Downloads Setup Page

Overview

This page controls the location of your temporary directory and your downloads directory, as well as the setting for requesting push downloads. Both of the directories must be located on the same drive letter for downloads to function properly.

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Temporary Directory

BearShare stores files in this directory as they are being downloaded. If a transfer is interrupted or aborted, the partial results remain in this directory. You can resume interrupted transfers, and BearShare will request the remaining portion of the file from the server.

Do not add this directory to the shared directory list!

You must also make sure that this directory is not anywhere in the hierarchy of directories specified in the shared directory list.

As a convenience, the Explore button will automatically launch the Windows explorer and browse to the temporary directory so you may view and manage your files.

BearShare never deletes files from the temporary directory, or from the downloads directory. It is your responsibility to manage the files in the temporary directory and decide whether to try to resume interrupted transfers, or delete the files.

Please do not place partially completed files in your shared directories.

Download Directory

Completed downloads are automatically moved to this directory from the temporary directory. BearShare will not overwrite files in this directory. BearShare will also refuse to download files that have the same name as files in this directory.

The default action of the BearShare Setup Wizard is to add the directory that you specify as your downloads directory to the list of shared directories. This action is completely safe, and since BearShare watches shared folders for changes by default, helps the file sharing community by making files available immediately after they are downloaded, with no action required by you. To turn off this behavior, remove the downloads directory from your list of shared directories.

Push Download

In order for firewalled hosts to serve files, they must make an outbound connection to the client requesting the file, since they cannot receive incoming connections.

Push messages are requests for files that are sent to firewalled hosts. These messages form the foundation for push requests. In order to download a file using a push request, your computer must be able to accept incoming connections (or listen on a TCP/IP port).

By checking the box, you are instructing BearShare to issue a push request when it determines that the remote host is unreachable. This will require a listening socket. You can tell that a listening socket has been activated, because the server indicator will turn on and stay green.

If you are firewalled, or cannot receive incoming connections, this box should stay off.