Any way to get uTorrent to start a torrent when a leecher appears?

[mrpete]

Hi -

SUMMARY:

I like uTorrent because it has good features and has a small footprint. I run a Micro$oft OS.

I'm looking for a certain feature. I don't think uTorrent can be configured to do what I'm asking, but I'll ask anyway. I've got bt.scrape_stopped turned on (true). Can this data in some way be used to start a torrent? In other words when a torrent is found that has a leecher waiting uTorrent should start that torrent.

Can queuing in uTorrent be configured to auto-start a torrent when a leecher appears?

DETAILS:

I belong to a website that limits the number of torrents that one can seed at any one time to a very low number ... a handful. There is no way to get the number raised / no donation / no increased "status" on the users part / etc.

Let's say I have 100 torrents downloaded and ready to seed. At any one time there are only leechers on 1 - 2 of the 100 torrents, if that. The desired client behavior is for a torrent to start seeding when a leecher appears. I can do this manually with my setting of bt.scrape_stopped to true, but I have to remain at the computer and monitor the stats. I start the appropriate torrent when a leecher appears. I would like this to happen auto-magically. If needed I could stop the torrent after the leecher has gotten the download.

The object here is to share files more efficiently and quickly.

Can uTorrent be configured to do this sort of thing?

Thanks loads for any suggestions you can make!

[Ultima]

Preferences > Advanced > queue.dont_count_slow_dl --> false

Preferences > Advanced > queue.dont_count_slow_ul --> false

Preferences > Advanced > queue.prio_no_seeds --> true

Preferences > Advanced > queue.use_seed_peer_ratio --> true

Preferences > Queueing > Maximum number of active torrents --> whatever the tracker limit is

Preferences > Queueing > Limit the upload rate to --> uncheck

Start all torrents you want to keep monitoring. Probably won't work perfectly if torrent is already decently seeded.

[SpasV]

Here is a short story I had had.

I started an upload with uTorrent behind a proxy. There were leechers but none could connect me. It was obvious I was non-connectible.

Then I tried Vuze and I could seed. I am not going to explain that in this forum.

What I think about that is:

When in status Downloading uTorrent, and I think any other BitTorrent application, initiates connections to peers.

When in status Seeding uTorrent is waiting for incoming connections.

So, most probably you can't change anything about that. But you can try something.

If you want uTorrent to initiate a connection to a leecher it has to be in Downloading status.

How to do that if you have the torrent job completed already I can't say. But here is the idea taken from the well known problem 99.9% complete.

The 99.9% complete problem sometimes is due to Windows hidden system files like Thumbs.db, desktop.ini and .DS_Store wrongly included in the torrent. When such a file exists in the folder then Windows doesn't allow its change and the result is ...the torrent is stuck at 99.9% complete.

If you can do something like that ...

P.S. I couldn't get it with the Read Only attribute though. uTorrent 2.0 considers this an Error and stops. Maybe playing with permissions could help?

[Ultima]

No, BitTorrent clients always attempt to initiate outgoing connections. They'll actively take any incoming connections unless (1) the connection limit has been hit, or (2) the listening port is blocked.

[mrpete]

Thanks very much Ultima for the recommendations.

It could take a day or two before I try this out. I will report back on the progress I make.

AGAIN THANKS.

[mrpete]

This is a bit long.

The advanced/queueing parameters have been set as shown above.

SUMMARY of test results: My torrents only "auto-start" when another seeding session ends; not when things start out idle. An idle start is normal for me.

DETAILS follow ...

I am using a rather old version of uTorrent and I was considering not posting the test results below because of that. When the next stable/non-beta version of uTorrent v2 is released I will upgrade to that version. I went through all the change logs between my version and the 2.0.1 beta version.

It appears that there are extremely few non-communications changes/fixes (UDP is a nice add) that have been made to how uTorrent interacts with trackers in the recent and medium past. I've listed the change log listed changes/fixes below. The fixes are likely for infrequently seen bugs.

Change: slow_ul/dl_threshold affects in/active status

Fix: tracker requests are not invalid anymore

Fix: sometimes the &ip= parameter sent to trackers would be incorrect

Ultima ... If those changes/fixes or maybe some undocumented tweaks have changed how uTorrent interacts with trackers then please let me know.

