Bug In Vers 2.11? - Cannot Select Files In A Torrent

[randam]

OS: Mac OS X 10.6.4
Transmission version: 2.11 (the latest)

Steps to recreate:
1. Go to Preferences, Transfers, Adding.
2. Check the box against "Display a window when opening torrent file".
3. Go to File, Open Torrent File....and open a torrent file that contains a few files inside.
4. A window appears, you uncheck all files except one file (e.g. the avi file). You just want to download that avi file.

When the download completes, all files are downloaded - when supposedly only the avi file should be. This can be a hassle e.g. if a torrent contains a lot of books and you only want to download one of them.

Anyone encountered the same problem? Any workaround? Thank you.

[Rolcol]

How big are the rest of the files that you unchecked? If they're small, they will fit inside the pieces that have the content that you want. It's a side-effect of the protocol. Ticket #532 will make it better by consolidating all the unwanted blocks in a single file without needing to create the files you didn't want.

In short: EVERYTHING IS NORMAL.

[randam]

The unwanted files have sizes that vary....from a few KB (*.txt) to a few tens of MB (the sample *.avi files). I would have thought that the latter type of files, being bigger in size, will not reside in the same block as the desired file.

I'm not too sure if it's due to the protocol, because when I used utorrent on Windows previously, I could prevent *any* file (big or small) from being downloaded. I recently switched to Mac and decided to use Transmission (utorrent for some reason is very slow on my Mac), which seem to exhibit this different behavior than what I observed previously on utorrent (Windows). The downside of downloading unwanted files is that the whole download process takes longer than is necessary.

[randam]

Can someone confirm if it's indeed normal that I cannot choose the files to download under a torrent, using Transmission? (given that if I use uTorrent on the same torrent, I can)

[Rolcol]

Even if only 1 byte of those unwanted files is included in the pieces of the files you do want, the entire file will be created (but only that extra 1 byte will be downloaded). What uTorrent does is place all the extra unwanted downloaded data into one single special file. I don't know if they're hidden or openly visible but uTorrent still downloads the data like Transmission does. It's just more sophisticated as to how it handles it. It'll reach Transmission in the future, though.

[randam]

@Rolcol Thanks for the clarification. So in summary, is it true to say that it's still advisable for me to continue to de-select those files that I don't want, as less of the undesired bytes would be downloaded? And the probable outcome is that I won't be able to open those undesired files even if the filenames appear in Finder?

[Rolcol]

@Rolcol Thanks for the clarification. So in summary, is it true to say that it's still advisable for me to continue to de-select those files that I don't want, as less of the undesired bytes would be downloaded?

Yep.

And the probable outcome is that I won't be able to open those undesired files even if the filenames appear in Finder?

Unless they're small enough to have been completely downloaded, then no.