First downloads!!!! But some questions....

[slipkid]

I have Utorrent up and running and did my first downloads (& reseeding) overnight. HOOOYEA!

I have a couple of (newbie) questions though.

Background - I downloaded 5 torrents off Dimeadozen.org. All 5 completed overnight. All 5 are "seeding/uploading" right now. I understand that I need to let them go for awhile to give back to other users, get a good ratio etc (mine now is .89).

(1) One of those uploading now has 56 peers attached to it and is uploading at a rate of about 445 kB/s. But it is also downloading at about .4kB/s. If it completed downloading already why is it still downloading??

(2) That same torrent has a RED upload arrow next to it. As opposed to a green one like the other 4. I understand that RED means "the torrent job is seeding but there is a tracker error". Is there something that I need to do to fix this? Should I stop/start it over? Report an error to Dimeadozen or somebody? What?

(3) One of my completed torrents has information in the logger that says "PIECE 634 FAILED HASH CHECK". Is there some action I am supposed to do to fix this? Do I need to redownload "piece 634" (and if so, how)???

(4) Three of my completed torrents are uploading but have nothing happening. They show numbers like Seeds = 0 (4) and Peers = 0 (1). Does that just mean that no one is trying to get them and I should just leave them as is in case someone comes along later?

(5) Of my downloaded torrents, regardless if they are currently reseeding actively with a green arrow or a red one, is it OK/safe for me to open the downloaded files with TradersLittleHelper and unFLAC or unSHN them? Or do I need to be sure to pause or stop Utorrent first????

Thanks for any help.

[moogly]

hello.

1/ You have residual connections to "speak" with peers that are leeching your tor. That's a normal behavior. I have too some 0.1kb/s that appear 1 or 2s regularly. Don't forget your p2p client exchanges infos with the other peers and the tracker.

2/ Check the "Trackers" tab relative to this torrent, you can read the tracker error message. Maybe you can stop it and restart it to update the tracker, that can fix this problem.

There are private trackers that need to be reconneted on the tracker website to leech/seed again after a long deconnection. And sometimes only 3 or 4 slots per user is authorized by the tracker (eg you can only seed 3 tors for a total of 5 or 10).

3/ You dont have to do stg. uT fixes it for you during the download. uT just warns you there is a piece with a bad hash check but uT dwl it again.

4/ Yep no one is trying to dwl your torrent or you are not in the peer swarm. Normal behaviour for old or not popular tors. So let it seeding or stop it and seed another one with more peers and back it later.... As you want.

5/ You can play a file (eg movie) that is seeding but not move (Windows pop-up eg) onto another location. Maybe some softwares will need to stop your torrent before using it. Just try.

Anyway if you modify the files during seeding, uT will warn you.

[slipkid]

THANKS VERY MUCH Moogly!!! Super helpful :-)

A followup question about #2. I checked the tab like you said (THANKS)!

There is a status message that says something like "Failure not authorized, torrent banned from this tracker" and next to that in the first column (marked "name") is a huge link to something on dimeadozen.org that ends in with "/announce:. I assume that that means that dime discovered something about this torrent that violates their rules so they "banned it". Maybe I can read more about that if I go to the huge url in the "name" column? Perhaps this is more of a question for Dime, but if anyone knows, what do I do? I have live connections on this thing right now. Should I stop/delete it or what?

And a utorrent question - is there anyway for me to copy that link from utorrent's tracker tab so I can paste it in to my browser? I can't find a way to do that and the link is so long with nonsense like "1856c2jfh48wnskgnlejkrdkdsfh3932849fjawjasdgweoiuihfkdt" that I'll never be able to type it in all correctly....

[moogly]

So the RED icon was normal if the tracker has removed the torrent from its database. That's the case if the original uploader deleted itself or a moderator/admin did it too (maybe rule violation etc...).

If you want to verify, you just need to go to the tracker website and search if the torrent is always present.

If the torrent is deleted from the tracker, you can do nothing to change that. With DHT enabled in uT, you will see peers but the tracker announce will fail. So you got the torrent, that's the main thing !

But you can delete the torrent (not the data if you need it!!) and that's all.

In addition you have many other tors to seed, not a pbm.

Long char string in Trackers tab is a part of tracker announce. It appears when the tracker is private, it's called the pass key. It's specific to your personal account on this tracker.

When you create a new torrent for a private tracker, you enter the global announce (eg: privatetracker.com/announce) but when you are going to seed, you need to download the uploaded .torrent from the tracker and open it in uT.

You will see the announce has changed like privatetracker.com:3000/hdyzeyh38d/announce.

If you download a torrent from a public tracker such as The Pirate Bay, you see the announce is more simple.

And it's useless to paste it in your web browser.

Bye.

[slipkid]

Thanks again Moogly. I understand some of what yer saying but being a noobie some things I don't quite grasp. I really appreciate your explanations though!

Q: I have live "peers" on that banned torrent right now (33 of 'em) that I am uploading to at about 450kB/s. Should I continue to upload or just stop everything? Are they even receiving anything/is this not even working anymore for those people because of it being "banned" or whatever??? Or are they still receiving it from me (& other people?).

Q: Regarding "DHT". I don't understand what that is or what it does, but I left anything to do with DHT set to "on" (along with "Local Peer Discovery" and "Peer Exchange" in the Utorrent Preferences/Bittorrent screen). I notice that there are messages along with the "banned" thing in Utorrent that say something like "DHT - [not allowed]" and "Local Peer Discovery - [not allowed" and "Peer Exchange - [not allowed]". Does that mean that these things are used by some trackers but not Dime? And are these things that I should leave off, or leave on in case I ever go to other trackers? Or where can I go to learn more about these?? (I've read so much stuff in the past week trying to understand everything I can in regards to bittorrent/utorrent that I may have already read about these but I can't remember, there is just too much to absorb/understand)

[moogly]

Q1/ If the torrent has been deleted, I think the tracker doesn't count your upload ratio for this torrent, it's logical. Remember it's a private tracker and your future right to dwl new torrents depends on your share ratio on this tracker.

I dunno your bandwith but with a low Internet connection, it's useless to continue seeding it. So stop it. You know there is a ton of contents to share, leech and seed on trackers so don't worry about one banned or deleted torrent.

Yep the other peers receive your packets but the swarm is going to decrease to 0 because no new peers could rejoin the swarm.

Q2/ For private trackers, DHT is disabled because the peer swarm is theorically restricted to registered members (even if it's possible to use it).

DHT is a trackerless system (decentralized tracking) where every peer acts as a tracker. It's useful for public trackers to recruit more peers.

Anyway when you dwl on private/public trackers, you can select all these 3 options (DHT/Local Peer Discovery/Peer Exchange in Settings>Bittorrent pannel) by default, uT will warn you (in Trackers tab) if it's allowed or not.

And if these options are enabled when you leech a private torrent, you can always disable them manually (right click>properties).

[slipkid]

OK thanks! I think I understand!

IE: Even though I am still uploading that one torrent, it is only to peers that were already connected before it got banned, no new downloaders (or seeds) can join the swarm (since it is no longer on the tracker), and continued uploads of it don't count for my ratio either - so kind of a waste to keep going. In fact it is just sucking my bandwidth away.

THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR ANSWERS!! Helped tremendously! I'm learning :-)

[moogly]

Yep that's it (in better English than me).