NB fails to download 25 of 116 requests

[bob1678]

I am no expert in this but since installing 6.60, I have had an unacceptable level of errors when trying to download posts. I can hardly click option because of
all the "critical error" popups happening. Today, I am taking time to provide information that I am seeing on these failures.

I selected about 116 files to download per the files list. Per the failed file list, 25 of these failed. There are 2 errors that are listed. The first is bland, no error and the second is download failed: file retry count exceeded. The logging file also lists 90 errors that parts of files are missing for the ones that failed to download.
When I download these same files using a different program (mimo), I have no problems, the files are complete. Did not turn VPN on for this test.

Since installing 6.60, I frequently get the missing parts error but most of the time, it seems to "find" these missing parts. This is the first time I have noticed that the entire file is not there. On some occasions, I have cleared the download by saving the incomplete file and using pars to correct the missing block.

System info:
Windows 8.1
ASUS P8Z77 MB
Intel I5 8gb memory 2TB disk.
25 mbps internet (18-20 actual)
Files selected are about 8 day old. Largest being 34.7 MB some rar some mp3

[Quade]

1 - You can disable the critical error popup, the same information is in the logging tab with no popping.

2 - What news server are you using? Astraweb was broken there for awhile and I think all files in that broken window are missing posts. I'd for most of this and last month. Maybe the month prior.

If you're seeing 430 errors, the problem is your news server. Many people use a couple news servers to fill in what their primary might be missing. I always run 2 servers. Have you tried manually unpausing any PAR files? You could try right clicking that "Assemble Incompletes" in the files too if Newsbin doesn't assemble them for you. You can hit the + icon on the download to see what kinda shape the download is int.

[bob1678]

Thanks for responding.

I did manage to disable the popup for the critical errors. That made things more tolerable.

As I continued trying various downloads, I noticed an additional behavior. I change select 10 headers for download and it downloaded 6 of those. The remaining headers where not in the downloads listing but in the group listing were checked but no activity. An hour later, they were still checked but still no activity.

I use giganews as my server with 7 connections with ssl set. I do not attempt to do anything fancy, just download headers and select some downloads. In fact it has been in suspend mode for the past 2 months while I was traveling. I did not see this level of the problem before suspending my account. Since I can download the problem files with mimo using the same servers, I am not sure where to look for the cause.

In doing more testing, I decided to go back to the headers that NB had errors with and select to download again with the bypass filters option. Many of them succeeded but about 15% did not. Stopping NB and restarting, recovered 80% of the missing files.

Yes, the 430 error is one of the more frequent errors I see but since I can download the file using a different program but the same server. Mimo shows multiple newsgroups for the file in question and I would assume it would try all of them to complete a download. In NB, I am downloading from the group level, does NB also check all the newsgroups in the group? If not, this might be the cause.

Thanks for your help

Bob




Since I am not a heavy user, I don't think having a second server would be worth the extra cost.
Where

[Quade]

Mimo shows multiple newsgroups for the file in question and I would assume it would try all of them to complete a download.

It doesn't matter what group they're posted too, there's only one file with the same subject, date and from field. The fact it's shown in multiple groups doesn't mean multiple files. Basically there's one file and the server simply displays it in multiple groups. Giganews is aggressive about removing files. If you have whole sets of files that won't download with 430 errors then that's giganews. If you can download the same file at the same time with Mimo I'd like to know about it. I'm skeptical that Giganews would leave themselves open to a legal attack by not removing the files. The reason I make the point about "same time" is that, for popular content, it might be on the server a couple hours then gets removed.

Files go missing (430 errors) for a couple reasons.

1 - They're very old. Anything over 1500 days is iffy.
2 - They've been removed because of the DMCA which requires the servers to remove files.
3 - There's something wrong with the server, like astraweb.

I'm hearing 2 issues. 430 errors, which are the server saying "I don't have part of the file" and the fact you add files and they don't always end up in the download list. Are you adding them from the search tab or from header downloads?

[bob1678]

I have seen this with old files as you note, I have just ignored those errors for the reason you gave. The current errors are new in the last 45 day to the current time. I need to watch more carefully which the dates of the headers that are involved to see if there is a pattern.
I don't think that this DCMA related because the files are rar parts. I called them files but I may have confused you with my definition of a file rather than the combined parts to create a complete file. Not every rar part will error out.

The fact that there was server issues the last couple of months, and I was offline during this time. I am looking at files from this time frame as part of catching up so it could likely be a server issue.

I am adding the downloads from the headers, not the search. I haven't looked at using search yet but I think it may offer some advantages to me.

I think I need to go and test this problem more logically, then continue the discussion or close it based on what I see. Thanks again for your responses, it has helped me understand how this should work and I will dig deeper using this information.