How do I specify unrar temp folders path?

[mkanet]

Every archiver I've seen allows me to specify the temporary folder path; including Winrar. If they aren't specified, %temp% is used.

It seems that the unraring process for Newbin creates a .tmp folder near where it plans to extract the files. There are complications/issues in some cases because of this (fragmentation, performance, etc); which is why archivers allow for user-defined temp folders. In my case, I use a directory monitoring tool to monitor for newly downloaded media files. However, they unfortunately get created in a temporary folder first, then get moved to an adjacent folder. So, my directory monitoring tool runs twice, onces for the files in the tmp folder and once for the final folder. If they were created outside my newsbin downloads folder, I wouldn't have this problem.

Having said that, I found the "override UnRAR path" setting, however, it doesn't look like it's meant for the temp folder (*.tmp folder).

[mkanet]

I thought I would bump this thread since it apparently got overlooked. I'm actually surprised I couldn't find any information on this. All archivers I have seen in the past (whether part of an application or not) have an option to specify a temp folder. If there's an option to do this in Newbin, it's unintuitive in my opinion.

[Quade]

The tmp folder will have no impact on fragmentation because the files are moved into their final place, not copied. That means whether I use a temp folder or not, the file generation happens one time. A move is basically a change to the directory structure without actually moving any data (unless the move is to another drive), That's why the tmp folder is close to the final destination.

That said, I could probably do away with the tmp folder if I notice there's an unrar path override because the tmp folder is only used to prevent the rar files from getting overwritten by rars inside the rar files.

The most reliable operation is to download to one folder then unrar to a different folder. Then the chance of an overwrite or that cleanup will kill a file is pretty much nil. I might actually enforce this in the future since you can spec unrar paths per NZB autoload these days.

[mkanet]

Does that mean there is no way to change the temp folder? Another reason for wanting to have the temp folder user definable is I usually end up with a .tmp folder (sometimes with files in it) for very large multipart rars. I usually have to merge the tmp folder and the final extracted folders to restore one complete extracted archive. I've been struggling with this issue for as long as there have been .tmp folders. This doesn't happen with other news readers downloading the same nzbs on the same computer and same download folder/HDD.

I'm not certain changing the tmp folder location would fix this problem, but I don't know what else t try other than just using a different news reader.

[Quade]

This doesn't happen with other news readers downloading the same nzbs on the same computer and same download folder/HDD.

You know what's failing, it's the move to final location. So, the question is, why does the move fail? If you watch the process with procmon, you might see why. For example, if the download folder depth is too great it might not be able to move the files. If that's the case you could try a shallow download/unrar folder. You only have 255 chars to work with. If the filename + path get that long, things will start failing. I don't actually think it's the download folder depth because the temp folder is deeper than the final path.

I have no such issue so, to me that suggests there's something specific to how you're downloading that's triggering this. I use shallow folders too.

If you see problems when using procmon. Let me know what the errors are and I can look into it.

[mkanet]

Thanks, whatever is its, specific to newsbin and the way it handles multipart RARs with lots of folders and files. These same rars extract fine using other programs such as WinRar and other news readers.

Ill try to inspect what's going on with newsbin when its extracting, but its not going to be easy since I have no idea what I'm looking for.

[mkanet]

Is there a character limitation in newsbin's unRARing that's not doesn't occur in WinRar? I think you're right though, there's probably something that affecting the move of files for Newsbin's UNrar engine that doesn't affect WinRAR.

I thought that it might be indirectly related to where the .tmp folder is kept. It's unfortunate I can't change this setting to at least rule that possibility out.

BTW: All my downloads are under E:\Downloads.

PS: I have my system swapfile set to 12288-12288 on a different HDD. Is it possible that Newsbin is sensitive to this setting? It would probably be a pretty bad idea to depend on the system swap file for assisting with unrar in newsbin.

[Quade]

- Newsbin doesn't care or even know about the swapfile.

- Newsbin uses RARLabs unrar code too. It's not something I cobbled together. Basically Newsbin has WinRAR built in.

I'd suggest setting it to download to one folder and then unrar to another. See what happens.

This is clearly not an UnRAR issue. If the files make it into the temp folder and partially to the final destination, that means the unrar completed 100% successfully and all the files were dumped into the temp folder. Newsbin unrars the whole thing into the temp folder and then moves the files to the final destination. The move is what's failing. I was hoping you're use procmon to watch the move.

Do you have auto-rename turned on? It shouldn't impact the move but, there is potentially some renaming going on if the destination folder has files with the same name as the current unrar. That's another good reason to try unraring to unique folders.

[mkanet]

Thanks so much for helping me narrow down where it's failing. It looks like it's caused by autorenaming enabled.

I have a directory monitoring tool that monitors E:\Downloads and tries its best to rename any media file that is NOT locked. Unfortunately, this is the only way that I know of to automatically rename media file/directories after they have been downloaded since a "execute program/script after unRAR" feature isn't available yet in Newbin. My understanding was you were interested in adding this a few months ago. I just looked for that feature in the latest beta, but didn't see it. Image link not allowed for unregistered users

[Quade]

I get it. You're running something that's stepping on the process of unraring and moving the files. Well, that's good to know. I didn't actually think this was a Newsbin problem.