Large torrent downloads render the system near unresponsive

[shag00]

Kubuntu 22.04 (the same problem was in earlier versions)
When downloading any large torrent (80-100 GB) the system becomes near unresponsive at some point during the download. By near unresponsive I mean that clicking on the torrent client window or another window that requires disk access (example, KDE Kate) may take a minute or more to gain focus, any attempt to issue a command eg. save file takes a similar amount of time. Concurrently the download speed drops markedly (from say 10 MB/s to less than 1 MB/s, often much lower).

If the torrent client is closed and any attempt to copy/move the file it created is painfully slow, instead of transferring the file (internal HDD to internal HDD) at roughly 120MB/s the speed is reduced to a couple of hundred KB/s with multi MB bursts on occasion. In total it takes 5-6 hours to copy a 70GB file from one disk to another.

I have tested a number of torrent clients and they all suffer the same problem and I have repeated the tests using the same clients (tixati, qbittorrent, <Ktorrent>) and the same download target on the same PC on Windows which have no problems, I can download the files at 10MB/s and transfer the files to another disk as per normal.

As it appears this is a disk related problem I have replaced the disk and Gsmartcontrol reports no issues of concern.

Please note that downloading smaller files do not display this problem, downloading a 20-30GB file shows no problems. In the beginning large files also display no problems but at some point the system slows down, I cannot pinpoint an exact size or percentage when the problem starts.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:22.04.13
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-46.49-generic 5.15.39
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-46-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Fri Aug 19 10:16:23 2022
InstallationDate: Installed on 2022-05-06 (104 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 22.04 LTS "Jammy Jellyfish" - Release amd64 (20220419)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

You've filed this issue against `do-release-upgrade` or `update-manager` which does not download large torrents in the upgrading from one release to a later release. Your install has also not used that tool since it was installed (that I can see).

You also mention a "disk related problem" in your description.

Bug reporting is mostly about finding & fixing problems thus preventing future users from hitting the same bug.

I suspect a Support site would be more appropriate, eg. https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu. You can also find help with your problem in the support forum of your local Ubuntu community http://loco.ubuntu.com/ or asking at https://askubuntu.com or https://ubuntuforums.org, or for more support options please look at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/community-support/709

I've marked this bug as 'incomplete', as I see no evidence of an issue with `do-release-upgrade`, which likely means you've filed against the incorrect package, but it also looks to me you'd benefit mostly from support. If you believe I'm in error, you can please leave a comment outlining why and the status can be returned to "New", though you may wish to change package first as I don't see attempts to upgrade your 22.04 system to 22.10

[shag00 (shag00)]

I saw that it was filed against do-release upgrade which is incorrect but I could not find a way to correct that.

I disagree that it is a support issue, I have a new system, a recent OS release and the problem is reproducible over several applications. The same problem does not exist using another OS if that does not point at the OS, as the hardware is the same, I can't imagine what would be more definitive.

This problem has persisted for years over many versions of Ubuntu and different PCs and always the work around has been to torrent large files in Windows. The proof will be in attempting to do it.

I suspect it is disk related because of the problems in moving a torrented file anywhere but it only applies to very large files, ~80GB+. It is not a disk hardware issue as I have tried several disks. Because I feel it is disk related does not mean the disk is the cause, it is not, it even occurs with M2 SSDs.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubuntu-release-upgrader (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]