DimeFAQ:Block on the Mainline Client, versions 4.22.0 through 5.2.0

From DimeWiki

If someone has advised you to read this page, you likely have asked what is going on when you're getting a "torrent aborted while not connected to any peers" error message or, if you looked deeper into it, a "client may not be used on DIME" error message. (One of the problems with Mainline is that it gives you a wordy story that an error existed but doesn't pass along the details of the error unless you look in its log. If you see the actual error message that DIME sends, which says that your client may not be used on DIME, it's a lot clearer.)

If you submitted the question to the mailing list instead of sending it to the moderator desk, we are not distributing it to the list members. This information was announced there the day it took effect and has been discussed thoroughly there already.

As of April 26, 2007, DIME no longer allowed connections using versions 4.22.0 or later of the official BitTorrent client, which is known as Mainline (because "BitTorrent" can also mean the protocol itself). These releases of Mainline hammer a tracker extremely aggressively in violation of Bram Cohen's own specifications when he designed the BitTorrent protocol. Releases in the 5.0.x series also are known to be resource hogs and to have annoying bugs.

That was announced on both of DIME's mailing lists, and the news is still on DIME's front page and on the Main Page of this wiki.

On November 3, 2007, we found that version 6.0.0 was a new coding based on µTorrent and appeared no longer to have the hammering problem, so Erwe limited the block to the range of problematic versions.

If you've been using a version of Mainline from 4.22.0 through 5.2.0, you need to change clients to connect to DIME's torrents. Our recommendations are at this item in our FAQ. You may use

• a different client, other than Mainline
• an earlier release of Mainline (any from 3.4.2 and earlier, or 4.0.1 through 4.20.9, will be OK; 4.0.0 is not blocked but it's buggy),
  or
• a version of Mainline from 6.0.0 onward, after the problem was corrected (note: no such newer versions exist for OS X as of this writing).

This applies equally to all Mainline users on DIME. It is NOT related to

• the length of time you've used DIME;
• your ratio;
• your uploading history;
• your user rank;
• your having or not having donated to DIME nor, if so, how much.

You do NOT need

• to redownload torrent content that you've already downloaded;
• to redownload dot-torrent metafiles that you were saving; nor
• to reupload the torrents that you have posted.

Just pick up again where you were, using your new client.