BitTorrent/FAQ

An actively answered and popular list of Frequently Asked Questions regarding BitTorrent (has achieved a high Google ranking). You can contribute to this page by clicking the "Edit this page" link at the bottom. See Text Formatting Rules and Style Guide for details.

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Common Questions

Can I resume ?

Yes, just save your download to the same location as the existing partial download. BitTorrent will resume where it left off after checking the partial download.

How do I start uploading ?

BitTorrent will upload automatically. If you already have the whole file, just act as if you did not and point the client to download to where the file you have is. The client will check the contents and start uploading.

My upload rate is much faster than my download rate !

This happens, sometimes. Most of the time, your download rate will pick up gradually and surpass upload.

I don't want BitTorrent stealing my bandwidth! How can I stop it from uploading?

You could hack the source to not upload, but then your download rate would suck. BitTorrent downloaders engage in tit-for-tat with their peers, so leeches have very little success downloading. You should help people to download by uploading.

Throttling exists in the experimental client, and possibly elsewhere.

When I look at the file it's already full size but it's garbled and BT says it's still downloading, what's going on?

BitTorrent pre-allocates the entire file when your download begins, then writes in pieces in random order as it gets them. As a result the file jumps to its full size immediately. BitTorrent will tell you when the download is complete.

As of BitTorrent 3.3, files are allocated as they are downloaded.

I use Mozilla, how can I use BitTorrent?

As of version 3.0.2, BitTorrent works with Mozilla out of the box.

Can I use BitTorrent on Mac OS 9?

If you install Python, you should be able to use btdownloadheadless.py from the source.

How can I contribute to a file distribution without downloading?

Just leave your downloader running after it's done downloading. If you already have the complete file, run the downloader as a resume.

How do I know the download isn't corrupted?

BitTorrent does cryptographic hashing (SHA1) of all data. When you see "Download Succeeded" you can be sure that BitTorrent has already verified the integrity of the data. The integrity and authenticity of a BitTorrent download is as good as the original request to the tracker. Checking the MD5 of a file downloaded via BitTorrent is redundant.

I'm behind a firewall/NAT, can I use BitTorrent?

Yes, but you will get better performance if other peers can connect to you. By default, BitTorrent listens on port 6881, trying incrementially higher ports if it's unable to bind. It gives up after 6889 (the port range is configurable.) It's up to you to figure out how to poke a hole in your firewall/NAT.

How many downloads can BitTorrent support?

BitTorrent routinely supports around 1000 dowloaders of files around a gigabyte in size. After current tracker scaling work, the next scaling bottleneck is expected to be in the hundreds of thousands of simultaneous downloaders.

How do I limit the amount of bandwidth consumed by BitTorrent?

Use the --max_upload_rate command line parameter, which takes an upload rate in kilobytes/sec. There is also btclient, an unofficial BitTorrent fork with bandwidth capping for DSL and Cable users who need to cap their upload bandwidth to achieve reasonable download speeds (Windows only)

Does BitTorrent contain spyware or adware?

The official BitTorrent client contains no spyware, adware, or any other kind of -ware. There are some third party clients which do contain spyware. Be suspicious of any client you see advertised in a banner ad.

What license is BitTorrent released under?

MIT, which basically lets you do anything you want with it so long as you leave the license notification in the source.

My download is currently at 99% and it's stopped there.

You may be able to utilize it, depending on file type. If the file is a program, you should probably give up after a few days of retrying and delete the file. If it is a media file (mpeg, mp3, divx), you may try opening it in a viewer anyway and see how it goes.

It is suspected that this problem is sometime due to the badly implemented preview in the windows XP file explorer. Windows may creates athumbs.db file in the directory that is being uploaded with bittorrent then not allow bittorrent to access it.

Is there a port for FreeBSD

The bittorrent are written in python so if if you have that installed you only need the bt*.py files to start sharing. However, there is a port located at /usr/ports/net/py-bittorent. Other bittorrent clients are available in net/ctorrent (C implementation, CLI only) and net/qtorrent (Python, QT GUI).

How can I run bittorrent in the background on a unix look-a-like system.

By using the command-line tools and this BitTorrent/Background Script you can telnet to your system, start bittorrent and then exit the shell without loosing the bittorrent task.

An alternative would be using the terminal window manager screen. Just start screen, then BT and leave screen with "Ctrl-a d" (for detach). Resume with "screen -r" sometime later.

Could multicast be aded to bittorrent

Since DSL lines often have dramatically different upload/download speeds, their download capacity, being capped by that of the uploads, is not used satisfactorily at all. Of course, fairness demands that people give the current as much as they receive. Wouldn't it be possible to use multicasting to use the upload bandwidth much more effectively?

Not with the current state of the internet. ISP's generally don't provide their customers with muticast service. In most cases a muticast bittorrent would not be any more efficient than allowing users to upload an equivalent amount. Peers are nearly allways on different ISP's so the data would have to be stream seperatly across the internet to each peer.

Common Client Errors Explained

By Darth TaGam and Romeria in the Hawkie's world forum.

1. 'connecting to peers'

Maybe there are no users to connect to. Leave your torrent open and maybe the bit torrent client will connect (it may take some time).

1. windows cannot find "c:documents and settingsownerlocal settingstemporery internet filescontent.ie5.....

Download the torrent to your hd and launch it from there. Right click on the link and save the torrent to your hard-drive, then open the torrent that is in your hard-drive by double clicking on it.

