For the last three days, I haven't been able to successfully download a torrent. I've tried a couple of dozen torrents, all with no luck. About two thirds of the chunks I have downloaded show up as "failed:" when I check the torrent data.

Versions:

ktorrent 4.0.2-1
libktorrent 1.0.2-1

Linux myhost 2.6.35-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Aug 21 07:23:08 UTC 2010 i686 AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux


The problem is, I've been using this version of ktorrent successfully for a few months. It's been perfect until a few days ago. I haven't upgraded the OS, nor have I upgraded ktorrent in the last few days. It seems to have simply stopped working.

I'm running ArchLinux, for what it's worth. I've got plenty of disk space and CPU. It's all very odd.

I'd appreciate any ideas about how to track down this gremlin.

Send me a torrent which is showing this behavior.

Holy cow, is this frustrating.

I just did a "check data" on a 400MB torrent that had already downloaded, was automatically checked, and deemed successful. The result was tons of "failed:" chunks and it knocked back to 40% complete.

Something is seriously wrong. I'm going to do a disk scan and see if my disk is dieing, or something. This doesn't seem like a KTorrent issue, although KTorrent is the only issue I have on this system right now.

Hmmm.....

I just installed Vuze from the AUR and it has downloaded several torrents cleanly with no errors.

The problem has been solved. Here are the relevant bits.

From George:
> You are doing the data checks the moment KT is hitting the too many
> open files limit, resulting in not being able to open the files to
> check the data, which leads to KT thinking that the chunks have
> failed, even though they aren't failed at all. The data checker does
> not take into account this situation.

The problem was too many open files. Originally, the limit was 1024.

I've adjusted the limit to 4096 by adding a line to /etc/security/limits.conf:

Code: Select all

* - nofile 4096

Logging out and back in has KTorrent working perfectly again.

... but not only that, performing a "check data" on torrents which were nearly complete and subsequently failed back to less complete has found packets that were thought failed but actually OK. In other words, the bad downloads have been repaired and everything is wonderful once again.

I like Vuze. I can see good aspects too it. It's slow and weired compared to KTorrent, though. I'm back on KTorrent 4.0.2.

Thank you very much, George! I'm humbled by the generosity of your help.


Tom