gettrackers

Purpose

Fetches, filters, and structures public torrent tracker lists, grouping them into priority tiers optimized for use in qBittorrent and other compatible clients.

such as ngosang's trackerslist

Usage

> gettrackers --help
gettrackers is a CLI tool that downloads tracker URLs from configurable sources, filters them using a blocklist, and outputs them grouped by domain.

Usage:
  gettrackers [flags]
  gettrackers [command]

Available Commands:
  block       Add a pattern to the blocklist
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  config      Manage configuration
  fetch       Force download/update the cached sources file
  groups      Output grouped tracker URLs (default command)
  help        Help about any command
  show        Show cached sources or blocklist

Flags:
  -h, --help                 help for gettrackers
  -o, --output string        Write output to file instead of stdout
  -p, --start-priority int   Output N blank lines before tracker groups (default: 0)

Use "gettrackers [command] --help" for more information about a command.

note the source download file is cached for 24h.

Backstory

found myself reviving a bunch of very old torrents, most of which no longer had working trackers listed in them. Some trackers were rejecting the client contacting too quickly, and realized this was because sometimes the all lists have http, https, and udp variants of the same tracker

so this program groups those into the same tier

Tracker Tiering (Based on libtorrent)

in th underlying libtorrent library, which powers qBittorrent. Trackers are organized into priority tiers

Tracker Tiers Redundancy and Announcement Logic

libtorrent use of tracker tiers are controlled by two settings.

announce_to_all_trackers controls how multi tracker torrents are treated. If this is set to true, all trackers in the same tier are announced to in parallel. If all trackers in tier 0 fails, all trackers in tier 1 are announced as well. If it's set to false, the behavior is as defined by the multi tracker specification.

announce_to_all_tiers also controls how multi tracker torrents are treated. When this is set to true, one tracker from each tier is announced to. This is the uTorrent behavior. To be compliant with the Multi-tracker specification, set it to false.

this tool groups trackers with the same hostname, into the same priority tier, with the assumption that qBittorrent's default configuration is announce_to_all_trackers false, and announce_to_all_tiers true.

so udp:// http:// https:// or different port numbers, with the same hostname all get grouped into the same tier.

Defining Tiers in Tracker Lists

When a multi-line list of trackers is added to a torrent, qBittorrent interprets the structure as follows:

• Same Tier (Group): All consecutive trackers (each on a new line) areassigned to the same priority tier.

• Next Tier (Priority Fallback): A single empty line separates the current group, assigning the subsequent block of trackers to the next priority level (e.g., Tier 0, then Tier 1, etc.).