Torrent stalled at 99.9% for over 10 days

weirdthall

I am trying to complete this torrent, but it's been stuck at 99.9% for over 2 weeks now. The torrent has been fully snatched before and there is currently 1 seeder but it's just not completing for some reason.

I am port forwarded so am fully visible to the swarm and I understand that there isn't anything really I can do about the last 0.1% (only affects two files) but I was wondering if I should report it as a potential dead torrent or just quit the torrent and go cry in a a corner somewhere

Shepard69

@weirdthall
Hi, first, you clicked on the Request Re-Seed button, right? If so or if not, try it (again). It is a fairly new torrent, only a few months old with 449 downloads. I'm sure that if the Request Re-Seed button is pressed (maybe once or twice over the next few days), someone out there will restart their torrent for you.

Second, have you tried viewing / playing the pictures / videos that you have downloaded, to see if they all work? Since you made it to 99.9%, all or almost all of them should work.

ianfontinell

I believe there is something deeply wrong with that torrent file, we are seeing too many unlikely scenarios happening together:

1 A recent torrent that was fully snatched by only 10 users.
2 Torrent file downloaded by more than 400 users, only 10 snatched.
3 The torrent has 20x more leechers than seeders for several days, meaning the missing pieces are never shared successfully.

It could mean those pieces are being requested but the shared data is seen as garbage by the leechers" clients, the amount of downloaded data can be used to verify this.

It would be helpful to know what all the 10 snatches have in common, what client they used. I don't know if this is an information that mods have access to after such a long time, maybe @mrmazda will know, or have a better diagnosis of the situation.

weirdthall

@Shepard69 Yep, twice. Made no difference as no-one joined the seeding pool.

weirdthall

@ianfontinell Yeah I saw that as well but I am not as well versed as you in torrents and their idiosyncracies so didn't want to spout potential nonsense lols. Thanks for affirming what little I did manage to glean as correct.

ianfontinell

@weirdthall here is what I found out:

The torrent file was created using BitComet 2.09
Selecting ONLY the 481 video files using BitComet, I get this size: 228,915,165,409 (213.194 GiB)
Selecting the same 481 files on qBittorrent I get this size: 228,928,200,299 (213.206 GiB)

Veredict: other clients are trying to download bytes that only exist in the metadata created by BitComet, since those bytes aren't a real part of the torrent content, it will never finish downloading because nobody has them, even if the person seeding uses BitComet to seed they don't have those bytes to share in their content folder.

Only BitComet is able to read and understand this metadata, because of this, the only client that can download 100% is BitComet itself.

in theory what this means is that you have already finished downloading the files but it is impossible to seed them using qbittorrent or other clients. if your client appends a temporary extension to the unfinished files, you can safely remove that extension as all files are in fact finished downloading.

For @joker :

bitcomet:

qbittorrent:

torrent creator:

i did not find padding data using my usual program (torrent file editor) and therefore i don't really understand why each client reads the same dictionary differently. if it was up to me i would forbid torrents created with this client from being uploaded to avoid future problems.

weirdthall

@ianfontinell As usual, you provide the best info. You were spot on...removing the !qb extension 'fixed' the files due to client padding and they 'seem' to be functioning like any other video file. Going to do a torrent recheck on my client and see if that fools it into thinking it's complete although doubtful due to size disparities created by BitComet.

Again many thanks for the assist.