EDIT: I removed the screen-shot for now since it contained my passkey, and I have since found a workaround for my problem.

I took a full-screen screen-shot to show the problem. After I leave utorrent on for a while, some torrents I'm seeding start to just stall at "updating" with the tracker. This causes my client to incorrectly report that the tracker is offline, when most torrents I'm seeding continue to see the tracker online and update fine. I can re-start utorrent to fix the problem, but it will just come back after a few hours.

Am I seeding too many torrents? I just took a quick count and I'm seeding about 80 torrents to this tracker. Also, is it likely a tracker or client bug? Any input would be appreciated.

Off-line trackers can have different reasons.

The tracker itself might have a small glitch or is off-line, this does not have to be the website itself as far as I know.

Basically it is trying to connect to a server that collects a lot of data. If the server is slow for some reason (like when creating full back up), off-line or your connection is a bit slow it will not be able to collect the whole data and then you get a message that the tracker is off-line. What also might be a reason is that too many connections at the same time happen and then it takes too long as well. Your message in those cases will show off-line.

Most of the time this is not a problem because your client will send the data after a short time again and again so no data gets lost at all.

I would just suggest to do nothing but wait till it shows green and maybe (don't do this too often) right click and use the option Update tracker.

I have no knowledge of any bugs considering the newer versions because I just use 1.8.4 which seems to work fine for me.

Hope this answered your question.

No matter how long I wait, it will say the tracker is "updating", and "offline (timed out)", until i restart utorrent. Even if I leave the client open and running for weeks, and use the right click "Update Tracker" option. Right-click>"Update Tracker" does not change what the client displays in any way, probably since it is already hanging at "updating".
I've tried both waiting and forcing an update of the tracker, neither works. Only restarting utorrent does. And that only works for a short time before the problem re-occurs.

Hello mate,

Could it be that when you are using all your upload bandwidth it makes it hard for the client to find bw to update the torrents when you have lots of them running at the same time? What cpu and how much ram do you have?
I see the screenshot is 2.0.2 and that client works really well as far as I noticed. Have you made any changes in the settings that might cause this?

Anyone else having this problem?

First off, system specs:
Mobo: Asus P5K3 Deluxe
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @3.0GHz
RAM: 6GB Corsair DDR3@1066MHz(3x2gb sticks) - I had to underclock due to the phantom "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" stability problem, the memory is rated at 1600MHz. Every since I underclocked my memory from the default synchronous 1333FSB to 1066 I have not had that error.
GPU(not like it matters): EVGA GeForce 8800GT Superclockd edition
OS: Windows 7 x64 Pro Retail Box

There are many times I am not using all my upload bandwidth, and the problem does not correct itself, nor can I correct it with a forced right-click tracker update. As you can see I have it throttled below what my maximum upload rate actually is, which is around 256k. I have it throttled down to 200k, which is recommended to throttle your max upload rate below what it could be. That doesn't seem likely either.

As for changing advanced options, I've been tweaking them ever so slightly to see if i can squeeze out more consistent performance from the client, but never over-doing anything when I really don't know exactly how the advanced options work.

Some things I almost always have changed are:
bt.prio_first_last_piece *true (helps when wanting to preview files before they are complete, but is more of a peer-to-peer option, doubt it would affect connection to tracker)
bt.tcp_rate_control *false - I see no reason to hinder the bandwidth of peers that don't use uTP, which if I'm reading the description of this setting, that's basically what it does - throttles TCP connections based on uTP.
Other than that just gui.update_rate set to 500, so I can see my client's numbers updating faster. Since its just a GUI tweak, there should be no performance problems caused.

I just figured out a work-around to this issue. Right-click on the line under the "Trackers" tab that says the tracker is "updating"(but hanging, and not actually updating). If you look at my screen-shot it will also incorrectly report on this line that the tracker is "offline (timed out)".

Solution: after right-clicking on that line, select "Add Tracker". A dialogue box will open with the tracker's URL and your personal passkey. Hit Ctrl-C to copy that line, then click "OK" or "Cancel". Then right click on the same line and click "Remove Tracker". Then right-click in the blank space under the "Tracker" tab, and click "Add Tracker" again.

This time the dialogue box will be blank since you just removed the tracker. Then paste the copied tracker with your individual key into the now blank dialogue box. After clicking ok, the tracker will start to update properly again.

I doubt this will stop the problem from re-occurring, but it removes the annoying necessity to re-start utorrent.

So for now my problem is solved, although not truly, but via a workaround.

Glad you found a way to solve it even if it should not be like this hehe.

Yeah its defenitely not your computer or bandwidth thats the problem. For some strange reason I get the feeling your utorrent client has a bug, but hey, I use the same so it sounds weird too.

For some reason your client simply do not update the tracker when it should. Then if that depends on your OS, your connection or the client itself is hard to say.

Glad you could solve it by readding the tracker.

If anyone else has or have had this problem please tell us.