[Tutorial] Share (p2p application)

Last edited by Fuurin on Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:36 pm; edited 3 times in total

Share is a Japanese peer-to-peer file sharing client and network for Windows based on a similar model to the English Freenet and Japanese Winny. Share is especially good for getting the latest Jdramas in RAW form, as they seem to be released here before BitTorrent, and the downloads are usually quite fast. Share may be easier for people who do not read Japanese to use than OpenNap because there is no need to negotiate transfers, and one can use hash values to search for files. As many western ISPs have taken to throttling bandwidth for WinMX, BitTorrent and eMule, you may be able to escape this through the use of Share.

The official homepage for Share is apparently hosted on Freenet 0.5, but you can download the latest version of Share, EX2, from Tom Maneiro's Spanish Share site. I have attached English locale and hint files for you to download below. Create a Share folder in Program Files, unzip Share EX2 to there, and then replace the locale and hint files. If you get a runtime error when starting the program, run msconfig, untick your antivirus and firewall applications, restart Windows, start Share EX2 and then turn your antivirus and firewall back on.

First, click on Settings, Clusters, and type in five words that describe the type of file you are trying to download. For example, you could add some combination of ドラマ, TV, テレビ, avi, mpg, DVDISO or even the names of specific j-dramas. Click in the boxes next to your favourite five, and then click OK.

Next, Settings, Profile, Settings, type in a Nickname and Password, and click "change key." This will set your ID. On the Network tab, input your upstream and downstream limits. You have to set both for a minimum of 50KB/s, but actually the main thing this seems to affect is the reported speed in the nodes window. Share has no internal bandwidth throttle. There isn't even a way to break the connection with a node.

On the same dialog box, the port number should be five digits, and you will need to open up the same port on any software or router firewall you have running. If you are using the Windows XP SP2 firewall, click on Start, Settings, Control Panel, Windows Firewall, Exceptions and then Add Port, ie. the same number as listed in Share - Settings - Network. EX2 is TCP only, so you don't have to worry about UDP. You can leave Performance, Action and Quota the way they are. Hit OK.

Next, you need a node list. A node is just the encrypted IP address of a computer running Share. You actually need only one active node, and then Share will automatically download the rest and store them in the nodes.db file. Nodes keep going offline, so you should try to get as fresh a list as possible. Tom Maneiro keeps one, and mudijp has a Japanese list. Node list web sites tend to come, and go, so you might need to run a search for "Share" and ノード on Google. Be sure to use EX2 nodes if you are running the TCP version. The UDP version NT2 has its own nodes. Copy, and paste the nodes into Notepad, and save the file as nodes.txt into the Share folder. On the Nodes tab, click "Add node," then "Load from file," browse to your nodes.txt file, and select it. Click "Add" and then "Close." Don't connect yet.

In Windows Explorer, in the Share folder, create two more folders, one called "Cache" and the other called "Download." Back in Share, switch to the Folders tab, click "Add folder," and add your new Cache and Download folders, setting a minimum quota of 4GBs for cache. For "Upload," browse to, and select the folder where your videos are stored. Unlike eMule or BitTorrent, you can easily share your complete collection. It takes a while for Share to check all your folders, so maybe you should work on something else until it's done.

Once you are all ready, restart Share, and then on the Nodes screen, click connect. It will start trying each of the nodes in your list till it finds an active one, and then start downloading others, and checking them too. It may take a while for it to find nodes related to your interests, but once you have a node that stays connected for a while you can start setting up triggers to find the files you are interested in.

Next, you need to set up some triggers for files you want to download. You can search for hashes yourself in online hash databases like keydb.info or sharedb.info. If you have the hash for the file you want, click on the Triggers tab, "Add Trigger" and then paste the hash value into the Hash field, leaving "Add to DB only" unticked. You might want to set a minimum file size of 100 MBs to screen out text dummies or a maximum of 2000 MBs if you want to exclude ISOs. Click "Add." As soon as Share finds the file, it will automatically add it to your Download window and start downloading. Share can only search for a limited number of triggers at a time, so don't create too many.

If you don't have a hash for the file you want, you can set up a trigger to get Share to add relevant search results to your DB. First, on the Triggers tab, click "Add Trigger," type words from the title into the Keyword blank, untick the "Delete matching query triggers" box, and add a tick to the "Add to DB only" box. Now Share will search the DB of all the nodes it connects to for that keyword, adding any matching filenames and hashes to your own DB. If you want to run an auto-download trigger, make sure you delete any "DB only" trigger with the same keywords. Otherwise, Share will just add the filename to the DB rather than starting the download.

Once you have added results to your DB, click on the Queries tab, and search your DB. Orange files are the easiest to download, white is neutral, light blue are the ones you are already downloading, and dark blue the ones in your upload folder. Red files are thought to be fakes. If you find a file you want, right-click on it, and choose "Add to Download."

In the Download window, you can follow the progress of your downloads. Order indicates the number of people in the queue ahead of you, and Status tells you the number of pieces that Share has managed to locate. Highest priority is given to the file numbered 0, but you can increase or decrease the priority by right-clicking on the file. The Tasks window shows you what files are being downloaded at the moment. When the download is complete, Share will convert it from Cache into a playable video, make a note in Tasks, and it will show up in your Download folder.

