DHT and trackerless magnet links

Windows specific questions, problems.
nichiren

DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

Trying to switch from µTorrent to a less dubious bittorrent client. So, I installed qBittorrent 3.0.0 on a Win7 box to test it out.

Windows Firewall is disabled, F-Secure firewall set to allow all traffic and the router has UPnP enabled and working. Nevertheless I configured qBittorrent to use same port  (35617) as µTorrent did, DHT, PEX and local peer discovery is enabled, uTP is enabled and UPnP/NAT enabled. Checking the router port 35617 TCP and UDP is forwarded properly.

When I start qBittorrent, number of DHT peers gets around 50ish but starts to decrease slowly. Opening a magnet link with trackers, peers from the tracker appear to work normally but DHT, PEX and LSD are grayed out and appear to be disabled.

Opening a magnet link without trackers I get nothing, DHT, PEX and LSD are greyed out and the torrent status is just stalled and waiting doesn't seem to change anything. Force reannounce does nothing.

If I shut down qBittorrent and run µTorrent, I get 300+ DHT peers right off the bat, same torrentless magnet link that doesn't work with qBittorrent works as expected. Resetting the router to ensure UPnP port forwardings are cleared doesn't change anything.

Some other guy seemed to have same sounding problem which apparently went away with Windows reinstall. This is not an option for me and I'd be happy this problem could be resolved and I could ditch µTorrent for good. Thanks.
loki

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by loki »

DHT, PEX, and LSD are always greyed but, unless it specifically says Disabled in the status column it is working.
nichiren

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

All right then. But the problem is that it doesn't still work, at least not all the time. When qBittorrent starts, it connects to DHT and the number of DHT nodes goes to around 170. After a while if there are no torrents using DHT, the number goes down until it reaches zero. When it's zero, any new trackerless torrents don't seem to connect anywhere and remain stalled. If I restart the program, it connects to DHT again and the torrents that were previously stalled start downloading. When the downloading is completed, DHT nodes go down to zero again after a while and no new torrents start downloading without trackers present.

Clearly there is something wrong, but the question is where and how can I fix it? Constantly restarting the program isn't a solution since I use RSS downloads.
MadClown

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by MadClown »

[quote="nichiren"]
All right then. But the problem is that it doesn't still work, at least not all the time. When qBittorrent starts, it connects to DHT and the number of DHT nodes goes to around 170. After a while if there are no torrents using DHT, the number goes down until it reaches zero. When it's zero, any new trackerless torrents don't seem to connect anywhere and remain stalled. If I restart the program, it connects to DHT again and the torrents that were previously stalled start downloading. When the downloading is completed, DHT nodes go down to zero again after a while and no new torrents start downloading without trackers present.

Clearly there is something wrong, but the question is where and how can I fix it? Constantly restarting the program isn't a solution since I use RSS downloads.
[/quote]

I can confirm this is happening to me also. Like you, DHT raises to about 160-170 and eventually drops to 0. When I tried uTorrent and Tixati, they both got around 300+ nodes but qBittorrent only gets around 170.
nichiren

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

I've done some more testing and tried to make things work without much success. As MadClown also said, µTorrent works through DHT without any problems on same machine. I also tested qBittorrent on other computer running Gentoo and on it there doesn't seem to be any problem. On startup the number of DHT nodes go slowly up to around 170 and stays there even though there are no torrents at all.

On Windows, I left a DHT only torrent "running" for a night and a day and it remains in stalled state, disabling and re-enabling DHT doesn't work, pausing and restarting the torrent doesn't work, apart from shutting down qBittorrent and starting again nothing starts the torrent. I even tried starting another torrent, which doesn't start either.

Looking at trackers tab DHT/PeX/LSD status is unlisted, it's not even disabled. It's just not working.

Please see the screenshot below.
http://i.imgur.com/d5Qoh.png

The first torrent (trackers tab visible in the screenshot) is the one opened around 20 hours ago, second one I started a while ago. #2 has got one tracker that has status not working on trackers tab, DHT status is working but there are 0 DHT peers and DHT nodes have been 0 since yesterday. Yesterday I downloaded one torrent by restarting qBittorrent, later when I checked the torrent was completed but DHT nodes had gone down to zero. I removed the completed torrent and started another one (#1 in the screenshot) and left the computer alone for the said 20 or so hours.

