RSS feed from KAT not returning any items

[munificent]

Hi there,

I am running qbt 3.4 on Win 7 64 with PIA VPN active via the TAP interface and the SOCKS5 proxy in use also as a redundant backup, just in case. Normally, this works fine. However, I am having great trouble with the RSS reader. Essentially, I will input my RSS link such as:

http://kickass.ag/usearch/bbc%20masterc ... ete/?rss=1

Then I will marvel as qbt fails to find any files from that link. Why is this? I'd be very grateful for any ideas to get this feature up and running.

Thanks,

James.

[KitKat]

Use kat.cr instead of that mirror, its better/supports https..
Here: https://kat.cr/usearch/bbc%20masterchef ... ete/?rss=1

[ciaobaby]

Does the SOCKS proxy support HTTP as well?

[munificent]

Thank you for the tip. I have made some progress, but in an unexpected direction. For a start, even using the new link, qbt couldn't find any files. So I checked the log and it was giving the following error:

15/04/2016 18:32 - qBittorrent failed listening on interface 0.0.0.0 port: SOCKS5/8999. Reason: SOCKS authentication error.

Now, in my setup, the port I have set for SOCKS5 is the 1080 port that PIA wants me to use, so it's no surprise, perhaps, that it can't authenticate on 8999. It is entirely possible, though, that I am misunderstanding the wording of the error and 8999 is used by something else.

So, I turn off the proxy, re-add the RSS and - boom! - files found. This strongly leads me to suspect that qbt is having a paddy with SOCKS ports and have amended the subject line to better reflect this fresh information.

I want to keep the SOCKS5 proxy up. It's an important extra layer of protection for me and I don't want to go without it. I'd be grateful for any further light anyone can shed on what's going on here.

[munificent]

As a further, final point, I just created a new SOCKS user/pass at PIA and input that new value just in case it was something as obvious as a wrongly noted password. Nope, still not working as I'd hope. And yes, the proxy supports HTTP as I entered different settings on another client to test that and it found files without issue. Seems a bit of a sticky one.

EDIT: this is weird. On a hunch, I went and created a new RSS feed with all settings on and... it worked. So I shut down the client, restarted it, added another RSS and it worked again.

On the plus side I'm happy it's now mysteriously working and might have been something dumb like a bad password. On the minus side, I'm confused that I still see the error:

15/04/2016 18:58 - qBittorrent failed listening on interface 0.0.0.0 port: SOCKS5/8999. Reason: Access is denied.

and that makes me feel like I don't understand why it's working now and was so utterly not working beforehand.

So... I guess... good news?

[KitKat]

[quote="munificent"]
I'm confused that I still see the error:
15/04/2016 18:58 - qBittorrent failed listening on interface 0.0.0.0 port: SOCKS5/8999. Reason: Access is denied.
and that makes me feel like I don't understand why it's working now and was so utterly not working beforehand.
So... I guess... good news?
[/quote]
You've gone from an "everything cant connect" failure message to a "just this one thing cant connect" message so yes good news.
If i had to hazard a guess qbittorent is attempting to use the SOCKS proxy to perform Local Peer Discovery which is causing the proxy to have a heartattack trying to route to an internal IP address.
I remember doing a bit of a lookup for port 8999 when i saw qbittorent making connections on it, and came to the conclusion (after disabling LPD and seeing the traffic stop) that LPD is its intended purpose.

[ciaobaby]

that LPD is its intended purpose.

You are quite correct in that conclusion,

Local Peer Discovery (LPD)/Local Service Discovery(LSD)  is intended to connect to peers that are 'local' to your external IP, and 'Local' in this instance means "Local within your Internet Service Provider's (ISP)   netmask (CIDR) space.

To use my fixed IP (87.81.nnn.nnn) as an example of how that should work, my provider is Sky Broadband and is in a CIDR of 87.80.0.0/15 which gives an address space of 87.80.0.0 to 87.81.255.255 (131072 addresses), so my LPD will connect with peers that are in those 131072 addresses, this is intended to allow ISPs to provide a caching peer on their local network to reduce BT Protocol traffic that has to cross in to Autonomous Segments (AS) that are operated by other providers, as this cross network traffic is expensive, and as an incidental note;

Cross  Autonomous Segments data transfer is how the main Internet, 'telecoms' and 'backbone' providers make their money, by charging each other for data that passes through their Autonomous System Boundary Router (ASBR) aka Border Gateway Router (BGR). So when or if the Bittorrent Protocol becomes a 'mainstream'  method of content delivery, which probably will not happen now given the advances in other Internet Protocols that make 'streaming data' to individual devices viable.

Meanwhile, back at the plot,
If your client is going via some sort of system that is intended to obfuscate, obscure or 'hide' your actual external IP (Proxies, VPN) turn LPD/LSD off, because it IS a pointless waste of resources and data overhead because the chances of finding a "local peer" in those conditions are somewhere between "slim" and "none".