Shareaza

I've noticed this intermittently under the circumstance that the G2 host cache is empty and Shareaza 2.7.4.0 is told to connect to G2. Often it will "just work" but sometimes it seems to get stuck in a loop where:

1. Every few seconds, it says it is querying a discovery service (in blue in the network tab)

2. At least half the time, it's the same damn one (named "BROADCAST")

3. It doesn't actually connect to any G2 hubs, or even seem to try (no G2 items in the upper pane of the network tab, not even in gray). Instead it seems to query each discovery service, ignore whatever it returned, wait a while, and then repeat, which is obviously not correct behavior.

This looping issue seems to eventually spontaneously resolve itself; after a while it doesn't ignore the discovery service it just queried and starts trying to connect to the hubs it reported instead. I haven't found any way to speed up the process and kick it out of this loop sooner when it gets stuck in it. There's no obvious reason why it should start trying to connect to fresh G2 hubs within seconds sometimes, but spend several minutes spinning some wheels and not doing anything else first other times. Clearly, though, it would be far preferable for it to exhibit the reasonably-quick-connect behavior consistently and the looping-for-a-while-seemingly-doing-nothing-at-first behavior never.

I believe enabling "Debug" Verbose Mode (System tab, under Network) would show more information on what Shareaza is doing during the phase where you mentioned that Shareaza seems to be either doing nothing or lost in a loop. It does generate a LOT of information, so you should return it to "Info" or whatever mode it was previously set up to avoid a deluge of information.

The relevant info may be too much to be included in a post (maybe not, but probably), but a TXT attachment will probably be OK.

Other ideas that might help devs/Shareaza source code enthusiasts with this are highly appreciated.

When you see this happening, what's the status of the Host Cache and Discovery Services (pressing F8 and F9 will show them). Are they fully empty? Do they get a few (if any) hosts loaded on the screen? Do you see status changes on the Discovery Services window? Failures, successes, etc?

I'm trying to make sure Shareaza is actually *stuck* (or paused) as it seems or if it's just doing something that won't clearly appear in the logs we checked.

Just a small question: Do you pass the connection test? (Help menu) Have you tried removing all discovery services and after restarting Shareaza querying all of the services in the list?

Just so we're clear, you're not falling into the foxy network, right? (This would show as Shareaza continuously trying to (and failing to) connect to hosts in China, Taiwan, etc.) That is the only situation I know of that would cause a large number of seemingly valid G2 hosts to fail to connect...

Would you mind providing a screenshot of your Discovery Services list?

both would be nice