Newsbin stops D/L

[cosmo4u]

This issue just started last week I am using 6.60 build 4163.

Newsbin will stop downloading all of sudden. No errors and no messages of any kind, It doesn't freeze as I can disable and enable the server and search groups.
I can add files to the D/L list but nothing happens.

I have tried disabling firewall and any malware with no success.

win 7 pro
64bit
8 gb Ram


any ideas would be great

cosmo4u

[Quade]

You probably want to be running the latest beta and try again. 6.61RC3.

It addresses a memory leak in the RAR code. Depending on what you download, it can be pretty severe.

[cosmo4u]

Thank you,..

Ive upgraded and will report back

[cosmo4u]

Worked great for the first few days

now...not so much. Unfortunately its acting up again.

sorry to bother you about this, but having to close the program and starting over again to get it working again is getting annoying.

Would rolling back to an earlier version work?



edit: maybe unrelated but now(new issue) when I try to close the program now it just hangs and goes to unresponsive mode. I have to physically close it in task manager

[Quade]

How much RAM is it using when this is happening?

[cosmo4u]

Wow!!

5.8Gb out of 8

nothing running but newsbin

closed everything i could in the background and it made no diff.

[Quade]

You're sure you're running 6.61RC3 or RC4?

There were specific memory leak fixes in those versions which it doesn't sound like you have.

[cosmo4u]

[cosmo4u]

BTW

when it happened tonight NB nver broke 250mb in mem usage. so i think I am encountering something different.

I think I might reinstall fresh and give that a go

[Quade]

I'd upgrade to RC4 just to be safe. You probably don't have to re-install.

[cosmo4u]

CPU spikes when the D/L halts. it hit as hi as 96%.
Went down to 11% when I closed NB
This is after the upgrade to RC4
Also this is happening In the middle of a d/l, not during rar/par. I expect a spike during them.

[Quade]

Not really unusual if it's repairing something. What happens if you just let it sit for awhile?

You might want to run "ProcMon" and what what files Newsbin is accessing when this is going on. I think it sounds like something it getting repaired.

I really don't know at this point. I'm not having any problems like that.

[cosmo4u]

That's why i said there is nothing being unrared/repaired. wanted to be clear about that

Just files being downloaded.

D/L stops everything just sits. cant close newsbin (says unresponsive)

wait..nothing....manual shutdown repeat

Will screen grab next time it happens


thanks for your time on this...going to give it another day or two then rinse clean and start over

[Quade]

That's why i said there is nothing being unrared/repaired. wanted to be clear about that

It can unrar when where's nothing visible in the list. Sometimes when you have PARS and other files not combined into a set, the repair is hidden because there's nothing in the download list. The fact you're running out of RAM though is probably the real issue. Why Newsbin is eating RAM like that is the question. Do you use NZB Autoload to load NZB files? If yes, how about pointing it to an empty folder and then restarting Newsbin.

[JackOfHearts]

In version nb661RC4 and version nb660 the D/L stops completely when the files are being RAR'd. I do have the performance box unchecked next to:

Pause download during RAR/repair

on version nb660. This option is not on version nb661RC4.

Additionally, nb661RC4 downloads at a significantly slower speed than nb660. I get a steady download speed of 143 Mbps with nb660. Using nb661RC4 I get a maximum speed of about 99 Mbps.

[Quade]

You post got buried for some reason.

1 - It doesn't actually pause download but it does pause writing to disk which eventually runs the chunk cache out. I didn't expect this to be a big deal, because I don't really notice it on my setup but apparently it is for a number of people. It requires large changes to fix so it won't make make 6.61. 6.60 did it too. You'd have to switch back to 6.56 to get the old behavior for now.

Increasing the chunk cache allows the download to continue longer.

2 - I'm not seeing any decrease in speed. What do you have the logging set to in the advanced options? If it's in debug mode, you might want to make it log less. Debug generates a flood of log messages.

[cosmo4u]

Update...

hasnt happened since my last post so the ghost in the machine is gone i think.

