Azureus downloads stuck at 90+%

January 7, 2007 9:13 PM

Why are my Azureus downloads stuck at 90+%?

All my downloads are getting stuck at 90+%. For instance, I'm trying to download some TV shows, and every episode gets stuck at 99.4%, 94.5%, 96.3%, etc...

There are plenty of seeds for these shows since they're brand new episodes.

Any ideas?

posted by atmu to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Double click on the torrent in Azureus. Under the "General" tab, is the number to the right of the bar showing availability greater than 1?
posted by cosmic osmo at 9:20 PM on January 7, 2007

No, they're all less than 1. The number is the same as the percentage, but as a decimal. So 93.7% would be .937 availability.

Does this mean no one has seeds for the last parts of these episodes?
posted by atmu at 9:35 PM on January 7, 2007

Yes. That's exactly what it means.
posted by cosmic osmo at 9:43 PM on January 7, 2007

To be more clear: your downloads are stuck at 93.7% (or whatever) because only 93.7% of the file is available for download. To get all of the pieces, you'll need to wait until someone with the complete file starts seeding it. (Alternately, you can try to watch the episode at incompletion. I find sometimes that there will be one or two parts that have glitches--the missing parts--but depending on how complete the files are, they can be pretty watchable.)
posted by cosmic osmo at 9:58 PM on January 7, 2007

Maybe I'm confused, but I thought if there was at least one seed, then the entire file was available. Just grabbing an FAQ at random:

"Seed : A seed is a peer that has a complete copy of the torrent and still offers it for upload."

And atmu says there are lots of seeds.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 10:09 PM on January 7, 2007

What does the availability number tell you?
posted by cosmic osmo at 10:17 PM on January 7, 2007

@AmbroseChapel

There could be a million seeds, and none would matter if they weren't connected to you, which seems to be what's going on. The availability measures how much of the file is available through those connected to you, which is why it's always 1.0 once you start seeding (there's no reason for a seed to connect to a seed).
posted by awesomebrad at 10:18 PM on January 7, 2007

I have found that time seems to cure many of these problems, though usually when I am downloading something with few seeds. Just leaving the computer running trying to get the last bits for a couple of days seems to do it most times.
posted by tomble at 11:37 PM on January 7, 2007

If this happens to you regularly, you probably need a new source for torrents. What do you currently use?
posted by concrete at 11:39 PM on January 7, 2007

Is it Azureus showing lots of seeds, or the search site / tracker you're using? Tracker stats can be days out of date.

If there really are lots of seeds, try turning encryption on. Particularly in the last couple of weeks, I've noticed a lot of seeds are requiring encrypted connections. Downloading <unnamed show> last week, turning encryption on made the number of seeds I was connecting to jump from a couple to over 100.

Possibly related: is the number of hash fails growing? I've noticed a number of broken / poisoned torrents lately with huge numbers of seeds. I suspect some entities are not happy with the popularity of this particular method of file transfer, and are fighting dirty again.
posted by Pinback at 12:30 AM on January 8, 2007

I've noticed a number of broken / poisoned torrents lately with huge numbers of seeds. I suspect some entities are not happy with the popularity of this particular method of file transfer, and are fighting dirty again.

If you (like the OP) are running Azureus, the SafePeer plugin helps with this problem quite a bit.
posted by toxic at 1:43 AM on January 8, 2007

Also, a 99.4% done movie film is totally watchable. Get VLC and drop the movie file onto it and view yourself crazy. Just to note, not having a complete file means that a) the video and sound will stop during the undownloaded bits (and then restart again after the missing section has been passed) and b) you probably won't be able to skip from section to section of the movie.

It's pretty comfortable to watch a film that is only 90% done, but you wouldn't want to drop much below 85%.
posted by pollystark at 3:45 AM on January 8, 2007

You might also want to make sure that you are connectable. That is, that you've allowed incoming connections on whatever port your torrent client is listening on. This requires firewall mojo.

Without this, you can only initiate connections to others, but no one else in the torrent can initiate a connection with you.
posted by utsutsu at 7:18 AM on January 8, 2007

They may be 'poisoned' torrents, possibly set up by one of the **AAs (or copyright holder) and reporting falsified inflated seed/peer tracker information to trick people into downloading their bogus version instead of a real one. Those often crap out at 97-99% completed.
posted by SenshiNeko at 11:05 AM on January 8, 2007