qBittorrent 4.0.4 "erroneous BT client listening" error

[rednoise]

I had been using qBittorrent version 4.0.3, and it was working well. I upgraded to the latest version 4.0.4 and now one torrent site, dimeadozen.org, shows me with the error "protocol error 4 - no/erroneous BT client listening." Downgrading back to 4.0.3 relieves that symptom, and my connection shows no problem. I've gone back and forth between the two versions a few times and the symptoms are consistent. This is running on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

I've combed qBittorent's settings, and played around with a couple of things like disabling or enabling encryption, but it doesn't seem to matter. I've tried turning off Windows firewall with no change.

Has anyone else seen this? Any ideal what the real problem is? Until I get this resolved I'll have to stick with 4.0.3.

[rednoise]

Nobody has any thoughts about this, eh? I have to check this out more thoroughly, but it appears it may be happening on my Linux machine as well. 4.0.3 worked OK, but 4.0.4 makes me appear on DIME as "firewalled" with "protocol error 4 - no/erroneous BT client listening." I'll need to downgrade to see if that makes a difference.

What could be the difference between 4.0.3 and 4.0.4 that could affect this? I don't see anything in the change log that seems relevant, but maybe I don't know what to look for.

[Switeck]

Check after qBitTorrent starts up, in its logging if it bound to ports correctly and possibly forwarded them using UPnP correctly. (or is UPnP disabled?)

[rednoise]

[quote="Switeck"]
Check after qBitTorrent starts up, in its logging if it bound to ports correctly and possibly forwarded them using UPnP correctly. (or is UPnP disabled?)[/quote]

It's disabled on the Windows machine and I have the port forwarded in the router. I was depending on UPnP on the Linux machine.

I'll enable logging and see if it says anything interesting and I'll report back. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Switeck]

Someone in IRC corrected me on this...

"protocol error 4 - no/erroneous BT client listening." <- The 'tracker' probably has not added 4.0.4 to it's stupid white list

[rednoise]

[quote="Switeck"]
Someone in IRC corrected me on this...

"protocol error 4 - no/erroneous BT client listening." <- The 'tracker' probably has not added 4.0.4 to it's stupid white list
[/quote]

It never occurred to me that this tracker maintained a white or black list, and in all my years using it, nobody has ever mentioned it before. I will definitely ask the administrators.

At this point, I know for sure that on my Windows 7 machine, 4.0.3 works and 4.0.4 doesn't, using the same settings (and using a dedicated forwarded port.) On my Linux machine using UPnP, 4.0.4 does not work, but the previous version I had on there (but I don't remember what it was) did work. I've as yet been unable to find a .deb file for 4.0.3 to downgrade and test. I tried BiglyBT and Transmission, and they both work with no errors on the tracker.

[rednoise]

[quote="Switeck"]
Check after qBitTorrent starts up, in its logging if it bound to ports correctly and possibly forwarded them using UPnP correctly. (or is UPnP disabled?)
[/quote]

Here's some sample logs. First is 4.0.3, which works without error:

Code: Select all

(N) 2018-02-26T17:35:27 - qBittorrent v4.0.3 started
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:27 - qBittorrent is trying to listen on interface 10.0.0.20 port: 11114
(N) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - Peer ID: -qB4030-
(N) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - HTTP User-Agent is 'qBittorrent/4.0.3'
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - DHT support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - Local Peer Discovery support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - PeX support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - Anonymous mode [OFF]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - Encryption support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - Embedded Tracker [OFF]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - GeoIP database loaded. Type: GeoLite2-Country. Build time: Wed Feb 7 14:42:47 2018.
(N) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - Options were saved successfully.
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - qBittorrent is successfully listening on interface 10.0.0.20 port: TCP/11114
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - qBittorrent is successfully listening on interface 10.0.0.20 port: UDP/11114
(I) 2018-02-26T17:35:28 - External IP: (redacted)
(I) 2018-02-26T17:38:13 - UPnP / NAT-PMP support [OFF]

---

And 4.0.4, which produces the titular error message on dimeadozen.org:

Code: Select all

(N) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - qBittorrent v4.0.4 started
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - qBittorrent is trying to listen on interface 10.0.0.20 port: 11114
(N) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - Peer ID: -qB4040-
(N) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - HTTP User-Agent is 'qBittorrent/4.0.4'
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - DHT support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - Local Peer Discovery support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - PeX support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - Anonymous mode [OFF]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - Encryption support [ON]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - Embedded Tracker [OFF]
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - GeoIP database loaded. Type: GeoLite2-Country. Build time: Wed Feb 7 14:42:47 2018.
(N) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - Options were saved successfully.
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - qBittorrent is successfully listening on interface 10.0.0.20 port: TCP/11114
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - qBittorrent is successfully listening on interface 10.0.0.20 port: UDP/11114
(I) 2018-02-26T17:39:43 - External IP: (redacted)
(I) 2018-02-26T17:44:34 - UPnP / NAT-PMP support [OFF]

---

Except for the version info and peer ID, both logs are identical. I guess the logs don't offer us any clues.

[rednoise]

[quote="Switeck"]
Someone in IRC corrected me on this...

"protocol error 4 - no/erroneous BT client listening." <- The 'tracker' probably has not added 4.0.4 to it's stupid white list
[/quote]

The moderators at dimeadozen.org tell me that there is no whitelist. There is a client blacklist, but qBittorrent is not on it.

[puncle]

i recently switched to qBittorrent 4.0.4 due to utorrent getting blacklisted on some of my favorite trackers. i am also having this problem on dimeadozen.org. i know my set-up, connections, ports, etc. are all good because they still work with utorrent (including dimeadozen torrents), so this problem is specifically qBittorrent and/or whatever settings i have checked or unchecked and dimeadozen.org. also, i should note that other trackers are listing me as "connectable", and i appear to be seeding fine.