Also FYI
I did download a nzb to a new folder with no issues

Thanks for your help with this.


Edit: I have to second what user JackofHearts stated about the speed issue since my upgrade to the lastest beta.
I was steady at 100 to 105. Im marginally hitting 20 to 30 now.
Not sure what I can change in the settings to offset this

[Quade]

I'm still getting 120+ day in and day out.

What News server and what Security software are you using?

[cosmo4u]

Norton 2015 internet
mbam for malware

i run programs off of bleeping computer once a week to clean up
rkill, adwcleaner etc etc

[Quade]

Norton 2015 internet
mbam for malware

I wasn't clear, I think there's a good chance your security software is causing slow downloads. Not malware. I just run MS Security essentials and have no slowdown. If you want to try some experiments, I'd probably uninstall Norton, reboot, try some test downloads, then check the speed. Then re-install and test speed again.

[cosmo4u]

Will do,

For what its worth. Ive been using norton for almost as long as ive been using newsbin and never came across this before.

ill update after the wipe and install

[malhusky]

I've noticed the same problem with downloading stopping for no apparent reason. I'm running 6.62B4. I noticed this on earlier versions as well. There was no Par or Rar processing going on. Strangely, while I was confirming the version number from the Help menu, it started downloading again. It had been stopped for about 10 minutes. Nothing unusual with memory usage. No errors were logged. I can't remember for sure but I think in the past I just restarted the program.

[Quade]

I've noticed the same problem with downloading stopping for no apparent reason. I'm running 6.62B4. I noticed this on earlier versions as well. There was no Par or Rar processing going on. Strangely, while I was confirming the version number from the Help menu, it started downloading again. It had been stopped for about 10 minutes. Nothing unusual with memory usage. No errors were logged. I can't remember for sure but I think in the past I just restarted the program.

If you look down at the status bar, the cache state is listed (X/Y). My guess is it stops with it set to (0/200). Then when you "help about" this forces the cache to flush. I think you're the third person to report this. I'm not clear how to reproduce it but I'll try.

[malhusky]

I didn't get a look at the cache. However, I was able to repeat this a number of times. The download would restart, but shortly afterwards it would stop again. I could keep repeating this. Next time I see it I'll check the cache.

[malhusky]

I did manage to see it occur again. As you suspected, cache was at 0/200 (0). Selecting Help/About cleared some of the cache allowing the download to continue, that is until the cache filled up again. That didn't take very long. The cache only went to 135/200 when it cleared.

[Quade]

How often does this happen?

Does is seem to be connected to doing anything in particular? This is the only thing preventing me from releasing 6.62 right now. I'd like to get to the bottom of it. I'll probably try to get you a version with some additional logging to try to figure this out.

[malhusky]

It didn't appear to be doing anything after it stopped. I didn't check memory usage other than to see that it didn't seem to be unreasonable. I didn't look at cpu usage. If it happens again I'll report back. It doesn't seem to happen too frequently, at least for me. As I mentioned earlier there were no Rar's or Par's being processed by this program that I was aware of and I don't think there were any group headers being downloaded, although i'm not sure about that.

[Quade]

http://www.newsbin.com/downloads/nb662B4.exe

How about giving this one a try.

[malhusky]

I am currently running 662B4. Is this different? Anything to be aware of?

Also, I downloaded some headers just now and the cache is sitting at 186/200 (0). I don't know if this is normal since I don't usually monitor it, other than the (0), but I seem to think it usually went back to 200/200. Nothing else is going on. While I was entering this I noticed it had gone to 189/200. This was over about 10 minutes. It sat there until I started downloading when it's now fluctuating (generally between 11 and 165). Now that everything is done it's back at 189.

[Quade]

New one is build number 4348. If you're not using 4348 then you should probably try this one.

[malhusky]

I'll give it a try tomorrow. I have 4337.

