Hi all,
This is part 2 of the utorrent tutorial. Here we'll discuss the some of the settings as well as some tips & tricks to get the most of utorrent.
Preferences can be seen by either using the CTRL+P combo or going through the Options > Preferences. Once the preferences window is loaded one can see that it's divided in 8 options & 2 sub-options so will go there one by one.
The pic. above shows the general preferences. Most of them are self-explanatory. The display options are what makes things much more readable/usable.
This is where things start becoming interesting. The downloads window gives plenty of options. First up, choose different places to place uncomplete & complete downloads. This makes trouble-shooting & stuff easier to do afterwards. All the other ones are also interesting but the most interesting is pre-allocation of files. What this does is when one starts with a .torrent it calculates the size of the completed file on the hdd & allocates space for it. So there isn't an issue of not having enough space. If there isn't enough space it would say it before downloading even a single bit.
[break=utorrent settings 2]
The connection window, this is where things such as the port forwarded is given. Depending on routers which can do Upnp port mapping one can use it. The other interesting thing is the upload & download bandwidth which one can set manually if one wants to.
This is the bittorent window, now here the interesting ones are no. of connections, which in Indian should be around 100 although I keep around 175. It does make slight difference, your milage may vary. The other is no. of connected peers for each torrent. This is kept at 10 as my bandwidth is not so much. The more peers the better it is provided one has the bandwidth to share & receive from all. Now AFA Enabling DHT for network, new torrents & peer exchange are concerned, I've disabled them as they don't serve the purpose with private trackers. The deal with private trackers is they want the .torrent file should be downloadable only to people in their community which in some sense goes again the grain of sharing but also induces the quality of sharing as one has to share to maintain ratios. This insecurity is what makes bittorrent cool, although this was not it was designed for. Similary Protocol Encryption has been kept forced.
[utorrent settings=3]
This is queuing part nothing much to report here or I don't know
Again, a scheduler, now this seems to be a work in progress as
one can limit bandwidth but at some point other things might also happen.
[break=utorrent settings 4]
This is another interesting one which tells where one wants to store the .torrent files when one is downloading as well as when it's completed. This is cool as one has the .torrent files just in case something does go wrong.
This last window has some of the more advanced options. As I've used ipfilters hence ipfilter=true Now most of these are switches which can be toggled as true or false. Each user toggle which is not in the default is denoted by a * at the end. Some of the notables here are :-
bt.enable.tracker true = This enables private trackers
bt.scrape. stopped true = Don't remember at the moment
bt.connect.speed 25 = speed in KB if have more than can go up. Preferably 90 % of total download speed.
bt.prior_firstpiece_lastpiece = This makes sure tht one gets the 1st & the last peices so end-game scenarios can be more positive.
Tips :-
1. Now for ipfilters the best one I've found is the bluetack site. Go to bluetack & download either the normal ipfilter or the paranoid filter. The paranoid one blocks more domains than the normal ones. Download it either with a download manager or with FF also. Extract the nipfilter.dat or pipfilter.dat by using 7-zip manager or some other good archive manager. Rename the nipfilter or pipfilter.dat to ipfilter.dat . Then go to C:\Documents & Settings\username\Application Data\utorrent & paste the ipfilter there. This should be done when utorrent is not running prefereably.
2. The same folder utorrent in app.data can be copied & pasted somewhere else just in case something goes wrong. It won't have the files but would 've settings as well as your passkeys so be careful.
3. Some private tracker sites like demonoid require a visit to the site after which the download starts. This is to enable the passkey alongwith the IP which utorrent broadcasts to the tracker. A visit to the site confirms the IP, passkey & the username . This is required only at the starting of the download & not after tht although many sites are trying to get past this.
4. Lastly, there may be times when one is downloading a .torrent file & due to some reason or the other the .torrent file is deleted (accidently or otherwise) , in such cases don't panic, the half or more than half file is already there. One just has to download the .torrent file & give the path to where the half or completely downloaded file is. The .torrent file checks the hash & checks the progress of the file & however much is done it states. There may be some notional loss like 100 Kb-1 MB but tht's o.k.