The execution log doesn't seem to have anything I wouldn't expect on the general tab, but the blocked IP tab has one message repeating number of times: [IP ADDRESS] was blocked due to your IP filter. All messages have the same IP address but I haven't got IP filter enabled, so I don't have a clue where it's from.

I quit qBittorrent and started it again, now both of the torrents start downloading using DHT, the only tracker on #2 is still not working. I'll just wait till they complete to see what happens.

That's all I've managed. Any suggestions? Is it possible to enable some kind of debugging (logging) mode? On Linux machine qBittorrent works without a problem and on the same Windows machine other client works so it shouldn't be any firewall or network setting, or probably not even something with Windows itself.

The Gentoo build I used is version 3.0.1 compiled locally against Qt 4.8.2, libtorrent 0.15.10.0 and boost 1.48.0. The Windows build I grabbed from qBittorrent.org and is linked against Qt 4.8.2, libtorrent 0.16.2.0 and boost 1.50.

I would really like to solve this, barring this showstopper qBittorrent would be perfect replacement for µTorrent.
nichiren

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

[quote="nichiren"]
I quit qBittorrent and started it again, now both of the torrents start downloading using DHT, the only tracker on #2 is still not working. I'll just wait till they complete to see what happens.
[/quote]

As I as afraid, as soon as both torrents were downloaded, DHT nodes started to evaporate and the count was zero rather soon. Back in same state again.
loki

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by loki »

I swear I read the fix to this yesterday, can't find it today though. (It was in the Linux section, fix applies to Windows too. http://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php?topi ... 94#msg2894) So far this seems to have worked... though not sure why.
Enable alternate port for DHT but still okay to set it as same port as incoming torrent.
Last edited by loki on Sun Sep 02, 2012 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
nichiren

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

[quote="loki"]
I swear I read the fix to this yesterday, can't find it today though. (It was in the Linux section, fix applies to Windows too. http://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php?topi ... 94#msg2894) So far this seems to have worked... though not sure why.
Enable alternate port for DHT but still okay to set it as same port as incoming torrent.
[/quote]

I had actually done this earlier, I had DHT enabled and manually configured to use the same port as the incoming one. It still behaved as I've been describing.

Though I decided to give it another go, I uninstalled qBittorrent, removed qBittorrent directories from AppData\Local and AppData\Roaming and reinstalled qBt. I then manually configured the DHT port, though to a different port. I'll test it out and see where it goes.

Thanks.
nichiren

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

All right. I've tested the fresh install and sadly, still not working. I tried manually setting the port, both to same as the incoming port and to another available port. Same behaviour as earlier. Works for a while and then DHT dies, only quit/restart reconnects it.
samsat

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by samsat »

I have the same Issue. I'm using the portable version from portableapps.com

Windows 7 x64
Last edited by samsat on Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
loki

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by loki »

Are you sure it doesn't re-add DHT peers when it's needed (for example when a torrent is active that needs it)?
MadClown

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by MadClown »

[quote="loki"]
Are you sure it doesn't re-add DHT peers when it's needed (for example when a torrent is active that needs it)?
[/quote]

Nope. Whenever DHT dropped to 0 my torrents were still active. Have to shut down qBittorrent and restart to start gathering DHT nodes again.
nichiren

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

[quote="loki"]
Are you sure it doesn't re-add DHT peers when it's needed (for example when a torrent is active that needs it)?
[/quote]

I am. It just doesn't start again no matter what I've tried, disabling DHT from settings, adding a torrent, then re-enabling DHT, adding a new torrent after enabling etc. As MadClown commented as well, only quit and restart seem to help.
samsat

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by samsat »

Yes, restarting qb every time is the only solution.
nichiren

Re: DHT and trackerless magnet links

Post by nichiren »

Just an update, this problem still exists in the latest qBittorrent Windows build, v.3.0.2.
I've also been trying to build a debug build with DHT logging enabled in libtorrent, but I've so far been unable to get even libtorrent compile due to some strange misbehaviour probably in either Windows command prompt or in my Boost.build. I'll try keep trying some more when I've got free time.
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