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[Gweilo]

Sometimes when uploading a torrent there is a glitch where the torrent link says:
"File does not exist. Please try the magnet link."

And the magnet link DOES work.
But you can can also
Recreate the .torrent file from the magnet or infohash.

e.g.: https://audiobookbay.lu/audio-books/auxem-terramates-book-13-lisa-lace/

As above, torrent link broken.
But magnet link loads and away we go, plenty of seeds.

(N.B.: clicking on a magnet link on a webpage should send it to your torrent client. If it doesn't, copy the link. Then, in uTorrent, "File/Add torrent from URL" and paste it in. uTorrent will load the torrent and start searching for peers.)


I wondered how uTorrent was doing this, and found that it had created a .torrent file :
Look in its Preferences/Directories and see "Store .torrents in" folder. Which you can change if you want.

Open that folder, (which will have copies of every torrent you have downloaded, so it can have a lot of files). Sort by date and the newest one is the one uTorrent created from the infohash.
(All the data in the torrent file it gets from seeds once it connects, so if the torrent is dead this will not work.)

This is a perfectly good .torrent file.
Test it: open in uTorrent and it will tell you that you already have it. Or stop the magnet torrent, delete it and now load the new file: it will connect to the same peers and get the same torrent, look at its info and see it has the same hash.

You can modify the .torrent file  (for instance, add or remove trackers, add a date and comments) -- these can be done without changing the infohash. Other changes WILL change the infohash, making it a different torrent, incompatible with the original.
Use a torrent editor: This is free and works well: https://sourceforge.net/projects/torrent-file-editor/

Now you have a good .torrent file. You can share it by uploading to a torrent cache site.
I'm now using http://itorrents.org/
Just upload the .torrent file and it will give you a link you can share:
http://itorrents.org/torrent/310FC79260F2AA8E5AA8D7A3332FC7516DB26E94.torrent
 
This is the link for the above torrent, just named with the infohash.
(Check at every stage that the infohash is still the same -- I just look at the last 3 numbers to quickly confirm.)

You can add this alternate link in the torrent description if it's your torrent or a comment otherwise.

HOW TO MAKE A MAGNET FROM THE INFOHASH
Related: if the magnet link doesn't work either, or you cannot login to access it, you can make one if you can see the infohash, just add that to magnet:?xt=urn:btih
and you have a valid magnet link for that torrent.:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:310FC79260F2AA8E5AA8D7A3332FC7516DB26E94

However, if both torrent and magnet links are broken, it's unlikely there are any seeds; unless the uploader is still seeding. But sometimes you find incomplete info about a torrent on another site and this lets you at least try to find seeds.

Note that magnet links only work for non-private torrents, i.e. with DHT active. Changing that changes the infohash, so it becomes a different, incompatible, torrent. So this technique will not work for private torrents.

[kassyopeia]

(I think it must get data from seeds once it connects, so if the torrent is dead this may not work; will test this later.)

That's so, no need to test. uTorrent "creates" the .torrent file only in the same sense it creates the contents of the torrent proper, which is to say, it downloads it using the BitTorrent file transfer protocol. The only difference is that it needs nothing more than the hash to download the .torrent, whereas it needs the info (thus "info"-hash) in the .torrent to download the payload.

Alternate methods, off the top of my head:

- http://magnet2torrent.me/
(This too will only work if the torrent is still healthy.)

- https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=310FC79260F2AA8E5AA8D7A3332FC7516DB26E94 and/or
https://torrentz2.eu/310FC79260F2AA8E5AA8D7A3332FC7516DB26E94 , and look through each of the listed torrent sites for one which includes a "download .torrent" link.
(This will work independently of torrent health, but is clearly not guaranteed to work at all.)

- http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://audiobookbay.lu/audio-books/auxem-terramates-book-13-lisa-lace/ , accessing the Internet Archive for the torrent page. If the .torrent file was accessible initially and then "lost" in the meantime somehow, this may yield results. In a sense, it's the most powerful of these methods, but there are a lot of ways in which it can fail, too. If the file was never accessible, it won't help. If the page was never archived, it won't work in the first place. The archives are domain-specific, so if the .torrent file became unavailable before the site went to the current ".la" TLD, it may still work, but will take more effort. And so on.

