So I downloaded this Pre-Installed game from a respected torrent site. But whenever I run the game, the bottom 5 files get updated/changed apparently. And this torrent goes to the error section in Qbittorrent. Now I have to delete the exe and other small files from my folder and redownload them again through this torrent else this torrent wouldn't seed.

So I would not be able to seed those bottom 5 files unless I have a completely fresh install of the game ? and that means, I either have to unselect those bottom 5 files from my torrent client or create a copy of the game in another Folder so the exe and other python files don't get updated as I play the game ?

top 16 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz 45 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Correct, you need to keep a pristine copy in your torrent folder and make a copy elsewhere.

[–] ugo@feddit.it 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A copy-on-write (CoW) filesystem like btrfs would be useful here. The “copy” would just be be shallow. The files exist in the new location but their contents are not copied, until a file in the new location is modified. And even then, not the whole contents of the file are duplicated. A “copy” like this would effectively only be a few kilo / mega bytes big rather than gigs

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sure ok. These filesystems are certainly superior in the ways you've described, but unless you were already considering changing to an fs like that, it's probably not an appropriate solution to this simple problem.

[–] ugo@feddit.it 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fair, but it’s something painless do to next time someone might be installing a new system or migrating disks. Until not too long ago I didn’t know about these kind of options, so just knowing is a good first step even without further action

[–] Lucien@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah I agree with you here, your comment definitely has helped me finally make the switch (mentally, at least) to btrfs. I was a slow hold-out on ext4, but my next install I'll go the butter route.

[–] Ghost999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is this similar to hardlinking and insta move cause I use Windows ?

I use a cross-seed program that does something similar, it creates a copy of files without it taking twice the space on the disk.

So should I just create another folder and hardlink the game and lib folder there, and copy the rest of the small files into that folder, so the original torrent directory is undisturbed whenever I open the exe in the newly created folder ?

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 4 points 1 day ago

No. Hardlinks and CoW filesystems are different things.

I don't know much about hardlinks on windows, but hardlinks usually are two different inodes pointing to the same file. This means, for the user, a single file appears duplicated, but without using any extra space. However, both files are really the same one, so if you modify one, the other one also gets modified.

CoW filesystems, on the other hand, are a bit more complex. When you store a file, its contents get first stored, and then a file references them. When you copy the file, a copy of the reference is made, and there is no need to copy the content, because it's already there. If you modify one of the copies, the difference between them gets stored (the modified content), but other parts of the file (or files in a folder) that don't get modified are not duplicated.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 1 day ago

Yeah just copy the files to your games folder and run it from there, leave a copy for the torrent client.

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Other people here have given you the answer—copy the files somewhere else and run from there—but can you motherfuckers just take a moment to appreciate the filename?

Edit: I had to know!

I Am Motherfucker: Everyone has some insecurities that plague them. Our protagonist is troubled by the size of his equipment. Day after day his friends regale him with their stories of their astronomical packages. Their stamina, unmatched. The length, unrivalled. Unfortunately, our self-conscious self-insert really takes all these stories to heart, feeling quite inadequate, until one fateful day when everything changes!

It was simple really, he was overcome by the masculine urge to adjust his modest manhood, when his friend's mom catches him in the act. She pulls him aside to give him a piece of her mind, which lucky for him involves some friction.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/510273-i-am-motherfer/data

[–] arararagi@ani.social 9 points 1 day ago

This is game specific, with this renpy game you will need to make another copy to keep seeding, but Inzoi for example I can play it while seeding no issue.

[–] Commiunism@beehaw.org 8 points 1 day ago

If you're torrenting and got some extra hard drive space, a good practice is to copy paste the game into another location and play for there. That way, you can modify or have the game update all you want without stopping seeding (as you need all original, unmodified files to seed), and you also have a backup in case something goes really wrong.

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The torrent would still seed, just without that 0.5%

Edit: if it's a private tracker they'll get pissed

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think it's still against the etiquette of torrenting as well. If you only download a few episodes from a season pack then partial seeding is fine, but leaving a game unplayable if you're the only seed is wrong in my opinion.

That said, in terms of solutions OP, if you're conscious of disk space:

You could hard link the files that don't change to a new folder, then copy the ones that do change. Don't need to change filesystems like the other person's solution. Soft link will also work but then when you wanna delete the torrent files you'll have to go manually copy the rest over to your install folder.
You could always try "force recheck" in the torrent application once you finish playing. It's likely that whatever changes are happening to those files only occurs while the game is open, potentially even just locking them to read-only, and the torrent application won't really recheck them once that happens without manual intervention.

Edit: tagging so you see this OP: @Ghost999@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[–] Ghost999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You could always try “force recheck” in the torrent application once you finish playing. It’s likely that whatever changes are happening to those files only occurs while the game is open

Yeah I've tried that, it didn't work, I even tried restarting the system before doing a force recheck to make sure they're not open in the background but it still doesn't work.

You could hard link the files that don’t change to a new folder, then copy the ones that do change

I was thinking of doing this too as I mentioned in my other comment, this seems the only option.

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago

If you wanna hard link a directory btw, use cp -lR <src-dir> <dest-dir> to do it. You can't actually hard link the directory itself, only its contents, so this command will create the directory structure and hard link the files within them.

[–] Ghost999@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

It's PornoLab, they're semi private and I've got a solid amount of buffer, but I do wanna seed those small but essential files because I know I'm probably gonna be the only seeder of this after a few years