queue.dont_count_slow_dl - Being Ignored?

[dezzo]

I have lots of torrents in my download list. Some of them are showing downloading status, but are actually not downloading data, due to no seeds being available, which is normal.

When I add new torrents which DO have seeds available, they go into Queued status, rather than downloading.

I have the maximum number of active torrents set to 4.

With the "queue.dont_count_slow_dl" setting enabled, uTorrent should ignore the torrents that are in downloading status, but not receiving data, and it should automatically increase the Queue limit to allow more torrents to download, but this is not happening.

I really don't want to have to do a clean install of uTorrent again, as it takes ages and lots of irritation to copy back all the torrent files into the download list, reconfigure all the settings, and adjust the columns the way I like them, so hopefully there is a solution to this.

I'm using 2.0.4.22150 on Win7.

[DreadWingKnight]

How fast is the "Down Speed" value for the offending torrents?

Are your queue settings set to seeding tasks having a higher priority than downloading tasks?

[dezzo]

The download speed was almost zero for the torrents, which is why it was surprising that it didn't allow more items into the queue.

Seeding tasks do NOT have higher priority than downloading tasks.

Maximum nunber of active torrents: 4

Maximum number of active downloads: 4

These are the settings I've always used, and it just stopped working recently, though I can't say exactly when.

[Switeck]

It's possible to replace only uTorrent's settings.dat file and not its resume.dat file ...so you can keep your torrent list.

Back up ALL those settings before you attempt to do so! (You may want them later if uTorrent corrupts the settings due to power outages.)

[dezzo]

I finally did a clean reinstall of uTorrent, and cleaned up the stray .torrent files, reimported the ones I wanted to add back to my list, etc. Very tedious. Removing only the settings.dat file didn't work, and caused the loss of some torrents from the list... but I digress.

Anyway, I reconfigured all of my settings back to the way I've been using them for years (with a few minor changes), but the problem of items in the queue not downloading properly all the time is STILL there.

Some torrents are downloading very slowly (less than 1-2k per second), and some are in Downloading status, but aren't actually transferring any data. In this scenario, almost no data is being transferred, and the connection remains nearly idle.

Meanwhile, there are torrents which have seeds and are in Queued status, but are not being activated to download. Since the queue.dont_count_slow_dl option is enabled, they should be downloading due to the fact that all other active torrents are transferring so little data. It worked this way for years. However, sometime around version 2.x, this all went wrong.

Sometimes if I go into the settings and change some of the Queuing settings slightly, click Apply, and then change them back, click Apply again, the torrents that should have activated on their own will suddenly activate and start to download, and will complete.

This is driving me nuts. Used to be, that I could add a bunch of torrents to my queue, and they'd all download without me ever having to check or monitor their status. It was a "set it and forget it" deal. Now, I open my torrent list after several days and find that there are torrents which have not downloaded due to this queuing bug, but should have.

This is not a 100% of the time situation. Sometimes I will check my torrent list, and find out that nearly everything I've queued up in the last few days has downloaded completely. Other times, I will find that there are lot of items that should have downloaded, but still remain queued, even though they are well seeded.

I do occasionally have to exit uTorrent when I want bandwidth for other things, or when I reboot, so perhaps this is what is causing the random behavior I just described.

I have a lot of torrents which only have seeders one rare occasions. Those torrents are always left in Downloading status, in case a seed becomes available. Since they are almost never transferring data, they should not interfere with the queue, but they are. They are hogging all the download slots and preventing torrents with lots of seeds from activating and downloading. Though, on some occasions the number of slowly downloading torrents will actually exceed the queue limits and I'll end up with 8 or 12 (queue limit is 6) torrents sitting there in Downloading status, but not actually doing anything.... but even in those cases, torrents which DO have seeds remain queued. I even make sure that the bt_scrape_stopped option is turned on so the number of available seeds is always known to the client.

So, somtimes it stays within the queue limits, othertimes it exceeds them as per the queue.dont_count_slow_dl setting, but regardless, it still often refuses to start torrents which have seeds available. Very odd. This goes against uTorrents design intention of using the connection as much as possible to transfer as much data as efficiently as possible.

I rarely pay attention to the goings on in the main uTorrent window, as in the past I've never had to... so I can't say for sure exactly what's happening when it does or doesn't work.

- Here are my connection details and some relevant settings:

DSL Download: 27 Megabits (3300 Kilobytes)

DSL Upload: 1.8 Megabits (220 Kilobytes)

- Maximum upload rate (kB/s) = 200

- Maximum download rate (kB/s) = 3000

- Maximum number of active torrents (upload or download) = 6

- Maximum number of active downloads = 6

- Global maximum number of connections = 300

- Maximum number of connected peers per torrent = 50

- Number of upload slots per torrent = 8

- Use additional upload slots if upload speed < 90% = Enabled

- bt.scrape_stopped = true

- queue.dont_count_slow_dl = true

- queue.dont_count_slow_ul = true

- queue.slow_dl_threshold = 10000

- queue.slow_ul_threshold = 5000