retracker.local in community iso torrent files causes problems on client side

[Aleksandra Fedorova]

Torrent files provided at https://fuel-jenkins.mirantis.com/view/ISO/ contain private announce url, which affects certain bittorrent clients.

Quote from Daniele Pizzolli (from https://review.openstack.org/#/c/114628/5/docs/devops.rst comments)
---
The provided file uses a private announce url (http://retracker.local:80/announce) that cause the original bittorent client to fail with a hardly informative message: ERROR: Problem connecting to tracker - <urlopen error [Errno -2] Name or service not known>
---

[Igor Shishkin (teran)]

That's not critical error and shouldn't cause any problems on downloading.
Could you please clarify how exactly this error affects downloading.
What clients affected?

[Daniele Pizzolli (daniele-pizzolli)]

Hello,

the following shell transcript show that the /original/ bittorent
client show an hardly informative message with fuel iso torrents.

I added few newlines and comments to separate the sections.

# Machine identification
vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-precise-64:~$ uname -a
Linux vagrant-ubuntu-precise-64 3.13.0-34-generic #60~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Aug 13 15:55:33 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

# install bittorent
vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-precise-64:~$ sudo apt-get install bittorrent
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  python-bittorrent
Suggested packages:
  bittorrent-gui
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  bittorrent python-bittorrent
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 95.2 kB of archives.
After this operation, 473 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe python-bittorrent all 3.4.2-11.3ubuntu2 [48.0 kB]
Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe bittorrent all 3.4.2-11.3ubuntu2 [47.2 kB]
Fetched 95.2 kB in 0s (391 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package python-bittorrent.
(Reading database ... 120640 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking python-bittorrent (from .../python-bittorrent_3.4.2-11.3ubuntu2_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package bittorrent.
Unpacking bittorrent (from .../bittorrent_3.4.2-11.3ubuntu2_all.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up python-bittorrent (3.4.2-11.3ubuntu2) ...
Setting up bittorrent (3.4.2-11.3ubuntu2) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btcompletedir.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btcompletedir (btcompletedir) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btdownloadcurses.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btdownloadcurses (btdownloadcurses) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btdownloadheadless.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btdownloadheadless (btdownloadheadless) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btlaunchmany.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btlaunchmany (btlaunchmany) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btlaunchmanycurses.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btlaunchmanycurses (btlaunchmanycurses) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btmakemetafile.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btmakemetafile (btmakemetafile) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btreannounce.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btreannounce (btreannounce) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btrename.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btrename (btrename) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/btshowmetainfo.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/btshowmetainfo (btshowmetainfo) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/bttrack.bittorrent to provide /usr/bin/bttrack (bttrack) in auto mode.

# get the fuel iso torrent file
vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-precise-64:~$ wget -q http://seed.fuel-infra.org/fuelweb-iso/fuel-community-5.1-11-2014-08-28_05-19-34.iso.torrent

# launch the bittorent client and look at the error
vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-preci...

[Dmitry Pyzhov (dpyzhov)]

I've reopened the bug, because there is new information

[Igor Shishkin (teran)]

Hello, Daniele.

Let me explain how our community builds seeds first.
We are using web seeding technology which allows us to share files via HTTP protocol and do not use torrent clients on server side.
Unfortunately not all clients support this feature. And currently those clients are unsupported.
Pretty good list of torrent clients with feature list available on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients

Now about your question.
I just checked out the code of btdownloadheadless and it's related library Bittorent.download comes from Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS repo. It looks like this torrent client doesn't support webseeds. The same result I've got when generated torrent file of the same ISO you tried to download without retracker.local but still with web seeds.
Please choose another torrent client with web seeding support on wiki page above.

Also I want to note that we will warn our community users about web seeding feature in our torrents.
This will help to avoid such kind of problems in future.

Thanks!

[Daniele Pizzolli (daniele-pizzolli)]

Thanks Igor,

> Also I want to note that we will warn our community users about web
> seeding feature in our torrents.

Nice, my orginal review note was about more documentation with some
suggestions. Your explanation deserve to be added to the doc.

Best!