d1:failure reason74:Connection limit exceeded! You should only seed/upload 10 shows at a time.e

[rojer]

After months of wondering why I would get "Tracker: [Could not parse bencoded data]" messages from my rtorrent client, I went to the rtorrent mailing list, and, having enabled the tracker_dump option, I learned that I've been getting the error message of the title.

I only get these when I try to reopen a closed torrent. I can open a new torrent just fine, indeed, I often have quite a few running over my rather fat pipe. I wonder, is this a good restriction? The context is almost always when I am trying to help out a stranded leecher! Perhaps this limit could be reviewed, or maybe a moderator could explain why I should restrict myself to 10 seeds. I don't seem to have any problem running many more that. Of course rtorrent is an extraordinary client! ;-)

[rojer]

According to the rtorrent guys, the tracker is broken (invalid error message):

>On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 10:00:56PM +0200, Josef Drexler wrote:
>>You can enable the tracker_dump option to record what it actually
>>sends, and maybe that will provide a clue why it is misbehaving.
>
>Ha! My bad:
>
> d1:failure reason74:Connection limit exceeded! You should only
>seed/upload 10 shows at a time.e
>
>Funny that I can have lots more than 10 seeds going as long as I never
>close them. Perhaps in that sense the tracker IS broken!


No, the tracker is broken because that is an INVALID bencode message.
It should be:

d14:failure reason74:Connection limit exceeded! You should only seed/
upload 10 shows at a time.e

Looks like someone can't count. You should file a bug report with the
tracker owners.

[paddington]

We don't allow seeding over 10 torrents at once. I don't think the tracker is broken. If you have some 10Mb upload or something, maybe Lynne can grant you an individual exception, but since most people are doing 2Mb or less upload, 10 is a good number for efficiency, in most cases.

[rojer]

We don't allow seeding over 10 torrents at once. I don't think the tracker is broken. If you have some 10Mb upload or something, maybe Lynne can grant you an individual exception, but since most people are doing 2Mb or less upload, 10 is a good number for efficiency, in most cases.

The broken part is the error message, should start with d14 not d1, according to the rtorrent guru.

Regarding uploading, what is strange is that I can easily be seeding 20 or more torrents as long as I started as a leecher and don't close them! It's only if I try to reopen an already complete download that I've closed that I get denied -- typically to try to help out a stranded leecher. So it's sort of inconsistent, and I was very confused until the rtorrent guys sorted me out.

I find that when I host many torrents (and I do have a fat pipe, 5Mb uplink) they don't share the bandwidth evenly, one or a few will be very active for a while, then some others will pick up. I suspect I would be uploading less with less torrents open since those lulls would be empty. I haven't observed any particular problems seeding 20 or more torrents with rtorrent but maybe it's a bad practice.

Many thanks for running a great site!

[U2Lynne]

The broken part is the error message, should start with d14 not d1, according to the rtorrent guru.
It's just a standard error message. I'd have to look at the actual code that spits out the error, but I would not worry about it - it still tells you exactly what the error is.
Regarding uploading, what is strange is that I can easily be seeding 20 or more torrents as long as I started as a leecher and don't close them! It's only if I try to reopen an already complete download that I've closed that I get denied -- typically to try to help out a stranded leecher. So it's sort of inconsistent, and I was very confused until the rtorrent guys sorted me out.

I find that when I host many torrents (and I do have a fat pipe, 5Mb uplink) they don't share the bandwidth evenly, one or a few will be very active for a while, then some others will pick up. I suspect I would be uploading less with less torrents open since those lulls would be empty. I haven't observed any particular problems seeding 20 or more torrents with rtorrent but maybe it's a bad practice.

Many thanks for running a great site!
The problem is that if you have 20 torrents open and you have a 5 Mb uplink, then you average only about .25Mb per torrent - which is about 40 B/s per torrent. That is an OK number (some users still only seed at that with one torrent open). However, it is usually best to pick the torrents that most need your seed and just seed those - they will finish faster and then be able to seed for others and then you can pick others to seed.

