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µTorrent 2.2.1 released


Firon

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In Utorrent 2.2.1, including the latest and greatest version, I've observed these bugs:

1) When downloading multifile torrents and using .!ut extension, approximately every 8th file will not get propely renamed when it is complete. There will be another file with the proper name, but not containing the downloaded data.

2) Sporadically, uTorrent will show a torrent as stopped with status "System cannot find specified file." while the log will show "Error opening so-and-so." I assume the need to open the files comes from the flushing of files. Starting the torrent again works.

3) With windows file-caching turned off, files still do get cached by windows. This is very different from 2.0.4 where they don't. This may be related to 2), the flushing code does not seem to be stable.

1) is guaranteed to happen with a 30+ file torrent.

2) happens every 2 two to 3 days.

Yes, I am absolutely certain the hardware is working correctly.

::Trym

I believe it's related to what I observe

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=573128#p573128

Thanks

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If the torrent still has peers connected to it, this isn't a bug.

Yes, it's logical that all torrents will still have connected peers soon after they were deleted from the tracker and the client receives the error. Unless you manually check a few hundred torrents' tracker tab for the unregistered torrent message and manually stop the torrent and restart it so you can see the red upload arrow (<-which by the way means seeding but with tracker error, according to uTorrent's help). Or closing and restarting uTorrent. That isn't a very practical way to find out which torrents were deleted or have errors reported by the tracker. It wasn't like that before 2.2.1. Torrents used to turn red the moment the tracker sent an error. So I assumed it was a bug. It's kind of a strange behavior and I think there should at least be an option to revert to the old way.

Ql58e.png

utorrent help says blue up arrow means seeding without any issue. Red up arrow means seeding but with a tracker error (with or without peers connected, as in all pre 2.2.1 uT versions).

So how is it normal that the blue upload arrow is shown when the actual status is "seeding but with tracker error" (<- represented by red upload icon, according to the manual)?

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-- 2010-12-17: Version 2.2.1 beta (build 23832)

<snip>

- Change: Only report a torrent as red because of tracker error if we don't have any peers

I really wish I'd commented on this change as soon as I noticed it...

To me, this is an absolutely horrible change, and I honestly can't understand why you'd change the program to hide problems from the user. Personally, when something breaks, I want to know right away so I can start doing something about it.

Here are two types of real-life situations I run into occasionally where not getting that red icon right away would cause me problems:

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1. I'm downloading a torrent and the tracker goes down for an extended period, or loses the torrent due to a crash or some other reason.

Getting that red icon right away, while I still have peers, lets me take action to improve my chances to finish downloading the torrent even without the assistance of the tracker. I can give the torrent maximum bandwidth, shut down other torrents to free up more bandwidth for the orphaned torrent, etc. If it's not a private torrent, I can also enable DHT to try and get more peers to improve my chances of getting it downloaded.

But if I don't get that red icon until I've lost all the peers, it's probably too late and I might wind up not being able to finish downloading a torrent that I could have finished successfully if I'd known about the problem as soon as it happened.

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2. Some of the trackers I use are pretty good about keeping their torrents up to date, and replace them with new versions as they become available.

If I get the red icon right away, I can go to the tracker site, get the new version, and get back to downloading and then seeding right away.

If I don't get the red icon until I lose all the peers, I may waste a good bit of time and bandwidth downloading an outdated version before I know to start on the new one. (And if a lot of other people are using the same version of uTorrent, there's likely to be a whole bunch of us sitting there fat, dumb, and happy with lots of peers and no idea we're wasting time on a dead torrent.)

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I really don't like software that hides problems and tries to pretend everything' s just fine, especially when knowing about the problem right away might allow the user to successfully deal with the problem but hiding the problem could put the user in a position where they're unable to download a torrent.

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@tanstaafl

An alternative would be to activate the 'tracker status' column in the torrents list and check that column for 'working' or the 'failure: torrent not registered' error but it's still more complicated than before and less easy to spot a problem. You can immediately spot a red icon in a list of 500 torrents but it will take a while to go through the tracker status column for all of those 500 torrents.

I agree with you, it was a completely unnecessary change and it only needlessly complicates things... for the more experienced users, at least.

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tanstaafl, use the tracker status column to find which ones have a problem.

The problem with showing the red icon is that for 99.9% of the torrents, it says there's a problem when there isn't actually one. DHT is more than sufficient to find peers. Hell, for a lot of torrents still floating out there, the tracker's been gone for ages, but the torrent is still very much alive.

