Soulseek temporary ban frequency

[HVR88]

When slskd gets hammered with too many fallback searches, and I get banned, my average search performance goes down the tubes.

server: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/5, 9:57 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/5, 11:01 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/6, 4:37 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/7, 2:02 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/7, 3:04 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/8, 1:50 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/8, 6:51 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/8, 9:50 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/9, 7:18 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/9, 3:58 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/9, 5:32 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/10, 4:48 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/10, 9:30 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/10, 11:12 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/10, 11:54 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/11, 1:03 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/11, 9:04 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/11, 10:18 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/11, 10:48 PMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.
1/12, 3:04 AMserver: System Message: You have been banned for 30 minutes. This is usually the result of doing too many operations at once. Do not flood chat rooms or private chat with many messages. Do not repeat the same text several times in a row. Do not quickly repeat a search. Do not connect and disconnect quickly. Do not connect many clients at once from the same IP. This list is by no mean exhaustive. You will be able to reconnect to the service in 30 minutes. NOTE: This is an automatic message, dont try to answer it.

[TypNull]

What do you use to hammer slskd with so many searches?
Did you try to slow down your searches a bit?

[HVR88]

Even if I search for 1 release, it's the fallbacks that seem to be hitting slskd with so many searches. I have automatic searching as disabled as I can, then use Huntarr to kick off searches every few minutes. This banning behaviour can happen if I do 1 each every minute or 4 searches every 10 minutes.

These are all for the same search I believe.

The 0 results are because by the time these searches kicked off, I was already in a ban state.

[TypNull]

I can add a feature to stop searches when you're banned, but I won't be adding any delays to individual searches.

I'm also considering implementing sequential searches in Lidarr so that priority actually functions as a true priority system. However, that's feature not directly related to slskd.

The issue is that you've enabled nearly every fallback option, which triggers a large number of searches on slskd. If Soulseek supported OR operators, I could consolidate everything into a single search query, but that's not possible with the current protocol. If you can test search methods that generally real in better searches. That would also help

My expected workflow would be:

1. Initially search using proprietary services to build your library
2. Use slskd normal search to fill any gaps
3. For items still not found, perform more granular searches on slskd
4. If that fails, download normally in slskd and use inclusive search to import into Lidarr

What specific implementation would you expect to prevent this issue? I can a add functionality to stop searches when a ban occurs.

[HVR88]

I'd expect that when you turn on those fallbacks, they're staggered to not make the server think it's being spammed. The issue is that "fallback" implies if one thing doesn't work, then go to the next - not try all these things at once. So it doesn't seem to support the common definition of fallback.

If you don't want to stagger that's fine, but the UI should probably use some term other than fallback and make it clear this is going to generate a lot of concurrent searches. I'd recommend making the searches staggered so as not to break slskd however. There shouldn't ever be options to easily turn on that are going to cause regular failures.

I also realize this is a severe weakness in slskd, that it doesn't throttle and allows the server to be spammed. Even within its own UI it's easy to trigger a ban and there are no settings/options to mitigate it.

[HVR88]

Likewise, the first and last options I have checked here:

I don't expect any more searches to be generated because I have them checked. I expect only for the functionality described to be applied, not for the opposite to also be applied.

With the various artists, I'd put the word "also" in there to make it super clear it's going to double the search.

If you decide to stagger these, then I'd also add a note to the UI to mention that turning all of them on is going to create a larger and therefore slower search.

[TypNull]

Slskd searches do not include a “fallback” term. Instead, there are two types of fallback searches: a standard fallback and a tertiary fallback that uses track names. These are fallback searches. The other options are variations of the main search.

You control how much Slskd searches by setting a minimum and maximum result threshold. Once the minimum is met, the search stops it won’t continue looking for more. Keep in mind that Slskd searches are already slow and run sequentially, not in parallel.
The search order is defined in SlskdRequestGenerator under CreateSearchChain. The primary search always runs first. Additional searches are triggered based on what you enabled. As a last resort, fallback searches initiate broader queries to find any remaining results.

In my setup, I use the fallback option with a minimum of 100 results for Lidarr to process. Each checkbox you enable adds another search, except for fallback searches, which are actually a group of searches. You can specify exactly how many minimum results you want, so in my case, the song fallback rarely triggers because most artists aren’t blocked.

[HVR88]

From a high level perspective, just by looking at the UI of all the apps involved, it's really difficult to tell what's going on, so apologies if what I see at any point doesn't match the expected behaviour from your implementation.

For most of the time I've been using slskd I've been able to see searches accumulate in its webUI, having them purged according to the timer defined in its options' retention setting. Right now I have this set to (for example) 60 minutes.

But for the past couple of days I'm not seeing the same behaviour. Instead I'm seeing search terms pop into the UI and then disappear on their own. This may leave one or two searches in slskd for a minute then even those disappear. I dont have any idea why there's a difference right now compared to earlier.

Some of the searches I see come up are in the form "*ig audio" - when searching for Big Audio. In manual testing I've done, using an asterisk to replace a single letter like that doesn't make any difference to the results. Neither has letter case anywhere in the search term. Diacritics do make a difference so that option in your indexers settings is valuable.

Some of the difficulty in testing is due to the way Lidarr calls the indexers, as I also have Tidal and Deemix indexing active at the moment. To get a better understanding of what's going on, I typically disable the other indexers, as I don't usually see the behaviour Lidarr claims - "all indexers are used"

[TypNull]

When you perform a manual search, the results remain visible in the UI until you initiate the next manual search. If Tubifarry runs an autonomous search, the results are automatically cleared after I think 30 seconds.

The asterisk (*) functions as a wildcard. For example, searching for "*eatles" will yield very different results than searching for "Beatles".

[HVR88]

In my experience (in this case, with slskd), using a wildcard in the form of "*eatles" substitutes exactly one character and does not affect the results (in most cases). That's because the only other valid or rather desired substitution we care about (this example) is the letter-case - and slskd already ignores case. There will never be something listed as "teatles" - and if there is, we don't want it anyway.

The only exception I can think of is if the first letter contains a diacritic - then it could produce worthwhile results if the uploader has the listings without the mark (or visa-versa). Does this wildcard only happen when the diacritic option is turned on?

Yesterday I mentioned that I wasn't seeing searches hang around, while previously they accumulated into the dozens or hundreds. I didn't change anything to modify that behaviour - and I had previously included a setting in slskd to remove them because the list was getting too long at times.

So today lo and behold - again no changes to anything:

Image cap at 5pm:

Odd?