And yes, you would only notice this in affect when you go to start a torrent after you had it off. That is when it goes to 'count' how many torrents you are already seeding and then spits out that error if you are over the 10 max limit.

[dcbullet]

We used to have a lot of problems with users having, no kidding, 75 torrents open with each one trickling 2-3 b/s.

10 is sufficient.

[rojer]

It's just a standard error message. I'd have to look at the actual code that spits out the error, but I would not worry about it - it still tells you exactly what the error is.

Well, actually, what I saw was: Tracker: [Could not parse bencoded data

I had to post on the rtorrent mailing list and enable a debugging flag to actually see the subject error; perhaps a bit more of a hurdle than it should be. If the error message was correctly encoded, I think my client would have displayed it, reducing my confusion. Maybe not, though, not a big deal. I wonder if others have been similarly confused however.

The problem is that if you have 20 torrents open and you have a 5 Mb uplink, then you average only about .25Mb per torrent - which is about 40 B/s per torrent. That is an OK number (some users still only seed at that with one torrent open). However, it is usually best to pick the torrents that most need your seed and just seed those - they will finish faster and then be able to seed for others and then you can pick others to seed.

What I observe is not lots of small streams but a small number of large streams which change over time, how would I know in advance which ones need seeding? Would I need to keep opening and closing torrents to track them? Even a fanatic like myself can only spare so much time monitoring TTD!

And yes, you would only notice this in affect when you go to start a torrent after you had it off. That is when it goes to 'count' how many torrents you are already seeding and then spits out that error if you are over the 10 max limit.

That's the part that threw me; the inability to reopen old torrents. Just seemed weird that I could be opening new torrents to leech but not old ones to seed. But now I understand it, thanks for the explanation, plus I learned something useful about my client. Still, having been running dozens of simultaneous torrents (mostly seeding) for weeks, my client seems very threadbare with only ten! But it doesn't seem to be having any problem saturating my 250KB threshold at the moment either.

Thanks again!

[U2Lynne]

Well, actually, what I saw was: Tracker: [Could not parse bencoded data
Ah, OK. Well, unfortunately I am on vacation right now and unable to spend the time looking at the code. It will have to save until I get back and have the time.

What I observe is not lots of small streams but a small number of large streams which change over time, how would I know in advance which ones need seeding? Would I need to keep opening and closing torrents to track them? Even a fanatic like myself can only spare so much time monitoring TTD.
I am unfamiliar with rtorrent (isn't it a linux client?), but doesn't it have a screen with a list of all your torrents (opened and unopened) and then a column for Seeders and a column for Peers for each of those torrents? Azureus and uTorrent have that sort of screen and it helps so you can just take a glance and see which torrents have leechers but no seeders. You can even click on the column title to sort the torrents by number of seeders/leechers/other stuff.

[rojer]

I am unfamiliar with rtorrent (isn't it a linux client?), but doesn't it have a screen with a list of all your torrents (opened and unopened) and then a column for Seeders and a column for Peers for each of those torrents? Azureus and uTorrent have that sort of screen and it helps so you can just take a glance and see which torrents have leechers but no seeders. You can even click on the column title to sort the torrents by number of seeders/leechers/other stuff.

Yes it's a linux client, old-school ncurses display, here's a to the project (http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no). Actually it doesn't show seeders and leechers explicitly, just active connections in a subscreen. Indeed I miss that from my old client, bittornado. So I use my TTD profile page to see what's hot and what's not.

I can live happily with the limit on seeds, it was just a curious bit of dysfunction that I finally got around to trying to resolve via the rtorrent mailing list and these forums. I can probably keep my uplink saturated just doing what I've been doing. I just can't generally open an old download to help a stranded leecher without closing a bunch of stuff, so I will try to modify my behaviour to keep my seeds around ten.

Thanks again for all your hard work, and please enjoy your vacation!