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Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:09 am
by 962817
I have been having a problem downloading headers for almost all groups. I have removed the groups and deleted the associated folders within the spool directory. I then add the group and set the preferences to indicate a display header age of 2500 and a download age of 3000. This is obviously greater than the retention, but the idea is grab ever header on the downloads. I then grab all headers and can see that the download is taking place as the header count is increasing.

After the download, I attempt to open the group and notice that it's empty. I change the display setting to display all, special, etc and the same result. Empty. I use Forte Agent and can download the headers and display them without any problem. This problem appeared only after upgrading to v6, but generally makes the product useless. Anyone got any suggestions?

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:26 am
by itimpi
I think I saw a mention about there being a problem if you set these value too high! You might try with values of around 1000 instead.

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:58 am
by 962817
Thnx, I'll give that a try.

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 12:06 pm
by Moondawgie
While I would still swear that I too have witnesses that same behavior, I must admit that there have been many times when I've seen this and then subsequently found that the posts appear after invoking the filter of "None". With groups that have a large number of messages it can take sometimes takes several minutes for the posts to appear. Sometimes a group, or group of groups, appears to be void of messages, when in reality Newsbin just hasn't finished the processing that leads to the display of the messages. There is nothing to alert you to the fact that Newsbin is either still working before displaying the list of messages, or that there are no messages available for display.

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 5:21 pm
by alexander038
I have the download age at 2500 days and storage and display age at
3000 and do not have such problems.

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:33 pm
by Quade
6.2 caps the age ranges so, you won't be able to set them too long.

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 7:21 pm
by alexander038
Quade wrote:There's no reason to set unreasonable values in something like the display age. The time stamps used throughout Newsbin only go back to 1970. No news server has more than 1300 days at this point so, 2000 would be a reasonable number.

I mean yeah, setting it to be 270 years probably causes an overflow. I'd say that's "not recommended".

I just changed it to limit it internally to 5000 days. You can enter anything you want but, it'll always cap it at 5000.

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 4:21 pm
by Hanko
[quote="KingFish"With groups that have a large number of messages it can take sometimes takes several minutes for the posts to appear. Sometimes a group, or group of groups, appears to be void of messages, when in reality Newsbin just hasn't finished the processing that leads to the display of the messages. There is nothing to alert you to the fact that Newsbin is either still working before displaying the list of messages, or that there are no messages available for display.[/quote]

KingFish you have hit the nail right on the head. I had the same issue. Download a large group of headers and then when I went to view the post - nothing. I tried deleting all the stored post, deleting everything in the spool directory and even re-installing newsbin to correct this issue.

Finally while I had the data directory open and was looking into one of the spool directories I noticed something odd. The .RV4 files were disappearing and the storage.db3 and storagedata.db3 files were growing in size. I waited until all of the RV4 files were gone and then asked newbin to display the post. At this point everything works great, everything is there.

I suspect this is a result of the Background Update Switch setting that allows newsbin to insert the header data into the database in the background. Quade would be the one to answer than.

Note to Quade - "If this is the case it would be a good idea to let people know this will happen while the data is being inserted into the database. That way we don't end up spending multiple days trying to correct an issue that is not really an issue. I came very close to dumping Newsbin until I figured this out"

Re: Empty Headers after Download

PostPosted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 6:19 pm
by Quade
Note to Quade - "If this is the case it would be a good idea to let people know this will happen while the data is being inserted into the database. That way we don't end up spending multiple days trying to correct an issue that is not really an issue. I came very close to dumping Newsbin until I figured this out


Look down at the "Cache:" entry on the status bar. If you see "(NNN)" then that's a count of RV4's being imported into the DB. It's something that could really benefit from a fast disk drive. It's somewhat of a function of how fast your PC and disks are so, maybe it's worse for you than for me. I hit speeds of about 400 Mbps downloading headers from Giganews so, that number will grow to 500ish.