Shareaza

Hi there. I've been trying to share files with the world but have had no success

Here's the situation:

For testing purposes I set up machine A to share files. I connected to the P2P network from machine B over a separate internet connection. I'm able to browse machine A's files (network -> browse host) from machine B and can find them using machine B's search window. When I select any file for download it is added to the download queue, but it won't download. The download status keeps switching between "queued" and "no sources available". The status column shows two green check marks and a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark for any file on machine A. Placing the mouse over it a popup window gives an explanation: "sources for this file may be unstable".

Can anyone tell me why I'm able to find but not download files on machine A?

FYI I forwarded port 6346 for TCP and UDP protocols to machine A on my router and got a positive connection test (help -> connection test) (see attachment).

Are you sure your ISP doesn't block uploads?
Did you test at home on the same router?

I don't know what my ISP does - I have very little contact with their incompetent representatives. I am able to connect to my server (separate machine) via HTTP and FTP (ports 80 and 21 respectively) and download files from it. The router in question is at home, as is my HTTP and FTP server. What strikes me is that I'm able to browse and search the Shareaza library but not download from it. Does the latter require a port other than 6346? I'm puzzled.

It can be any port between 5,001-65,535, so pick a number at random and switch to that.

In this case the two computers are in different houses so there's no need to avoid each other.

I think "unstable" means A has not uploaded anything to anyone. That suggests the problem is with the connection or uploads settings of A. Go to advanced settings and look for non-default (*) connection or uploads settings. The problem could also be in the upload queues.

A has indeed not uploaded anything to date. I checked the advanced settings and (only) the following connection and uploads settings were different than their factory counterparts:

Connection.Autoconnect* (False)
Uploads.SharePartials* (False)
Uploads.SharePreviews* (False)

I set these to their defaults (True) without any effect. Machine A still won't upload anything. I haven't seen any file entering the upload queue. It's as though download requests are ignored.

Small correction concerning my first statement about the download status on machine B: The status actually alternates between "searching" and "queued". "no sources available" appears in the client column.

And you also verified there is nothing fishy in the upload queues? Such as there not being a queue for the protocol you have enabled or the queue not having upload slots or there not being enough upload bandwidth allocated for Shareaza to actually accept an upload.

To ailurophobe: I don't think it's a bandwidth issue (see settings pic). I don't know how to check the two other conditions you mention.

To old_death: I haven't tried a complete reinstall yet. Can you tell me which branch of the registry I'll find the SA keys in?

Thanks guys for all your patience. I will probably try a clean reinstall, but before I do there's something which just occurred to me. In the "Port forwarding a home network" section of the FAQ - MOST COMMON PROBLEMS AND QUESTIONS (by Seli) (http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/share ... ?f=3&t=168) I see 5 ports being forwarded. I'm running a D-Link DSL-2540T which only allows one user rule to be defined. I have already used up this rule for my NAS which acts as my HTTP and FTP server. As a consequence I have to use one of the predefined rules of the router to forward port requests to SA, as in the following screenshot:

Thanks guys for all your patience. I will probably try a clean reinstall, but before I do there's something which just occurred to me. In the "Port forwarding a home network" section of the FAQ - MOST COMMON PROBLEMS AND QUESTIONS (by Seli) (http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/share ... ?f=3&t=168) I see 5 ports being forwarded. I'm running a D-Link DSL-2540T which only allows one user rule to be defined. I have already used up this rule for my NAS which acts as my HTTP and FTP server. As a consequence I have to use one of the predefined rules of the router to forward port requests to SA, as in the following screenshot:

As you can see TCP port 1214 and TCP, UDP port 6346 are forwarded to SA using the predefined Gnutella rule. Could this be causing a problem?

Shoot - sorry about the double post - stupidly pressed submit instead of preview.

I should add that only the two ports above are forwarded to SA, not 5 ports as in the example.

Cheers.

Port Forwarding Shareaza on the Dlink DSL-2540T

You can keep adding rules as you need them. You could make 5 for Shareaza because it doesn't care what they are for, only what they do.
Just call them "Shareaza 1" "Shareaza 2" or any names you want, such as "gnutella", "G2", "ed2K", etc.

Thinking that you were restricted to only one forwarding rule was the problem all along.

Shareaza only needs one port and IIRC he already passed the connection test. The other four ports in the example were for other applications. Besides the symptoms don't match a port forward problem.

Ok, this quite obviously has nothing to do with port forwarding, firewalls and the like. After some further testing it became obvious to me that:

SA will show but not share files under UNC pathnames.

I can confirm this because I put a couple of the files in my collection to a local drive on machine A (e:\temp) and I was able to d/l from machine B immediately. In other words, you shouldn't add files to the SA library over My Network Places - these files will show up on the p2p network but will not be downloadable, for some reason I can't explain.

Yes, mapping the network drive works, but it's not an elegant solution for my purposes. Besides, SA should plainly refuse UNC pathnames if it doesn't support them. The way it works now is illogical and confusing. I personally consider it a bug. Le me see if there's a bug reporting page somewhere...

PS I'm running SA 2.5.2.0 32-bit on Windows XP Pro SP3