[rednoise]

[quote="puncle"]
i recently switched to qBittorrent 4.0.4 due to utorrent getting blacklisted on some of my favorite trackers. i am also having this problem on dimeadozen.org. i know my set-up, connections, ports, etc. are all good because they still work with utorrent (including dimeadozen torrents), so this problem is specifically qBittorrent and/or whatever settings i have checked or unchecked and dimeadozen.org. also, i should note that other trackers are listing me as "connectable", and i appear to be seeding fine.
[/quote]

I'm very glad to hear that it's not just me! I've been in contact with the admins at dimeadozen, and they're not interested in looking into the matter, so I guess we're at an impasse. Unless someone here can suggest a fix for this, I'll have to stick to ver. 4.0.3. I'll try out future releases - maybe whatever was changed in 4.0.4 that makes it incompatible with dime will change again to be compatible.

[puncle]

[quote="rednoise"]
I'm very glad to hear that it's not just me! I've been in contact with the admins at dimeadozen, and they're not interested in looking into the matter, so I guess we're at an impasse. Unless someone here can suggest a fix for this, I'll have to stick to ver. 4.0.3. I'll try out future releases - maybe whatever was changed in 4.0.4 that makes it incompatible with dime will change again to be compatible.
[/quote]
it's definitely not just us. when i searched this error i found someone with the same problem on dimeadozen asking about it in 2007 on the taperssection.com forums. so it's obviously been an ongoing issue with them for a while and with other bt clients. it's a shame the dime people don't seem to care though. i've posted on another forum with lots of brains, so i'll report back if i learn anything helpful. i might just start checking and unchecking one box at a time in the options to see if anything fixes it.

[puncle]

not sure if this will be helpful or not, but i found this on DIME's help area:

Unable to Forward Port via UPnP - ERROR Couldn't listen - unable to forward port via UPnP

In BitTorrent, Universal Plug and Play, or UPnP, comes into play when your client tries to use it to control the port forwarding in your router.

If you get that error message, the control attempt is failing.

Possible reasons include these:

    You're not using a router. Turn UPnP off in your client.
    Your router doesn't support UPnP. Turn UPnP off in your client and forward your answering port manually.
    Your router's UPnP implementation is incompatible with that in your client. Turn UPnP off in your client and forward your answering port manually.
    Your router has UPnP turned off. Turn UPnP on in your router, or turn it off in your client and forward your answering port manually.
    Your router's UPnP table needs to be cleared. Clear its table and try again, or turn UPnP off in your client and forward your answering port manually.

i don't know much about this stuff, but perhaps UPnP is the issue here. maybe when switching from one client to another it affected the UPnP table in our routers (whatever that is)? although that wouldn't explain why other sites aren't having a problem with us. i don't know... i'm just trying to figure it out with what little knowledge i have in this area (which isn't much other than using bit torrent since it came out).

[rednoise]

[quote="puncle"]
it's definitely not just us. when i searched this error i found someone with the same problem on dimeadozen asking about it in 2007 on the taperssection.com forums. so it's obviously been an ongoing issue with them for a while and with other bt clients. it's a shame the dime people don't seem to care though. i've posted on another forum with lots of brains, so i'll report back if i learn anything helpful. i might just start checking and unchecking one box at a time in the options to see if anything fixes it.
[/quote]

This error message has been an ongoing problem on dime for many people using recent versions of uTorrent. The odd thing is that I continued to update uTorrent until maybe a year or so ago, and I had no problems (other than uTorrent's ads, which I managed to turn off). Many other people got the "erroneous BT client" and similar errors, but not me. Dime's advice has always been to downgrade uTorrent to 2.1.1. Recently there have been reports of security issues with uTorrent and other clients, but it now appears that uTorrent 2 series is immune, it only affects later versions. So, their advice is reasonable, I guess. qBittorrent is immune as far as I know.

I've combed through qBittorent's settings, except for the Advanced ones. Maybe the key is to be found there.

[phantomengineer]

I must confess to not being technically very adept with this stuff but have use dime since 2009, and started using qBittorent about four or five months ago. I was having no problems at all uploading torrents I had downloaded until I upgraded to v4.0.4, but now seem to be virtually unable to do so.
This is not an issue of trying to upload old torrents, but new ones I have just downloaded, which in the most cases many are still apparently trying to grab. It's now that largely they can't do so from me!
I'm conscious that it mat be an issue with Dime, from looking at this thread, but nevertheless for some reason v4.0.4 is a factor.
Is the suggestion that, if I can find it, that I just revert to the earlier version of qBittorent?

[rednoise]

[quote="phantomengineer"]
I must confess to not being technically very adept with this stuff but have use dime since 2009, and started using qBittorent about four or five months ago. I was having no problems at all uploading torrents I had downloaded until I upgraded to v4.0.4, but now seem to be virtually unable to do so.
This is not an issue of trying to upload old torrents, but new ones I have just downloaded, which in the most cases many are still apparently trying to grab. It's now that largely they can't do so from me!
I'm conscious that it mat be an issue with Dime, from looking at this thread, but nevertheless for some reason v4.0.4 is a factor.
Is the suggestion that, if I can find it, that I just revert to the earlier version of qBittorent?
[/quote]

If you go to the announcement page on Dime for the torrent in question, do you see the same error I reference above, "protocol error 4 - no/erroneous BT client listening"? If so, yes, downgrading to ver. 4.0.3 should get you back in the saddle.

I'm sorry you're having trouble, but I'm glad to know there are at least 3 of us in the world with this issue. There's solace
in numbers, and maybe we'll be taken more seriously and someone can fix it or at least identify the real underlying problem.

Old versions can be found at:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/qbittorrent/files/qbittorrent-win32/