shittorrents

May 26, 2006 10:09 PM

Some of my bittorrents are stuck at 99.X%

I have three bittorrents which are stuck. One is at 91.75% - and I think the seeder is dead... so I'm not so concerned about that one. The other two are stuck at 99.74% and 99.98%. I've read that a few different factors can cause torrents to behave this way including changed files, ratios, etc.

I've asked the seeders to reseed with no luck. Is there anything I can do with these torrents other than delete them? (Together they make up over six gigabytes and have been downloading for weeks... months even...)

My client is Shareaza.

posted by wfrgms to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Usually there's nothing you can do. That's just the nature of bittorrent. I run into crap like that all the time, and until a seeder comes back online, you're pretty much screwed.

I ran into stuff like that with no less than 5 different BT clients.
posted by drstein at 10:13 PM on May 26, 2006

Have you tried playing the files? I've had mp3 and avi torrents that have crapped out around 99% that were still usable.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:14 PM on May 26, 2006

You could also try doing a hash check, or restarting the torrents. I've had torrents that report 99.x%, then I do a hask check and they are actually 100%

I use ABC, btw.
posted by utsutsu at 10:34 PM on May 26, 2006

I believe (but cannot confirm) that this is a tactic used by the MP/RIAA to discourage filesharing. Basically what's happenning is that the initial seeder posted something to get a bunch of people to jump on the torrent, then seeds it until the last couple of bytes or so, then disconnects. The remaining people are essentially just downloading and sharing those 99.9% of the file with each other, so even though it looks like there are (say) 500 people on a torrent, the actual total number of copies is less than one.

Some torrent programs (Azureus, uTorrent) support the "number of copies" feature, and I highly encourage you use it. That way you can quickly see if you're just wasting your time or not.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:59 PM on May 26, 2006

Oh yeah, and what utsutsu said. :)
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:00 PM on May 26, 2006

The newest version of VLC has a feature that can repair/salvage incomplete torrents. It at least made the file playable.
posted by nenequesadilla at 11:26 PM on May 26, 2006

I'm not saying Civil_Disobedient isn't correct as he/she may have heard a different story then me, but I heard that they created torrents that gave an false number of seeders and leechers that made the torrent look more desirable.

The strategy of stopping to seed a torrent at 99.9 percent would not work as different peers have been downloading different portions of the file. Therefore even if a seed disconnects a torrent may still work with only peers.

I could have sworn someone having the same problem as you and finding out it had something to do with there router/firewall, but I don't remember what, sorry.
posted by meta87 at 11:45 PM on May 26, 2006

In Azureus, just right-clicking and choosing "Force Re-check" does the trick for me.
posted by squidlarkin at 1:37 AM on May 27, 2006

I'm not saying Civil_Disobedient isn't correct

Oh, it's OK. I'd suggest after reading the above responses that not only am I incorrect, but I'm also paranoid. :)

would not work as different peers have been downloading different portions of the file

Not if the initial seeder is super-seeding. But regardless, if the file is already an AVI/MPG, you can always view what you've got and see if it's real or not. If it's a RAR/ZIP, there are some recovery tools that attempt to reconstruct the original based on what you've got... to varying degrees of success. Worth a try, at least.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:48 AM on May 27, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for all the suggestions everyone! I found a util that will patch together torrents. Works like a charm.
posted by wfrgms at 10:06 AM on May 27, 2006

Use a client that support dht (distributed host tracking) so that if the seed dies there's a resonable chance that you can continue to pull the missing pieces from peers.
posted by iamabot at 2:31 PM on May 27, 2006

Because the torrent code is open source, anyone can make a client that is intentionally broken. If the software is programmed to NEVER send out a certain amount of pieces, the file will never complete because the initial seeder never sent out the needed pieces. This IS a well-known way of screwing with our heads.... I recommend invite-only or moderated torrent communities. (demonoid.com and bitsoup.com have both been good to me.... mininova, torrentreactor, piratebay have all had bogus torrents)

(if you get a file where patching rars doesn't work:)
If what you're looking for was released by a release group (i.e. they have a nfo and everything), it's quite possible that you'll be able to find the offending file on a newsgroup. If you know anyone that has an easynews.com subscription, they'd be able to get you the file in an instant.
posted by hatsix at 4:16 PM on May 27, 2006