mhm, what’s the upload like with no open ports?

Yes, I updated the OP, but it basically has got something to do with Proton’s anti-DDOS that for some reason started applying to me too only a few days ago whereas the other user said it’s been around for much longer; too many connections trigger it and you get booted

For the most part, I’m not fond of its GUI, the rest is because I’ve been using qBit for, I don’t know, maybe ten or twelve years now

That sucks, no surprise you can’t with just 85 max connections. I have bottom-of-the-barrel upload so I don’t really need more at the moment, but if things get worse I’ll consider switching

Damn. I mean, I still almost saturate my upload with just 20 connections, but I only seed one thing at a time. I’d rather seed more stuff, at lower speeds, but if this is it, then this is it. Thanks again, though, qBit works again!

Yeah, I read about the new libtorrent version having slower uploads, but I was already on 5.3.0 BEFORE the issue, so that’s not it

I’ve been on 20 max connections for the past 20-25 minutes and you were right, that seems to have fixed it! They must have done something on the backend because I used to run qBit with 500 max connections up until a few days ago with no issues. I’ll try upping max connections a bit and see where I land on. Thanks! No idea why it didn’t work on the first try

at Brickfrog’s suggestion I crossposted this on the piracy community, and someone did incur in the same issue. Apparently it’s a ProtonVPN DDOS protection, and the fix is lowering the number of max connections, so you’re kind of right, though it’s server-side. I’m now on 20 max global connections and it seems to chug along, for the time being. Now, as to why Transmission worked with 200 max connections, while qBit gets a connection timeout with 150 max, I don’t really know. Though I tried Transmission “as is” without even configuring ports, so that probably lowers the actual number of connections it can establish? I did see lower upload speeds in it, compared to my actual bandwidth and to what I used to see in qBit

That’s not it, they allow P2P and even have a guide on how to bind your P2P client to the VPN interface. Thanks though!

Thanks, I’ll keep them in mind in case I really can’t fix this!

Gotcha, I’ll keep it in mind if I can’t fix Proton! Thanks

I get a “connection timeout”. The VPN client still works, I just need to reconnect manually. I tried both flatpak and native install and the result is the same, unfortunately. Thanks!

Thanks for the info! I did try lowering connections, I went from 500 max to currently 150, and I still get booted. I’ll try lowering even more and see if that makes any difference! edit: I get booted even with 20 max global connections

Mullvad has no port forwarding so I don’t think that’s the best option, in my opinion… thanks anyway

So, journalctl for the VPN shows nothing for Nov 01 around that time (only what I suppose is normal networking, “sending request - receiving response”). I remember that the qBit client froze at some point and I had to xkill it, though I’m not sure it was so long ago, I think it was less than a week ago. Anyway this is the journalctl for that day, around that time: https://pastebin.com/Y9eXqbgL

in a few minutes I’ll add the VPN log matching the Nov 10 qBit SIGTERM edit: here it is: https://pastebin.com/Vj9e0a2C

What I understand from these logs, and also because I noticed it this time, is that once the connection to the VPN server drops, I can NOT reconnect to the same server, not manually nor waiting for the client to do it automatically. I can only connect again to ProtonVPN if I change country

Paid! And everything was working just fine with 500 qBit connections up until a week ago, then suddenly it started giving problems! Thanks for the help though!

Nov 10 was three days ago and that’s more or less when this issue started happening. I’ll check the logs again and see if I remember something. I usually don’t close qBit as soon as I boot the system, routine is boot, launch PVPN, connect, launch qBit and I don’t close it ever.

The Proton log is truncated because it was tens of thousands of lines lol so I had the journalctl print only the last few lines, but, yeah, I can fetch its logs for Nov 10 and Nov 01, I’ll add them asap.

I was just thinking that I did not try to reinstall qBit and maybe I should do that! Thanks again

Yes, virtually all servers allow P2P (there are two or three locations that don’t), and I get the same issue regardless of which one I’m connected to.

Encryption is set to “allow” in qBit and “prefer” in Transmission.

Thanks!

I did try lowering connections (started from 500/200/something/something, went down to 150/20/10/4, this is global max connections/max connections per torrent/max upload slots/max up slots per torrent) but it still kills the VPN.

Transmission was left untouched and it currently has 200 peers overall and 50 peers per torrent.

I disabled DHT, testing it!

Thanks for the help, I’ll also try crossposting there, you never know!

edit: VPN is still killed with no DHT and/or capped down/up

Done! Thanks again for the commands