When I launch, bittorrent asks for a meta file

Bug #70423 reported by Joachim Noreiko
6
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
bittorrent (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I launch BitTorrent from the menu, and I get an Open dialog with the title 'Open location for bit torrent meta file'.

I don't know what that means or what a bit torrent meta file is.

Revision history for this message
ville palo (vi64pa) wrote :

bittorrent meta file is .torrent file like http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/releases.ubuntu.com/6.06/ubuntu-6.06.1-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
You need it to download the wanted file.

This is not a bug. I'll reject this.

Changed in bittorrent:
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
Revision history for this message
Joachim Noreiko (jnoreiko) wrote :

The common name for this file is a "torrent file". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_Torrent for example.
So it should say "torrent file", not "meta file".
This is a UI text problem.

Also, what if I want to open Bit Torrent to continue ongoing downloads, or just to consult the manual?
This is a conceptual UI problem. Most apps do not launch with an Open Dialog. It's confusing.

Please reconsider your rejection of this.

Revision history for this message
Joachim Noreiko (jnoreiko) wrote :

Right. I've launched BitTorrent from a torrent file, and then stopped it. I now want to resume it. I can't -- I get asked where I put the torrent file and I have no idea where.

Reopening the torrent file from Nautilus produces a mystery dialog box 'File may already exist' which doesn't tell me it's from Bit Torrent and is confusing

The UI of this app is quite flawed, basically, and would need an overhaul.

In the meantime, please reopen for the simple text change, which would be a good start.

Revision history for this message
ville palo (vi64pa) wrote :

Changed status to confirmed, this "meta file" could be changed

Changed in bittorrent:
status: Rejected → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
NitroX (plata-92) wrote :

Exactly for what is? Is a kind of plugin or something else??? it supose the file is for dowload the wanted file, but, how I can use BitTorrent for download wanted files?

Revision history for this message
dhlii (dhlii) wrote :

This is a major pain.
The Windows version of Bittorrent knows everything it needs to resume a torrent.
Isn't there some way to painlessly get similar behavior ?

If I have two different instances of bittorrent both asking for a meta-file, even presuming I know what they want is a .torrent file,
how do I know which .torrent they are looking for ?
What if I have 10 .torrents in a directory, but only 3 represent active downloads,
What happens if I pick the wrong one ?

If I am downloading something that took 3 days so far and something interrupts the process, I really do nto want to have to start over

Revision history for this message
Cameron Dale (camrdale) wrote :

Unfortunately this version of bittorrent is quite old now, and doesn't have the functionality of other clients, or of the current windows version. This is due to a license change for the bittorrent code which keeps the debian/ubuntu version at 3, while the windows versions are 5 or 6 now.

The functionality you're looking for (managing multiple torrrents, even over a restart) exists in the newer versions only. If you need this functionality, I suggest you install a more current bittorrent client that supports it (there are many, azureus and deluge-torrent both do).

I don't recommend this, but if you REALLY want to use the mainline bittorrent client, you can find .deb packages of the latest version on their website: http://download.bittorrent.com/dl/

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