1. No space left on device

The client allocates the space needed to store the file on your HD, you get this error when you don't have enough space on your hard drive for bit torrent to fully allocate the file.

1. urlopen error - (7, 'getaddrinfo failed')

This means that the tracker is overloaded, just keep the torrent window open and wait.

1. temporary internet files content 1.5 xxx don't exist

It is an XP thing, either download the torrent to your hd and launch it from there.. or clear out your temp internet files that will generally resolve the issue. (XP compresses temp internet files once it reach a certain # of files or 1/2 alloted space that is what causes the error) Just let the torrent run in your client and the client will keep checking the tracker and should resume eventually.

1. problem getting response info - [errno2] No such file or directory

The directory of C : /// is probably causing your problems, it's most likely a temporary directory that Internet Explorer uses when you left click on the torrent file. Try right clicking on the .torrent and selecting "save target as". Then save the .torrent file to a directory on your C drive. Keep them all in a folder specifically designed for use with Bit Torrent and your life will be much easier. Then when you start your client and you're ready to download the files you can navigate to that special folder and not have to keep searching for where Windows plonks the torrents each time. Clear your temp internet files, then make a dedicated folder for your torrents and try again. Put the download in the folder you made.

1. (IOError - [Errno13] Permission denied)

Sometime bit torrent still runs in the background, and if you start more than one GUI (the same torrent) it will give you permission denied, go to Task manager and close down all bt-gui processes.

1. rejected by tracker -

Your IP is not registered to use this tracker for this file Probably the tracker is overloaded, so the owner decide to only allow certain IPs to use the tracker

1. Problem connecting to tracker: HTTP Error -1

Leave your torrent running in your client. The client will keep checking the tracker and it should resume eventually.

1. Problem connecting with tracker - (10060, 'Operation timed out')

That error means that the server/tracker is down or too busy to process your request. Just keep trying - leave it open.

1. <urlopen error (10061, 'Connection refused")>

Just leave your torrent running in your client. The client will keep trying to connect to the tracker. When you're already downloading, just ignore it.

1. Problem connecting to tracker - <urlopen error(10055, 'No buffer space available')>

A lot of routes in your routing table (due to a mis configured router, or mis-configured default route) Lots of stale connections in your connection table Or a lot of data that is pending for sending or receiving on a current connection(s), which can't be sent or received for some reason (destination system dead or unreachable, for example). Opening too many sockets at the same time. Probably don't have enough free space on your hard drive.

1. Problem connecting with tracker - (10054,'Connection reset by peer')

This occurs when an established connection is shut down for some reason by the remote computer, just ignore it.

1. 'Problem connecting to tracker. HTTP error 503: service unavailable'

Have you tried using torrentspy to check on the tracker's status? Maybe the tracker is down for a rest or something bad happened

1. Piece XXX failed hash check, re-downloading it

Bit Torrent downloaded a wrong packet, so it's re-downloading it, just ignore it.

Related

1. Smiler's Bit Torrent links
2. Slashdot's Bit Torrent overflow site for Slashdot effect victims
3. BitTorrent Search Engine (English / Spanish)

Other BitTorrent FAQs

1. Brian's BT FAQ and Guide - very complete, if primarily Windows-oriented. The most popular FAQ but sometimes down due to bandwidth overload.
2. Theory.org's wiki BitTorrentFAQ
3. Monduna FAQ - More detail, a glossary
4. Sharing the Groove Good, basic overview with Informal Message Board FAQ
5. AyudaBitTorrent - Spanish FAQ
6. Deutsche Bittorrent FAQ - Detailed German FAQ
7. Newbie FAQ - Questions, problems and walk-thrus

More? See: Google Listing

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Hey There. My Question is: I have a Debian Server up running and I connect to it threw ssh. So far so good ;) I installed bittornado and Torrentflux. Bittornado runs on ports 50000-60000. So if I want to download a torrent it can't find any Peers. Any Trackers tell me, that i can't connect, because I'am not visible. The Ports are forwarded correctly. Anybody got a idea?

Post new questions and possible answers here

1. My college recently decided to block all ports on our internet link. As a result only websites can be accessed and the bittorrent client is not working. Is there any way to find out which ports may be open or to overcome this problem in some other way?

Some suggestions:

1. You may wish to use a proxy. One example, Tor, is an anonymous proxy that is probably too slow for file sharing but should allow you to escape your closed network.

Ideally you setup an encrypted proxy so that network administrators do not sniff your connection.

1. There is also Filetopia set to randomize ports but recent iA testing has shown the program to be unwilling to accept new users.

1. Is there a way to find out who is connected to a torrent swarm, before I even load the .torrent file into my BT client?

1. I can't believe this isn't a common question, but it's not answered in any of the BitTorrent FAQ's I've found. "No space left on device" often presages file corruption from which BitTorrent will not resume. No easy fixes for this. I saw this answered on a BitTorrent mailing list (sorry I don't have it anymore, or know what list it was on) that one's only hope in that situation would be to delete all and restart the torrent. This was about a year ago, and I'm not sure that the problem has not been subsequently fixed.

I suspect that in this situation, one's uploads to others are corrupt, but I don't really know.

A suggestion:

In Azureus, right-click on the torrent and select "Force re-check." This has worked for a similar problem I've been having.

I don't have enough insight into this problem to add this to the FAQ myself. If this only occurs in some clients, I can say it does in mine, BitTornado 0.3.7 (BitTorrent/T-0.3.7).--Edgarde 10:23, 27 Dec 2004 (GMT)