Share is always uploading files from your upload folders to neighbouring nodes through Diffuse Up (which you can see in your Nodes window), but you can choose particular videos which you want to share, and push them along. One approach is to go to the Uploads tab, and turn on Turbo. This pauses your downloads, and causes Share to upload to only one or two other nodes. Go to Queries, run a Search for one of your own files, right-click on it, and choose "Add to upload." After the file has been uploaded to another node, the filename should turn orange in Queries, and you can shut off Turbo. To further spread the file, you can right click on it in Queries, and choose Convert. This will add the complete file to your cache, from where it will be uploaded to neighbouring nodes via Diffuse Up. You should be careful with this Convert function though because if you've set a low quota for your cache folder, Share may inadvertently delete part of the files you have already downloaded. If you want to shut down Share, but haven't finished the upload, you might want to move the file out of your uploads folder, so that when Share restarts, it won't ignore the parts of the file still in its cache.

You can ask questions about Share on the Winny/Share Download BBS.

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 1:06 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Share is pretty outdated. It's probably unsafe as well.

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:52 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

InTr4nceWeTrust wrote:
"Share is pretty outdated. It's probably unsafe as well."

Share is probably one of the newest of the P2P applications that are popular in Japan. Share EX2 came out in 2006. The last release of Winny was in 2003, and both WinMX 3.54 and Utatane 1.04.3 came out in 2004.

I haven't had any security problems with Share at all - no viruses, no fake files, no hacker attacks, nothing. Why do you think it is unsafe?

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:03 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Yes, it is relatively new but last time I looked into it, there were very few users left. Can you tell me when it was last updated?

Last edited by Fuurin on Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:30 am; edited 1 time in total

Share EX2 was released on April 1st, 2006.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "few users left." According to the RIAJ's estimates, there were about 200000 people using Share in 2006, and that jumped to about a half a million in 2007. I'm not sure if the numbers can continue to double like that, but in any case, if anything, there are more people using Share these days not less.

Also, OpenNap sort of proves that it is not really the number of users that matters. Even at the best of times, there are not more than 2500 users on the Zerosen server, but they continue to have all the newest releases and the widest range of J-dramas of any network. New releases seem to spread out from Utatane to other networks, although there do seem to be some releasers on Share as well. With enough sources, you can get amazing download speeds on Share, faster than BitTorrent on my machine anyway.

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:59 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Hmm, guess all of the RAW files I got from Share are all unsafe. I will go start deleting them right now!!! Tongue

PS, I try to use Perfect Dark, but couldn't get anything in a timely manner.

As with any software, you should scan it for viruses before installing, and make sure that it is the official version of Share released by 村長. There are reports of course that some naive users in Japan installed infected versions of Winny (and Share?), and paid the price, but if you are careful, you should be fine.

Perfect Dark appeared in the RIAJ's survey for the first time last year, but it still has a really small user base. I've read reports from people who are using both that Share continues to have a wider variety of videos. It is hard to say what the future will bring, but for now anyway, Share continues to be one of the best sources for new J-dramas.

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:40 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Thanks for the guide and the speed is indeed very fast. Big Smile

I was wondering is it possible to force convert an incomplete file? I have a video that is close to finished but under status I don't have all the blocks. It's been that way for weeks so I doubt I can finish the file and just want to watch what I downloaded.

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:35 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

>I was wondering is it possible to force convert an incomplete file? I have a video that is
>close to finished but under status I don't have all the blocks. It's been that way for weeks
>so I doubt I can finish the file and just want to watch what I downloaded.

In the Download window, right click on the file, and choose convert. In the Task pane, you can follow the progress. If you get any corrupted blocks, you can try using a plugin like ForcedFileConverter. Set up a trigger for the following hash:

5bcaac130357e0d6f69485ca38a478eca307a600

and you might want to include the word アプリ amongst your cluster words to make sure you connect. There are other plugins too like CacheDumpEx, but I haven't used them yet.

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:35 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Hello

I've downloaded and tried share program but failed to get the search function to work or search anything

- I've opened the ports on my router and firewall and set up up/download bandwidth
- made a cache, upload, and download folder
- paste the name of the stuff i'm searching for into my clusters
- and on the site http://www.anonymous-p2p.org/tutorial_share.html on step #2 it says "Download the English locale / hint / readme / info files from Uguu.org and overwrite the files in your Share folder.", i'm not sure what it means but I've overwrite the old previous text in those files by copy and pasting the bunch of text from the link into those files(locale, hint, readme, and inf) and and then save those 4 files.

Please help me anyone, I've been trying to get this program to work for days but still failed. Sad

And please forgive me for my awkward tone.

Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 10:50 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:51 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Hehe got my problem fixed, realized I added the wrong set of nodes. (accidently added EX2 nodes for my NT5 Share Tongue

)

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:03 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

wow great guide, thanks!

however, i've recently been having a problem where my share is connecting to nodes just fine, but after a few minutes it'll suddenly disconnect from all of them. this has been happening frequently even though i update my nodelist constantly. any idea what's wrong?

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:05 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:20 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Toyotaku, glad you found my tutorial helpful.

I haven't experienced the disconnect issue, but you are right that it is does sound like something related to sanjiu's and your firewall/router. Share is a bit sensitive to firewall issues, so much so that I have to disconnect from the internet, and shut down my firewall when I want to start up Share. Once Share is loaded, I can restart my firewall, and it works fine.