Settings
There are eight sections, each can be viewed by selecting one of the categories on the left side of the view.
User Interface
Colors
A default dark or light color-scheme can be loaded by pressing the appropriate button. The OS default color scheme is very plain and is intended as a starting point for creating new schemes from scratch. Clicking the 'Adjust Colors' button will open a dialog allowing all colors to be individually adjusted. Buttons to save and load custom schemes to and from .colors files are also provided. The .colors files produced are usable on any installed copy of the software regardless of operating system.
Behavior
The action taken when the main window close button is clicked can be selected here. Additional options are provided to control whether the 'Transfers' or 'Home' view will be visible on program startup. Also an option to activate the main window when a transfer is loaded (usually by clicking a magnet link) is offered.
Output Options
These are miscellaneous options controlling minor display details in the program.
Byte formatting options control how large numbers are formatted within list and tree views throughout the program. A separate formatting option is provided for the display of bytes within charts such as the bandwidth graphs and DHT graphs.
Displayed bytes per second can either be purely file bytes (those which contribute toward the progress of the transfer) or also include protocol bytes (those which control the flow of data and provide information to the remote peer, such as bitfields or PEX peer-exchange messages.)
The connection-flags option is provided for power-users that want to know whether a given peer was connected by a local action or was connected via an incoming connection. Also, an option to include local data in the swarm availability information is given. Some users prefer to have the local data included in order to determine if 100% of the needed file data is available between all peers. With this setting on, an availability under 100% means that the file will not complete with the currently connected peers.
Network
TCP and UDP Ports
The TCP port used for incoming connections and UDP port for incoming DHT packets can be adjusting by clicking on the respective buttons. For more information about selecting a TCP port, click here. For more information about selecting a UDP port for DHT, click here. Also refer to the Tixati Optimizing Guide for more information about receiving incoming connections and UDP messages for DHT.
Proxy Settings
A SOCKS4/4a/5/HTTP proxy server can be used for tracker, peer, or both types of connections. It is not possible to use a proxy for DHT UDP packets, and using a proxy for peers may prevent incoming connections from being received.
Connection Options
Users that have access to IPv6 networking may change the network mode to take advantage of the newer IP system.
Options for peer connection encryption are also offered. The encryption used is the standard BitTorrent message stream encryption, which features a Diffie-Helmann key exchange followed by RC4 stream encryption. This scheme is not 100% secure, but does offer a reasonable level of privacy. It is recommended all users set the default "Encrypted Preferred" and "Accept Either" unless a very slow CPU is used, in which case the user should set "Unencrypted Preferred" and "Accept Either".
The "Maximum concurrent outgoing connection attempts" should be set to 8 for Windows systems, and 100 for Linux systems. Windows has a TCP/IP stack that is purposely crippled as part of a 'security feature', and will not make any more than 10 outgoing connections at a time. Unfortunately, this 'security feature' was implemented very poorly, and when any piece of software exceeds the limit, it can cause excessive amounts of socket handles to be leaked within the TCP/IP stack due to the handles not being properly released from the internal outgoing connection queue when a connection attempt is aborted and a handle is closed by the application. This will cause the TCP/IP stack to become unresponsive until all outgoing attempts have ceased for several minutes to wait for these orphaned handles to make their way through the queue. To prevent these problems, keep this setting at 8 or under.
The "Local IP address" setting is provided for expert users that have multiple internet connections and need to specify a local address to bind all connections to. Most users should leave this setting blank.
Transfers
Download/Upload Slots
These options help control the amount of transfers that are running at a given time. It is important to not run more transfers than your internet connection and/or CPU can handle. Excess downloads will be queued and will start as other downloads complete. Excess seeding transfers will be put into a standby-queue and will activate when other seeding transfers have been stopped (either manually or by hitting a pre-set seeding ratio limit.) Both queues are fully re-orderable by dragging and dropping in the main transfers view.
Auto-Start Options
The first option will automatically start newly loaded transfers, whether loaded by .torrent file, magnet link, or new seed creation. The second option will cause the software to remember which transfers were running when the last session was closed, and will re-start them when the next session has started.
Default Per-Transfer Options
These are the defaults for the per-transfer options that are normally found in the 'Options' tab in the transfer properties. Changes here will apply to all transfers unless they have already been set to non-default options.
Tracker Filtering
If a tracker URL contains any of the strings entered into this text-box, they will not be contacted. Each entry must be on it's own line.
File Management
Default Download Location
This is the location on the local hard-drive where downloaded files will initially be saved. The location of downloaded files for an individual transfer can be changed in the 'Options' tab in the transfer properties.