---

Two points that probably have nothing to do with this uTorrent behavior:

- I'm connectable.

- I set almost all of my torrents to seed to 999999% (forever).

---

The test ...

- I see that there is 1 leecher that will be there a long time on a large torrent. (1+ GB)

- shutdown all torrents

- verify that website shows no torrents for my login

- reboot

- start uTorrent and set the above params, max # torrents = 10

- Additionally, bt.scrape_stopped is set to TRUE.

- The only other modified advanced param is bt.graceful_shutdown = TRUE.

- exit and restart uTorrent

- start 10 torrents, but NOT the large torrent mentioned above

- start 8 more torrents including the large torrent ... they get queued

- all 18 torrents are on the same tracker and will update within seconds of each other

- The web page of the large torrent shows that the leecher is there and there are no seeders.

- The standard "update" interval on this tracker is 30 minutes.

- Over 30 minutes the "Update In" property of the tracker falls to zero then resets to 30 mins.

- Over the subsequent 1.5 hours the large torrent is not started.

=== overnight ... the system and torrents are unobserved ===

- Next morning - From the speed log it appears that after 5 hours the leecher was seen

- and the large torrent was started. The start circumstances are unknown.

- Next morning - The large torrent is running. I stop all torrents and exit uTorrent.

- There is now another seeder for the large torrent, but the leecher still needs hours to complete.

- After some minutes the website shows no torrents for my login.

- restart uTorrent

- start 10 torrents, but not the large torrent mentioned above

- start 8 more torrents including the large torrent ... they get queued

- all 18 torrents are on the same tracker and will update within seconds of each other

- Over 30 minutes the "Update In" property of the tracker falls to zero then resets to 30 mins.

- At the 1st update uTorrent shows 3 queued torrents with leechers.

- I check on the website and that is so.

- By "shows 3 queued torrents with leechers" I mean that the peers column is non-zero.

- At the time of the 3rd update (1.5 hrs) uTorrent shows 2 of those torrents with 2 leechers.

- I check on the website and that is so.

- On the 2 torrents with 2 leechers the website shows that at least 1 leecher is actively downloading.

- by the 6th update (3 hrs) 1 of those leechers has completed, but never was connected to me

- 4+ hours after uTorrent was restarted one of the originally selected 10 torrents starts seeding.

- Sometime in the next hour the large torrent moves from queued to seeding ("auto-start").

- 8+ hours after uTorrent was restarted the large torrent has completed.

- Immediately after that completion another torrent moves from queued to seeding.

---

Twice uTorrent took a super long time to "pick up on" the leecher(s). During this test the queued torrents only started seeding after previously running torrents had started or stopped seeding.

It was suggested to me by someone else that the reason for this sort of behavior is:

1) uTorrent scrapes torrents when they're started.

2) uTorrent only rescrapes torrents when a previously started torrent stops.

I'm not sure that point 2 is exactly correct. But it seems to be close to correct. My torrents would only "auto-start" when a torrent that had been seeding went idle. My torrents would not "auto-start" when everything starts out idle (the normal situation for me).

Since I have multiscrape on uTorrent is "aware" of leechers that appear. They are listed in the peers column. It just seems not to be acting on that info until a seeding session of another torrent ends ... even if everything is 100% idle.

I'm gonna try a test next where I do not start out idle. I've got this one huge torrent that is constantly popular and that for various reasons I don't seed (already seeded to 400%). I'm going to start out a session with some torrents set to seed and most queued and an additional 5% seed of the huge torrent. When that one stops interesting things might happen.

Thanks for any suggestions you might have about this!

[Switeck]

I have no good answer for this except to say you've done a thorough job demonstrating the problem.

[mrpete]

Thanks for taking a look at my description of the problem Switeck.

As I said above I am using an old version of uTorrent. I notice that uTorrent 2.0.1 stable has been released.

In the not too distant future I will install that version. After that I'll run the same sort of test as above and post the new results. Lets' hope ...

[Switeck]

Please do, although I have no hopes that the new version will do any better as I haven't noticed any major changes in queue handling in changelogs.