Initial seed

[Keima]

Hi Guys,

I have just started my first seeding and was wondering how do i know when it is complete? as unlike the downloads there is no % indication.

Thanks

Keima

[jewelisheaven]

When you see the * in the # column disappear it has fulfilled the Ctrl-P -> queueing rules

By default this means at least 90 minutes of straight seeding and a 1.5 ratio upload.

[Keima]

Thanks jewelisheaven.

But what do you mean by 'fulfilled the Ctrl-P -> queueing rules'?

[jewelisheaven]

The uT user manual explains that and much more. Generally you will see instructions in the form of Step1 -> Step2 -> Step3; and Step 1, Step 2, Step 3; as well as 1) Step 1 2) Step 2 3) Step 3

There is the Queue which uT uses to keep track of how many torrents and of what type are running at once. Additionally the queue has default seed rules which are as I state above. This allows a very generous share methodology. Many people feel a share ratio of 1.0 is adequate (aka you download as much as you upload) and this default is 50% more than that.

[hermanm]

When you are seeding as the initial-seeder, the availability column will say 1.0. As you send out pieces to your peers, availability will increase slowly. When Availability reaches 2.0, that means one of your peers has a complete copy. But [once a peer becomes a seed it disconnects from you and you lose that 1.0 complete copy so availability will go down 1.] If I am the initial-seeder on a private tracker, I seed as long as there is demand. If I'm on a public tracker, I purposefully seed slowly until availability is 2.0. I take off after that and let the seed live or die. Too many hit-and-runners on public trackers that doesn't encourage me to keep seeding after I have more than contributed my share.

[Keima]

Thanks to you both!

jewelisheaven and hermanm

Both replies have been helpfull, Guess i still have alot to learn.

interesting stuff though!

[Ramalama1]

Follow up question for Hermanm -

I appreciated your reply. My question is this:

If, when I create my torrent and select Initial Seed, does that require me to manually unselect that once my torrent reaches availability of 2?

Right now, I have three new torrents with a * and avail. shown as 1.000 but I also have one I created today that has an * and avail. says 1.6xx so I am not sure what this means! I have NOT enabled initial seed on any of the torrents I created today.

For a bit of background, when a well beloved site returned it was noticed that a lot of torrents created after November last year did not live to see the reincarnation. The amount of activity is phenomenal. I uploaded a torrent and looked at it in about an hour and it had scrolled off the page already, even filtering results to Category and Genre. Wow!

[jewelisheaven]

I hope you'll forgive me, * in # means you just haven't uploaded to the Queue rules yet (Ctrl-P -> Queueing). Defaults are 90 minutes seeding and a 1.5 ratio, so you will continue seeding after 90 minutes if you haven't hit 1.5 ratio yet.

You can turn off initial seeding whenever you want, but actually a better indicator would be ~ 1.1 -> 1.3 on the share ratio. 2.0 availability means there is one other copy distributed out there between the connected peers. Once a peer becomes a seed it disconnects from you and you lose that 1.0 complete copy so availability will go down 1.

[Ramalama1]

Okay, it took a minute or two for me to figure out what you meant, since CTRL P means Print...but I looked in Preferences|Queue and saw the settings you refer to.

I assume that by I "haven't upload to the Queue rules yet" you mean that I have not yet reached the limit set in the rules. And yes, my rules are default. So my torrent at * and 1.6 has not yet satisfied both of those rules.

So do you recommend using initial seeding on Demonoid torrents?

[Ultima]

Whether you use initial seeding or not is not a function of what tracker you're on. It depends on how many seeds/peers are in the swarm. If you are the only seed in the swarm, then yes, it would probably be a good idea to use initial seeding (unless you don't care about upload bandwidth efficiency).

[Ramalama1]

Well I know there are different suggestions for private and public trackers. I guess Demonoid tracker would be considered public. The Demonoid forum is not up and running yet or I would have asked there. I think what I will do is wait until there is at least one full copy (seed) and then turn off Initial Seed. My initial question is will it automatically turn off, and I guess the answer to that is no. I am not really not as concerned about bandwidth as I am in letting these torrents seed for at least a couple hours. If I do set my Queue rule to 90 minutes and have to reboot in the middle, does that have any impact on those 90 minutes - meaning, must they be consecutive minutes or combination of minutes totally 90?

[Ultima]

Nope, it has no impact. µTorrent keeps track of how long it was seeding internally.

[rayfromtexas]

ok...forgive me. i 'understand' about keeping it open so others can benefit but i am still not sure how I 'know' if i have had it open long enough! when you say a '1.5 ratio' where am I looking for that on my utorrent window? this is frustrating for a computer novice like me!

[jewelisheaven]

You see on the General tab when you click a torrent, you see "Uploaded" "Downloaded" and "Share Ratio"? That's the number we're talking about.

If you want to check out some more information on the UI, get a copy of Ultima's User Manual

[Ramalama1]

Well, all was well and good until I got up and checked my new torrents this morning. I had to turn off the computer last night so I shut down uTorrent and logged out of Demonoid. When I got up I logged into Demonoid first, and saw that 4 of ten new torrents were labeled dead, meaning that theoretically since no one else seems to be seeding, I have the only copy? So I started up uTorrent, and force started all four of the dead ones, plus I checked Intial Seeding. However, even updating the tracker did not make the one seed (mine) show up in the torrent database. How do I get my lone copy to show up? If I see a torrent that says dead next to it, I just move on although experience has taught me that the number of seeds can be reported in error.

Is there anything else I can do besides wait?

[Ultima]

You ask the tracker staff why it isn't showing up. It's not exactly uncommon for tracker scrapes and peer lists to contain outdated information.

[jewelisheaven]

Demonoid takes... up to an hour for the seed/peer lists to become accurate. If you're the only seeder let it go for a bit... and if you want you can even PAUSE the torrent while you wait for peers to connect. Remember INITIAL seed only works for 2 or more peers connecting to you... and presumably they connect to eachother. If not you're wasting something like 60% of your upload time if you're not uploading consistently.

The only thing you worry about is if it says "deleted or not in pool" for the tracker status. That means you stop it, start up after a minute or two then you should be green and advertising to other interested parties