How to...

[JMJimmy]

Just wondering if there's a way to:

1) Change the colour for blocks being downloaded on the files tab. Grey/white look very similar so it's difficult to tell what's downloading vs simply available. (pieces tab doesn't have a "file name" column)

2) Is there a setting I can change that will force utorrent NOT to download the first/last piece of every file in a multipart file at the start? Like so: http://i.imgur.com/Isdr7sT.jpg It's a real problem for large multipart files in a low storage environment. By it downloading the first/last parts it allocates the full space required for each of those files leading to the "not enough storage space" error message. utorrent then goes into some sort of "slow mode" and doesn't download blocks or downloads them extremely slowly, despite previously allocating the space for those blocks.

*Note: Options->Preferences->General->When downloading->"Pre-allocate all files" option is unchecked

3) Is it possible to have utorrent automatically delete files which are marked as "skip"?

4) Is there a way to have a paused torrent continue to get seed/peer/availability data without seeding? I try to seed content which has low availability but there's no easy way to do this currently without seeding everything or removing what currently has high availability (which is then a pain to add back in)

5) I recently downloaded a torrent, due to lack of space I shifted it off to an external and stopped seeing it. I tried to add it back to seed to some friends by downloading the torrent, once it finished downloading the meta data, I paused it, copied the files back to the seeding computer, and did a force check. Only 17% of the torrent would validate. The main 2.9gb archive would not validate despite no modifications being made, simply a copy/paste back and forth. Is there a reason why this would happen or a way to correct it?

[DreadWingKnight]

1> skins

2> Advanced Settings, but it doesn't work consistently because it requires others to turn it off

3> Nope. cross-file pieces.

4> advanced settings

5> Stop changing the files or fix your overzealous media indexers

[JMJimmy]

1> skins

2> Advanced Settings, but it doesn't work consistently because it requires others to turn it off

3> Nope. cross-file pieces.

4> advanced settings

5> Stop changing the files or fix your overzealous media indexers

1) thanks

2) Any hints as to which setting and even if this setting is default is there a way to prevent the program from entering that "slow mode"? Edit: I assume it's bt.prio_first_last_piece but this is already set to false

3) Makes sense, just these "downloaded from" text files are annoying to deal with

4) Again, which one?

5) No changes were made so it's probably the latter, I'll have to look into that.

[ciaobaby]

2) a: bt.prio_first_last_piece (there's a clue in the names for Advanced Settings keys ) b: No

4) bt.scrape_stopped

[JMJimmy]

2) a: bt.prio_first_last_piece (there's a clue in the names for Advanced Settings keys ) b: No

4) bt.scrape_stopped

Thanks. #2 really sucks. ut allocated 320gb of 380gb for a torrent I was downloading but wouldn't continue until I freed up the last 60gb - you'd think it'd be better to download/share what it could and enter that mode once it hits the end of the allocated space.

4) bt.scrape_stopped works for stopped but not paused unfortunately. I would have thought it'd be default behaviour for paused.

[ciaobaby]

ut allocated 320gb of 380gb for a torrent I was downloading but wouldn't continue until I freed up the last 60gb

4) bt.scrape_stopped works for stopped but not paused unfortunately. I would have thought it'd be default behaviour for paused.

"Paused" is different to "Stopped" in that it maintains the open connections and attempts to complete the 'in transit' pieces but does not update trackers and DHT. (in theory)

[JMJimmy]

ut allocated 320gb of 380gb for a torrent I was downloading but wouldn't continue until I freed up the last 60gb

Was there supposed to be something after this quote?

4) bt.scrape_stopped works for stopped but not paused unfortunately. I would have thought it'd be default behaviour for paused.

"Paused" is different to "Stopped" in that it maintains the open connections and attempts to complete the 'in transit' pieces but does not update trackers and DHT. (in theory)

I tried changing this setting and stopping all the torrents that were previously paused. It grabbed some scrape info (less than 5% of them) but everything gets a "1.0" availability so it's not much use.

[ciaobaby]

but everything gets a "1.0" availability

And would these happen to be 'Seeding' jobs?

