Troubleshooting Seeding Issues

Introduction

Seeding is a crucial part of the torrenting process. This guide will help you understand what seeding is, why it's important, and how to troubleshoot common seeding issues in various torrent clients supported by Pulsed Media: rTorrent, Deluge, and qBittorrent.

Seeding issues can be frustrating, but with the right knowledge and troubleshooting steps, they can be resolved. Remember, the key to successful seeding is patience and understanding the factors that influence it.

Understanding Seeding

Seeding is the process of providing parts of the torrent's content to other users. Once you've downloaded a file via a torrent, your torrent client can start seeding, which means it starts uploading the file to other users. The more seeders a torrent has, the faster the download speed is for everyone.

Common Seeding Issues

There are several reasons why you might be experiencing seeding issues. These can range from settings within your torrent client, to issues with the tracker, to problems with your internet connection.

Check the tracker status: If the tracker is down or experiencing issues, this could affect your ability to seed.
No Demand: If no one is downloading the torrent, it won't seed, no matter what your settings are.
Torrent Health: If there are more seeders than leechers, it might be harder for you to seed.
Peer/Leecher Bandwidth/Speed: If the peer's you are connect to does not have sufficient bandwidth there is no way to force them to accept the data any faster.

Troubleshooting on Your Seedbox

Is the Torrent Client Running?

If your torrent client runs in the background on your seedbox, check if it's active:

Check via the Web UI: Log into your seedbox's web interface (ruTorrent, Deluge WebUI, or qBittorrent WebUI). If the interface loads and shows your torrents, the client is running.
Check via SSH: Connect via SSH and check the process:

       ps aux | grep rtorrent
       ps aux | grep deluged
       ps aux | grep qbittorrent

If the client is not running, see Restarting rTorrent for instructions on restarting it.

Check Network and Firewall

On a Pulsed Media seedbox, firewall and port configuration is handled for you. If you are experiencing connectivity issues, check:

The tracker status in your torrent client — is it reporting errors?
Whether the torrent has any peers/leechers available

Check Disk Space

If your seedbox storage is full, the torrent client may stop seeding. See Checking disk usage and Seedbox Storage Quota for how to check your usage.

Try Super Seeding

Super seeding is a method where you can use multiple seedboxes to distribute data more efficiently. This is different from the traditional approach, rather than offering just consecutive blocks you utilize a swarm of seedboxes to supercharge content delivery. At Pulsed Media, we focus on distributing the maximum amount of data in the least possible time by utilizing seedboxes. This method brings numerous benefits to content publishers and end users. By utilizing BitTorrent seedboxes effectively, large-scale content distribution becomes more efficient and reliable. You can read more about super seeding with seedboxes in our blog post.