[break=invites]
The last thing is invites. We do have an ongoing thread on invites here . Now for getting an invite one needs to give a valid e-mail. I find gmail as well as yahoomail to be most responsive while hotmail is not so much in such matters.
The other thing that one does have to maintain is the ratios. Now low ratios doesn't mean trouble just for yourself but also the person who invited you. Also if somebody does give an invite, it would take anything from a week to a month for one to be eligible to give an invite. Some torrent sites are generous or forgivable with how the ratios are maintained while some are not. There are many different sites having different rules about them, so it makes sense to atleast know what each one is giving.
Tip :- Sometimes you download a torrent you'll see tht the dl arrow is red in color instead of blue. This generally denotes tht there is some issue with the tracker. In such cases, go to the General tab below as descibed in Part 1 of the tutorial . Once there move down to the Tracker & see what the tracker status says. Some of the common things you'll find are :-
1. Tracker (offline) timed out :- This is a general error. There are times when the tracker and/or the site may be taken down for maintenance. AFAIK the tracker is nothing but a database so it needs to be optimised often to give good performance. This necessarily doesn't mean that your download/upload is stuck. If you had been downloading or uploading then the peers with which you had handshaken before will work. It's only new peers might 've issues connecting with you.
2. No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it :- This one is rare but can happen when there are many seeders (something like 500 or 1000) & no seeders so the torrent is active & healthy. It can also be sometimes when you haven't registered to the site but even then it's rare to say the least.
3. Unrecognized pass key :- This one is quite common. This happens when you're trying to download a torrent which needs a passkey. In such a case register to the site, get the passkey & download the .torrent file. When it opens in utorrent, it'll say tht the the torrent file is already there, do u want to load the trackers with it? Say yes & load the trackers. Then right click on the .torrent file & in General tab delete the before tracker. To differentiate the one with the passkey & the one without the passkey is pretty simple. The one which has about 10-12 or more alphanumeric nos. after announce is the one with the passkey. The only one to date which doesn't show the passkey is demonoid which hides the passkey somewhere.
Lastly, most of the sites revoke accounts if not used for more than a month. So that's it, Enjoy torrenting
This is part 2 of the utorrent tutorial. Here we'll discuss the some of the settings as well as some tips & tricks to get the most of utorrent.
Preferences can be seen by either using the CTRL+P combo or going through the Options > Preferences. Once the preferences window is loaded one can see that it's divided in 8 options & 2 sub-options so will go there one by one.
The pic. above shows the general preferences. Most of them are self-explanatory. The display options are what makes things much more readable/usable.
This is where things start becoming interesting. The downloads window gives plenty of options. First up, choose different places to place uncomplete & complete downloads. This makes trouble-shooting & stuff easier to do afterwards. All the other ones are also interesting but the most interesting is pre-allocation of files. What this does is when one starts with a .torrent it calculates the size of the completed file on the hdd & allocates space for it. So there isn't an issue of not having enough space. If there isn't enough space it would say it before downloading even a single bit.
[break=utorrent settings 2]
The connection window, this is where things such as the port forwarded is given. Depending on routers which can do Upnp port mapping one can use it. The other interesting thing is the upload & download bandwidth which one can set manually if one wants to.
This is the bittorent window, now here the interesting ones are no. of connections, which in Indian should be around 100 although I keep around 175. It does make slight difference, your milage may vary. The other is no. of connected peers for each torrent. This is kept at 10 as my bandwidth is not so much. The more peers the better it is provided one has the bandwidth to share & receive from all. Now AFA Enabling DHT for network, new torrents & peer exchange are concerned, I've disabled them as they don't serve the purpose with private trackers. The deal with private trackers is they want the .torrent file should be downloadable only to people in their community which in some sense goes again the grain of sharing but also induces the quality of sharing as one has to share to maintain ratios. This insecurity is what makes bittorrent cool, although this was not it was designed for. Similary Protocol Encryption has been kept forced.
[utorrent settings=3]
This is queuing part nothing much to report here or I don't know
Again, a scheduler, now this seems to be a work in progress as
one can limit bandwidth but at some point other things might also happen.
[break=utorrent settings 4]
This is another interesting one which tells where one wants to store the .torrent files when one is downloading as well as when it's completed. This is cool as one has the .torrent files just in case something does go wrong.