You can add this alternate link in the torrent description if it's your torrent [...]

Or, you can create a fresh torrent page: Open the "edit" page for the old version with the broken link in one pane, the "upload" page for a new version in another pane, copy the contents of each field of the form across from the old to the new, add the .torrent file to the new, submit the new, test whether the new has a working link, delete the old.

---
ps: Gweilo, the contents of this post are yours to do with as you like, and let me know if you want me to expand on anything I touched on.

[Gweilo]

Alternate methods, off the top of my head:
- http://magnet2torrent.me/
(This too will only work if the torrent is still healthy.)

That looks like it does the same as uTorrent does: finds a seed and completes the torrent from their info.
Also doesn't seem to work with a simple magnet link like
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:bcb73cee1b223685c4dbb3f343b65721c07390fd
which does work in uTorrent.

- https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=310FC79260F2AA8E5AA8D7A3332FC7516DB26E94 and/or
https://torrentz2.eu/310FC79260F2AA8E5AA8D7A3332FC7516DB26E94 , and look through each of the listed torrent sites for one which includes a "download .torrent" link.
(This will work independently of torrent health, but is clearly not guaranteed to work at all.)

Yeah, just Googling for the infohash may work if it's on old torrent also on other sites.
Not for a new one or one that is only on ABB.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://audiobookbay.lu/audio-books/auxem-terramates-book-13-lisa-lace/ , accessing the Internet Archive for the torrent page. If the .torrent file was accessible initially and then "lost" in the meantime somehow, this may yield results. In a sense, it's the most powerful of these methods, but there are a lot of ways in which it can fail, too. If the file was never accessible, it won't help. If the page was never archived, it won't work in the first place. The archives are domain-specific, so if the .torrent file became unavailable before the site went to the current ".la" TLD, it may still work, but will take more effort. And so on.

Whatever is causing these ""File does not exist" errors on ABB, it happened when the page was created. All archived versions are the same. Anyway, you can't download the torrent file from any archived version, as you have to be logged in to do that, and you can't log in via an archive.

But I have used archived pages to find deleted torrents, by reading off the infohash and making a magnet from that.

You can add this alternate link in the torrent description if it's your torrent [...]

Or, you can create a fresh torrent page: Open the "edit" page for the old version with the broken link in one pane, the "upload" page for a new version in another pane, copy the contents of each field of the form across from the old to the new, add the .torrent file to the new, submit the new, test whether the new has a working link, delete the old.

Preferably, if the upload fucks up you should just try again and delete the bad one.

The alternate link is for uploaders who don't want to do that, as when ABB is not working properly (as happens when it's in DDOS). They  can  just up their torrent file (obviously they don't have to rebuild it) to itorrent and put that link in the description.

But adding it in the comments is something anyone can do at any time, whether the uploader is around or not.
Main reason to do that is all the idiots who don't know what a magnet link is, refuse to try it and keep complaining the torrent is "broken" and demanding a re-up. They probably won't work out how to click on the alternate link either though.


I don't advocate just re-upping someone else's torrent if it's recent, but if it's very old and crippled like this, and the original uploader has departed long ago, AND there are still seeds, it's justifiable. I've done it a (very) few times. Of course, copying torrents from other sites is fine, as long as they aren't set "private". Those should be recreated and new torrents made.

[kassyopeia]

That looks like it does the same as uTorrent does: finds a seed and completes the torrent from their info.
Also doesn't seem to work with a simple magnet link like
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:bcb73cee1b223685c4dbb3f343b65721c07390fd
which does work in uTorrent.

Yeah, definitely. That's the only reason I can think of for why it takes so long (and noticeably less long for very-well-seeded torrents). I hadn't noticed it balks at "naked" magnets, good catch. Presumably, that means that it only uses traditional trackers, and not DHT, which is a definite downside.

[Gweilo]

Presumably, that means that it only uses traditional trackers, and not DHT, which is a definite downside.

I guess because trackers are usually faster than DHT. Just a single query. Less work for them, and it's free so you can't complain when it fails.
Of course, many old torrents have no live trackers. There has been a great die off of trackers in the last 2 or so years.

More reliable to DIY, especially for old torrents.