Move On Completion
If this option is set, the local downloaded files will be moved when a transfer completes and starts seeding. This can be overridden per-transfer by changing a setting in the 'Options' tab in the transfer properties.
Location Shortcuts
The user may choose to use the most recently selected folders for a shortcut list, or a custom list of folders. When using the customized option, the 'Clear' button will be replaced by the 'Customize' button which will open the Customize Location Shortcuts window.
Incomplete Piece Storage
This is where the software will store small fragments of downloaded pieces before they are complete. The data is stored separately because only complete pieces can be hash-checked for integrity, therefore it would be dangerous to save this data into the main downloaded file. This location should have at least 40-50 MB of free space available otherwise data may be lost between sessions.
Misc. File Options
Changing the file allocation strategy to "Pre-write" will help prevent disk fragmentation, but will also cause a delay when new transfers are initializing due to the need to write out the entire file (with zeroed data) to the hard-drive. The "Error on missing downloaded files" option will cause a transfer to stop if it expects local downloaded data files to be present and they are not found. This prevents re-downloading data that may have been moved to a different location between sessions. Also provided is an option to enable fast-moving when a transfer's local downloaded files are moved within the software to a different location on the same hard-drive partition.
DHT
Auto-Start
When a new session is started, this will control whether the DHT engine is also started automatically.
Auto Node-ID Change
For privacy reasons, it is a good idea to change your DHT Node-ID about once per week. These options control the frequency of this change (daily to monthly) and allow the user to manually change the ID at any time.
RSS
Activate RSS Feature
When set to 'On', the RSS button in the main window will appear, allowing the user access to the built-in RSS reader. If this setting is switched to 'Off', all information in the RSS view will be saved, and no RSS activity will occur.
Auto-Start Options
The first option will automatically activate newly created feeds. The second option will cause the software to remember which feeds were active when the last session was closed, and will re-start them when the next session has started.
New Feed Default Processing Options
These will be the default options in the Add RSS Feed window under the 'Feed Processing Options' tab. These options will not affect any existing feeds.
IP Filter
Activate IP Filter Feature
When set to 'On', the IP Filter button in the main window will appear, allowing the user access to the built-in IP Filter manager. If this setting is switched to 'Off', all information in the IP Filter view will be saved, the IP Filter button will disappear, and no IP filtering will occur.
New Filter Default Options
These will be the default options in the Add IP Filter window. These options will not affect any existing feeds.
Scheduler
Activate Scheduler Feature
When set to 'On', the Scheduler button in the main window will appear, allowing access to the scheduler feature. If this setting is switched to 'Off', all information in the Scheduler view will be saved, the Scheduler button will disappear, and no tasks will be executed.
Add Scheduler Options To Context Menus
This option will add a Scheduler sub-menu to the popup menus in the Transfers and/or RSS view. This sub-menu can be used to included or excluded specific Feeds or Transfers from any scheduler task, or create a new task including the selected Feeds or Transfers.
Tasks Missed Between Sessions
If tasks were scheduled to execute when Tixati was not running, this option will control what happens when Tixati restarts. If the 'Run' option is selected, the tasks will be executed in chronological order as if Tixati had been running the whole time. If the 'Prompt' option is selected, the Missed Tasks window will appear upon startup if tasks have been missed.
New Scheduler Task Default Options
These will be the default options in the Add Scheduler Task window. These options will not affect any existing tasks.
Event Logging
Main Log Backscroll Size
This controls the backscroll size of the event-log in the 'Home' view. Setting this to a higher number will allow the user to look further back into the event history, but may consume more RAM and CPU.
Default Transfer Log Detail Level and Backscroll Size
It is recommended that the backscroll size not be increased unless it is understood that this may have an impact on performance and memory usage. Setting the detail level too high may also cause high CPU usage in some situations. Pressing the 'Reset All' button will force all transfers to reset to the default detail/size, even if they had custom levels set. The "Log explicit tracker requests and responses" option will log the exact request and response string used when communicating with trackers.
Default Peer Log Detail Level and Backscroll Size
This is the same as the transfer log settings, except that it is even more important to be careful with detail level and backscroll size due to the fact that there are more peers, and the higher detail levels will log individual messages, which may consume large amounts of CPU time, particularly with high-bandwidth peers.
Default RSS Feed Log Detail Level and Backscroll Size
Because RSS events are somewhat rare and sporadic, setting the detail level higher will not impact performance. However, setting the backscroll size to a very large number will consume more RAM if you have a large number of feeds.
Default Scheduler Task Log Detail Level and Backscroll Size
Scheduler tasks typically don't produce many events in the log, so using the higher detail level will not impact performance, but may make the log more difficult to read if you have a large number of transfers or feeds that are affected by the tasks.
