Why does qBittorrent always add trackers that do not work?

[dftf-stu]

I thought I'd post this here in "Discussions", not on the "Issues", as this is likely "by-design" and not a bug, but...
is there any-reason why dead / non-alive trackers get added to torrents?

In Options > BitTorrent > "Automatically append these trackers to new downloads" I have already copied-and-pasted
in a list of trackers I know work.

And yet whenever I go to the "Trackers" tab on any torrent I've added, I notice additional ones have been added, very
few of which are actually in a working-state:

I'm guessing it's one of the "Enable DHT ... to find more peers" or "Enable Peer Exchange (PEX) ..." settings which does this,
but neither of them are explained in the online help here, and the "here" links on that page don't help. The first goes to a Wiki
article where the heading it linked to has since gone; and the second goes to a dead Vuze webpage.

Can anyone explain which option I need to turn-off so it only uses by default list of trackers please?

Thanks

[thalieht]

They are added from the .torrent file / magnet link.

[dftf-stu]

@thalieht: I only-ever use 🧲Magnet links, not .torrent files.

I was aware that .torrent files contain a list of trackers, but I thought magnet-links were just the hash of the torrent to look for, but didn't include any trackers. Is it the case magnet-links to also add trackers? 🤔

[thalieht]

Is it the case magnet-links to also add trackers?

Yes, just look at the link.

[dftf-stu]

@thalieht: hmm, I never knew that for magnet-links. (Guess I've never looked at the URLs much, plus the main site I use for torrents doesn't include these in the URLs; all magnet-links stop after the hash.)

But yes, appears so: this is the magnet-link for elementaryOS, a Linux distro (so is safe to post here -- no copyright issues):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d52eea45cd83f947983192e1ce2ef723ce992fec&dn=elementaryos-8.0-stable.20241122rc.iso&tr=https%3A%2F%2Fashrise.com%3A443%2Fphoenix%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&ws=http%3A%2F%2Fams3.dl.elementary.io%2Fdownload%2FMTczMzkxNjg4OA%3D%3D%2Felementaryos-8.0-stable.20241122rc.iso

I added it into qBittorrent by stripping-away all the bits of the URL after the hash, so leaving just:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d52eea45cd83f947983192e1ce2ef723ce992fec
...and indeed, the only trackers that were listed are the ones I've asked qBittorrent to add to all torrents. 🥳

So thanks for that. 👍🏻

Though... it would still be nice to know what those two options do:

• "Enable DHT (decentralised network) to find more peers"
• "Enable Peer Exchange (PeX) to find more peers"

Are there any links you could offer, now that the ones the official help on here links to no-longer work? (At a guess, I'd assume the bottom one means: when I connect to any-other seed, peer or leech, I will obtain the trackers they have listed for the same torrent? But for DHT I've no idea.)

[thalieht]

Are there any links you could offer, now that the ones the official help on here links to no-longer work? (At a guess, I'd assume the bottom one means: when I connect to any-other seed, peer or leech, I will obtain the trackers they have listed for the same torrent? But for DHT I've no idea.)

Look it up in a search engine... i don't know specifics, but i can tell you this: Neither of them have anything to do with trackers.