And,

(pieces tab doesn't have a "file name" column)

That's because the "Pieces" tab is really a "blocks" tab, because it actually shows the progress of each 16k block for the pieces that are currently being downloaded. The 'file' that the piece number belongs to can then be found on the 'files' tab.

[JMJimmy]

but everything gets a "1.0" availability

And would these happen to be 'Seeding' jobs?

The behaviour I was hoping for was one that would allow me to only seed files that were dying. I found when leaving all the torrents available for seeding the queue.prio_no_seeds setting did little/nothing to prioritize the dying, just the dead.

[ciaobaby]

uTorrent does NOT maintain connections to seeds when seeding, so availability IS always 1.00 because to all intents and purposes your client is the only active seed.

And:

The swarm count is the value to look at for a more accurate number of peers, NOT the raw tracker numbers, as they are very rarely accurate.

[JMJimmy]

The swarm count is the value to look at for a more accurate number of peers, NOT the raw tracker numbers, as they are very rarely accurate.

Right, I'm not referring to the raw tracker numbers. Where a friend downloading the same torrent as me (at the same time) in the US, they will see dozens or hundreds in a swarm I'll only see at most a dozen and of those most will be flagged "d" so I can't get anything from them.

[ciaobaby]

most will be flagged "d" so I can't get anything from them.

Check the relevance of the peers that are flagged as 'd', and it may well be that you have no pieces that the peer wants, so the "tit for tat" algorithm is favouring clients with the wanted pieces. There are so many things that you don't know about other peers, so trying to micro-manage connections and peers very quickly becomes a fruitless task.

Is your friend in the exact same info hash swarm?

[JMJimmy]

most will be flagged "d" so I can't get anything from them.

Check the relevance of the peers that are flagged as 'd'' date=' and it may well be that you have no pieces that the peer wants, so the "tit for tat" algorithm is favouring clients with the wanted pieces. There are so many things that you don't know about other peers, so trying to micro-manage connections and peers very quickly becomes a fruitless task.

Is your friend in the [b']exact same info hash swarm?

Yes, I sent them the hash so they could find the right torrent. They completed the 2.8gb download in ~40 minutes and I couldn't get more than 10Kbps. As to the general "d" problem, that 380gb torrent I mentioned has 1 seed and 1 leech with a higher completion than I have, everyone else has 34.1% or less (including myself). Those two are flagged "d" along with a dozen others (~25% of the swarm) who have pieces I need. The rest have no pieces I need and/or I am uploading to them (371gb so far). This is just an example, but 25% seems very high. Also, the 131GB I have downloaded has come from less than 15% of the swarm. Edit: this is just an example that's repeated over and over, just this torrent doesn't have a lot of seeders so it's easier to track what's going on with it

[ciaobaby]

Sounds pretty average for the kind of material I download.

I have one job that is ~70G of public broadcast documentaries, TED talks etc. etc. that has been bumbling along for several months with a couple of seeds (swarm = 0) that occasionally connect, availability is from peers is 1.99 mostly 2.99 at best with 16 connected peers (swarm 0), some with a 0% of the payload but have made no requests to my client (3.4).

It's just the way it is with jobs that are not particularly "mainstream".

[JMJimmy]

As I said though, that's just an example. I get this on mainstream torrents as well, The Daily Show, while I can download it in under 30 seconds over 50% of the seeding peers (50+ in the swarm) are flagged "d" from the get go and stay that way. It just seems like utorrent 2.x had a far easier time connecting to peers and getting small amounts of consistent throughput from them where 3.x struggles, despite 5x the resources to work with.

[ciaobaby]

are flagged "d" from the get go and stay that way.

You cannot change that, if the other peers have no free upload slots and the connection is simply 'optimistic' with your client making a piece request and the other client being unable to respond.

Just because they are not downloading to your client does not mean they are not downloading at all. As said earlier there are too many unknowns.

I've had many jobs that will perform better in a different client or different version, AND many jobs that perform poorly in Halite or qBitTorrent but run perfectly well when loaded into uTorrent.