Advanced topics

This section describes some of the more advanced features of dc-qt that doesn't fit into any of the other sections. If you don't feel like an advanced user, you can safely ignore these topics.

Connecting to a running instance of DCTC
Troubleshooting

Connecting to a running instance of DCTC

Since DCTC is a separate program which handles all the network connectivity, it is by no means dependent on dc-qt to function. This means that if you manually start DCTC, or start it with another program, you can connect to it later using dc-qt. You might also have started it through dc-qt and then exited without killing it. This can be accomplished by closing the application while still connected to some hub(s), and choosing the "Just quit" option in the exit dialog. dc-qt might also crash since it is still alpha software. In this case none of your transfers are lost, just reconnect and everything should be working again.

To connect to a running instance of DCTC, bring up the connection dialog and choose the "Running" tab. Select the instance of DCTC that you would like to connect to and click connect. It's as easy as that.

IMPORTANT: Running instances of DCTC are found by looking at the files in the directory ~/.dctc/running. Sometimes, DCTC leaves invalid files in this directory, resulting in invalid instnaces being shown in the connection dialog. If you are annoyed by this, you can manually remove the files in this directory after making sure that no instances are running. They really don't harm anyone, they just make it harder to find the instance you would like to connect to.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes things go wrong. More often than we would like actually. In this section I'll try to collect known issues and their solutions. If you come across some bug or other annoyance, please submit it to us.

Unexplainable "Could not connect to hub" message

Sometimes something happens to DCTC which makes it impossible to connect anywhere. We are not sure what the problem is, but it is solvable by removing the entire .dctc directory in your home directory. In general when having trouble with DCTC, the first thing you should try is to remove this directory.

Building of shared database takes too long

When sharing lots of data, the initialization of the shared file database can take too long, resulting in disconnection from the hub. Fear not, dc-qt will automatically reconnect in 30 seconds. That is true for all kinds of disconnections by the way. There is currently no way to change that delay.

Hacking

If you want to do some hacking / debugging on your own, consider rebuilding with ./configure --enable-debug. This will give you a nice debug window and some log files. One log file in the current directory written by dc-qt, and one in the download dir, written by DCTC.