upgraded to the latest RC but the behavior is still present.  Here is what I've noticed since then:

 

When I powerdown and come back online, the array is stopped [setting probably got overwritten with the upgrade, but it gave me new info at least].  If I telnet in and navigate to my SNAP drive, the transmission directory is entirely gone.  Since the torrents are stored in a sub-directory there, that would explain why they get deleted as well.  I do have other things on that SNAP drive, however, and they aren't being deleted when I power down.  For example, ps3 media server remains entirely intact on reboots.

 

Once I start the array, transmission goes through the process of repopulating its directory [with an empty torrents sub-directory, and a few other things].

 

To bring back my original question, I am unsure where to look and find the culprit.  Is it transmission?  Is it the powerdown script?  Is it SNAP?  Just looking for some insight from any experts who might have an idea where to home in on and look.

 

Thanks again for your time with my problems.

It sounds like the path may not be correct for the disappearing files. What path is being user for the disappearing files vs files that remain?

The top-level SNAP share is /mnt/disk/MyCache/

 

Within that, there is a directory of /ps3mediaserver, and a directory /transmission.  The first is always there no matter how many times I reboot, but the second is deleted either during powerdown, or on boot (not sure of when exactly).  When the array starts, /transmission is recreated but only as a skeleton - subdirectories are created for torrents, resume, and blocklist but are all empty, and settings files are copied from their base plugin locations.

 

When I add a .torrent file via URL, it gets saved in that freshly-created /mnt/disk/MyCache/transmission/torrents location, and it will remain there until next powerdown when the whole /transmission directory gets deleted once again.

 

If I look at syslog and ctrl+f for "MyCache", this is the only entry I see, which occurs only after I start the array:

 

sudo:    root : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/transmission-daemon --port 9091 --config-dir /mnt/disk/MyCache/transmission --pid-file /var/run/transmission/transmission.pid

 

The user param is pulled from transmission setting, I have tried both root and nobody but either results in the same behavior.

 

I may try the "revert to stock" in your sig, just to see if I can get things working properly with a fresh start.  Very useful information there, thanks!

Almost sounds like the start of transmission is happening before the snap drive is up and connected.

I used the steps in dgaschk's signature to revert back to a stock situation.  I then installed unmenu and snap, set up my applications drive through snap, and then installed transmission and plex media server to it.

 

I redownloaded  a .torrent file and it was saved in the place I would expect - the SNAP directory that I had directed it to.  I spent a solid hour having Plex build my library and associated metadata for all the media on my unRAID server.  I watched back a file on my PS3 with Plex and it did just fine.

 

Crossed my fingers, ran powerdown, and then brought the system back up.  Library, gone.  .torrent file, gone.  Both Plex and Transmission app folders on my snap drive were recreated at the time of booting up the array.

 

Plex was a bit more verbose in its logging, so I was able to see this new bit of information:

 

pms: /mnt/disk/MyCache/Plex/Library/Application Support doesn't exist creating it

 

I am thinking that you are correct, prostuff1, and that snap isn't coming online before it needs to.  Maybe these paths are being created in RAM, that would at least explain why they vanish into thin air when I cut the power.  I have found a few posts that will hopefully allow me to mount the drive and will give that a go instead of SNAP.

 

For reference to those who might come here due to similar problems, this is what I am trying: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18046.msg226021#msg226021