Reset of Newsbin Pro

[eclapwannabe]

I am ready to admit to defeat. Promises are unfulfilled but I guess at $11.99 worth of entertainment
for 2 years worth of material is not so bad. I just wish they would not promise the Sun and the Moon!

I need to know the best way to set up NB Pro for real body content and headers. Not the pseudo promises
of my Usenet provider. The headers and body content seems to be mostly there from July 2011 thru current date.

So by my calculations that should be 708 days of headers. Giving the start date of June 09/10 2013.

So I should go to the groups list page and under Post Storage choose delete stored post? That should set
all the NG I monitor back to zero. The next steps I am confused about? I go to the options screen and it
shows there different settings for headers: Download Age, Display Age and Storagge Age. By my calculations
they should all the same number, same as above, 708. Is my thinking correct? I have read of the information
on this but still not a 100% sure I understand correctly. I am fully aware that certain groups I monitor will still have
missing files due to current regulations being imposed. But for the most part most of the headers and bodies should be
there.

[itimpi]

The values are for different purposes:

• Download Age is the oldest header to try and download for a new group or after resetting a group. This is often set to a small value if you only want to get the most recent headers.
• Storage Age is the oldest header to keep on disk. Many people like this to be a large value, but keeping more than your longest retention news supplier can supply files for just wastes disk space. Some people have fill servers that can supply files for a longer period than their header server can supply headers so in this case a larger value makes sense.
• Display Age is the default number of days to show if you simply do a 'Show headers'. Smaller values result in faster loads, so if you are only normally interested in the last few days or so something like 5-10 might make sense. It can always be over-ridden by the 'Show All Headers' option that will retrieve all the headers saved on disk.

Having said that setting them all to the same value of 708 will work.

[Quade]

I'd keep the display age low, 30 days or less for daily browsing and right click "Show all Posts" for when you want to delve into the past.

I'm not clear if you want ONLY 708 days or AT LEAST 708 days with more if you can get it. The answer changes depending on what your actual intent is. I can't really tell from you post. I have my dates set so 2000 I think. These days giga seems struggle to deliver anything over 1100 day or so.

Itimpi's answer is "ONLY 708".

[eclapwannabe]

Sorry Quaade did not intend to be confusing. I don't trust Giganews/Supernews to be able to provide reliable service
beyond that 708 day window. So my cutoff will be 708 days for that server. I am still thinking of using another service, one of the block accounts to supplement the Giganews Farm. So If I set it up the first age criteria as 708 days the next 2 as 808 days that should suffice.

Yes, I use the age filter, a 30 day limiter on what is available. It makes all these headers more manageable.

You did not make any comments on the first part of my message. Can I then correctly assume that those
steps are the correct ones to use to achieve what I have in mind to do?

BTW thanks for all your help. I know you are author of the product but it makes using NB Pro a useful program. I have been using the Internet for the past 15 years. I remember doing everything manually and I even used the dreaded MS outlook for my newsreader program. I have many different utility programs that help with headers and in the old days you had to look several places to find answer.

[Quade]

- There's no "per server" retention so, you set the "Storage Age" to the total age you might download from. If that's 1000 days then set it to 1000 days and that's the age for ALL servers.

- All headers are the same for the most part from server to server and they all get lumped into one store so, there's no point to trying to micromanage the headers on a per server basis. Even if giganews won't reliably deliver files > 708 days. The giganews headers can still be used to download from other servers.

- Giga can deliver headers out to probably 3000 days now. If you have those headers, they'll work with any server. You seldom need to download headers from multiple servers.

- My opinion is that you want all headers, all 3000 if you have the disk space. Then you can juggle the servers to try to find a mix that most reliably delivers the files. If you don't have the disk space, reduce the number. There's nothing wrong with setting is short like 700 days. Just pick a number and stick with it.

- Delete stored posts will reset it to download headers over again but, if you already have 700 days worth of header stored, there's no real point to it.


1 - Pick the max age of headers you want to store. Set the "Storage Age" to this number.

2 - Set the "Download Age" to whatever number of days you want from new groups.

3 - Set the "Display Age" short.

If you want to force Newsbin to re-download "Download Age" worth of headers, right click "Post Storage/Use Download Age" is a non-destructive way to do it. "Delete all Posts" will lose any current history.

I have a hard timing parsing out what you're really wanting. "Too many words" syndrome maybe. For my brain a narrative is less useful than something like a bulletized list. I think we're pretty close though.