It should probably show it regardless of how many peers you have for private torrents, though.

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tanstaafl, use the tracker status column to find which ones have a problem.

To be honest, I'd forgotten about that column; it's enabled now. But with anything more than a handful of torrents listed, trying to spot error messages in that is a pain in the neck. Plus, it wastes display space to do what the red status icon did much better.

The problem with showing the red icon is that for 99.9% of the torrents, it says there's a problem when there isn't actually one. DHT is more than sufficient to find peers. Hell, for a lot of torrents still floating out there, the tracker's been gone for ages, but the torrent is still very much alive.

My experience over the last four years using uTorrent is very different from what you're describing. For me, if that icon stays red for more than a minute or two, it usually means something's wrong and I need to deal with it while I still have peers. It's very rare for that icon to stay red if there's not an actual problem.

I think the difference in our experience is that 95% or more of my torrents come from private trackers. I get very few torrents from public trackers, and I usually leave DHT disabled unless I need it for a public torrent that's having trouble finding peers.

It should probably show it regardless of how many peers you have for private torrents, though.

Rather than looking at public versus private, how about going by whether or not DHT is enabled for the torrent?

That would automatically cover private torrents, plus public torrents that have DHT turned off.

That way, if DHT is enabled, people wouldn't have false alarms from the red icon as long as they have peers, but users with private torrents or public torrents with DHT disabled would be warned of problems immediately so they could take appropriate action.

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Originally, I was going to suggest including an advanced option so users could select whichever behavior (old or new) for the status option worked best for them.

However, if it could be coded to automatically select the appropriate behavior for each torrent based on either the status of DHT or the private/public flag, that would be even better.

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Next thing you'll say that to also disable red-net-status for tracker issues as long as also PEX is enabled... since you can get peers from that to...

As far as I am concerned - as long as there are incoming transactions/connection requests - from anywhere (TCP or UDP) the status is more or less OK. If you like an indication for tracker errors (no trackers on line), then I suggest you ask the devs for an additional color-shape to the torrent status icon & line, like a yellow circle, or a green with a cross-checked "v" mark to indicate tracker issues.

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rafi,

The comment about DHT was just tossed out as a possibility that might be useful for fine tuning the behavior for public trackers.

My concern is getting back the old behavior of the status icon (or something similar) for private trackers, because a different colored icon is a lot more noticeable than one different text string in the middle of a whole bunch of text strings in the status column.

When a private tracker goes down, you need to know as soon as it happens. If you don't notice until you've also lost all the peers, it's too late. All you can do is wait for the tracker to come back up and hope it didn't lose any of your torrents when it crashed.

Your suggestion of a different icon for tracker failures sounds fine to me; I just don't want a green icon telling me "everything's OK" when there's actually a problem I need to try to deal with.

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They are correct on one thing, though. This icon shows some GLOBAL issue (being on the status bar). Tracker problems are more like "per torrent job issue". So maybe a more proper replacement should be an indication on the torrent's "status" column, or maybe also some indication on the torrent's status icon.

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The new 2.2.1 I just put up will now show you the red status icon if the tracker goes down on private torrents.

Thank you very much! :) For listening, and for the quick change.

Now I just have to wait for some tracker errors to see how well this works.

And why don't you make the devs do the right thing, for once, and not the easy thing. This is a per-torrent issue, not a global issue, and the correct place to show it is not the global status-bar but in the torrent -job line . Perhaps a modified icon/color and a different text in the status column.

Huh???????

What the heck does any of this discussion have to do with the status bar?

Read the two change log entries, my posts on this, Firon's posts, and a couple of other people's posts: I don't remember anybody (except you) bringing up the status bar in this discusion.

(I think I may have said 'green' icon when it would have been more precise to say 'green/blue/grey' icon, but I didn't think it would cause confusion.)

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Hi,

As an example ...

- Downloaded a folder "Top100_2011" that contains several files.

- When add torrents, rename folder "Top100_2011" to "Top"

37891365.th.png

- Open µT, select "Top" torrent

- Right click menu > Advanced > Set Download Location...

- Relocate folder "C:\Downloads\Top" to C:\EXAMPLE

- After this move, rename the folder back to its original name (C:\EXAMPLE\Top100_2011)

This is a new idea? Thx

W7 build 25110, 25113, 25130

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