This last window has some of the more advanced options. As I've used ipfilters hence ipfilter=true Now most of these are switches which can be toggled as true or false. Each user toggle which is not in the default is denoted by a * at the end. Some of the notables here are :-
bt.enable.tracker true = This enables private trackers
bt.scrape. stopped true = Don't remember at the moment
bt.connect.speed 25 = speed in KB if have more than can go up. Preferably 90 % of total download speed.
bt.prior_firstpiece_lastpiece = This makes sure tht one gets the 1st & the last peices so end-game scenarios can be more positive.
Tips :-
1. Now for ipfilters the best one I've found is the bluetack site. Go to bluetack & download either the normal ipfilter or the paranoid filter. The paranoid one blocks more domains than the normal ones. Download it either with a download manager or with FF also. Extract the nipfilter.dat or pipfilter.dat by using 7-zip manager or some other good archive manager. Rename the nipfilter or pipfilter.dat to ipfilter.dat . Then go to C:\Documents & Settings\username\Application Data\utorrent & paste the ipfilter there. This should be done when utorrent is not running prefereably.
2. The same folder utorrent in app.data can be copied & pasted somewhere else just in case something goes wrong. It won't have the files but would 've settings as well as your passkeys so be careful.
3. Some private tracker sites like demonoid require a visit to the site after which the download starts. This is to enable the passkey alongwith the IP which utorrent broadcasts to the tracker. A visit to the site confirms the IP, passkey & the username . This is required only at the starting of the download & not after tht although many sites are trying to get past this.
4. Lastly, there may be times when one is downloading a .torrent file & due to some reason or the other the .torrent file is deleted (accidently or otherwise) , in such cases don't panic, the half or more than half file is already there. One just has to download the .torrent file & give the path to where the half or completely downloaded file is. The .torrent file checks the hash & checks the progress of the file & however much is done it states. There may be some notional loss like 100 Kb-1 MB but tht's o.k.
[break=invites]
The last thing is invites. We do have an ongoing thread on invites here . Now for getting an invite one needs to give a valid e-mail. I find gmail as well as yahoomail to be most responsive while hotmail is not so much in such matters.
The other thing that one does have to maintain is the ratios. Now low ratios doesn't mean trouble just for yourself but also the person who invited you. Also if somebody does give an invite, it would take anything from a week to a month for one to be eligible to give an invite. Some torrent sites are generous or forgivable with how the ratios are maintained while some are not. There are many different sites having different rules about them, so it makes sense to atleast know what each one is giving.
Tip :- Sometimes you download a torrent you'll see tht the dl arrow is red in color instead of blue. This generally denotes tht there is some issue with the tracker. In such cases, go to the General tab below as descibed in Part 1 of the tutorial . Once there move down to the Tracker & see what the tracker status says. Some of the common things you'll find are :-
1. Tracker (offline) timed out :- This is a general error. There are times when the tracker and/or the site may be taken down for maintenance. AFAIK the tracker is nothing but a database so it needs to be optimised often to give good performance. This necessarily doesn't mean that your download/upload is stuck. If you had been downloading or uploading then the peers with which you had handshaken before will work. It's only new peers might 've issues connecting with you.
2. No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it :- This one is rare but can happen when there are many seeders (something like 500 or 1000) & no seeders so the torrent is active & healthy. It can also be sometimes when you haven't registered to the site but even then it's rare to say the least.
3. Unrecognized pass key :- This one is quite common. This happens when you're trying to download a torrent which needs a passkey. In such a case register to the site, get the passkey & download the .torrent file. When it opens in utorrent, it'll say tht the the torrent file is already there, do u want to load the trackers with it? Say yes & load the trackers. Then right click on the .torrent file & in General tab delete the before tracker. To differentiate the one with the passkey & the one without the passkey is pretty simple. The one which has about 10-12 or more alphanumeric nos. after announce is the one with the passkey. The only one to date which doesn't show the passkey is demonoid which hides the passkey somewhere.
Lastly, most of the sites revoke accounts if not used for more than a month. So that's it, Enjoy torrenting