[malhusky]

Used it some today. So far so good. The cache cleared out when downloading was completed. Saw it go as low as 61/200. I'll post back if I come across any problems related to this.

[Quade]

Thanks. That's good to hear.

[malhusky]

I never paid any attention to this before but after downloading some headers and some files I see the cache has been at 182/200 (0) for a while. I don't know if it is supposed to clear but thought I'd pass that along. I have not yet run into the download problem with this version. Help/About brought it to 196/200. No need to respond if this is normal.

[Quade]

The fact help/about didn't return it to 200/200 means there's still something wrong. It's just not as bad as before.

Still digging through it.

[Jocke69]

For me newbin stops downloading almost every day, it has done that for some time now.

Currently I'm running 6.62 RC1 b 4351.

I will install RC2 and see if things get any better.

I will check out the cache next time it stops.

[dexter]

I'm in the process of announcing 6.62 as the production release. It is working better than 6.61 for a vast majority of people, only 2-3 people still report odd issues that we can't recreate. We will start a 6.63 beta if we can recreate something and have any more fixes.

Until then, at least try the production release just in case is magically address your issue.

[Jocke69]

I will test this, for me NB usually stops when I'm at work. so i will see tomorrow if it works

[Quade]

When it stops, hit "Help About" and see if it continues. If it does then it's the same thing that's being discussed here.

[jamesio]

I hope the following information helps with the debugging of this issue.

I've run Newsbin for a long time and a few versions ago in the 6.x series, my downloads also started stopping (weird phrase). Every beta or release update had the same issue. I've tracked it down to one thing: the Chunk folder.

Originally, I noticed that the memory was 0/1000. The first few weeks of this, I'd exit Newsbin and restart it. The closing always took longer than a close when the memory was not at 0.

I then learned from the forums that you can do a Help/About to try and free memory. This worked to free up some memory, but never went to the full 1000. Ever.

I then upped the memory to 6000. The issue took a lot longer to happen, but it would end up at 0/6000.

Exiting and restarting Newsbin gave the best results, but even when it started up with nothing in the download list the memory would drop to some other number such as 2378/6000. And that's from a fresh start after exiting previously with nothing in the download list.

At this point, if it ran out of memory I would just do Help/About and let the download list download/unrar naturally and then exit/restart Newsbin. This was my pattern for weeks. Some times it would take only an hour or two to run out of memory or it could take a full day or more.

As a fluke, I decided to clean up the directory that Newsbin stores the Chunk and other folders. Whoa... Newsbin started up with 6000/6000. Hasn't happened in months.

As each 0/6000 happened, I'd do my normal: Help, About, clear download list, exit Newsbin, delete Chunk folder and all download database files.

I then decided to isolate even further. As the next 0/6000 happened, same pattern, but I'd only delete portions of the folder. The last remaining thing that was deleted as a solo item was the Chunk folder. Once this was deleted alone, the memory would start up as 6000/6000.

So then, I realized that I also had a lot (about 30) of watched items with auto-download. I think I know what's happening in the most general sense, but not within the internals of Newsbin.

Newsbin starts up with 6000/6000. My timer is set to 15 minute increments to download headers. It does this and finds new material to put in the download list. It then tries to download the pieces. Some make it and some don't (spam). Those pieces always stay in the Chunk folder. Memory decreases a bit. New material gets in the download list of many gigs. Those chunks get worked, unrared and removed from the download list. Memory decreases. I then check the Chunk folder. Item was downloaded, unrared and removed, but it has 1000s of chunk pieces still in the Chunk folder.

I think this is the root of the problem. I'm not sure what the clean up or memory pattern is relating to chunks in the Chunk folder, but even after downloading something the chunks remain. Or at least a large number of chunks remain. Memory never goes down to the original number prior to the download. This continues for hours and then 0/6000.

[Quade]

I'm looking in my chunks folder and not seeing any chunks older than one day old.

If you look at the dates of your collected chunks, how old is the oldest?

[jamesio]

I'll have to get back to you in a couple of days. I had deleted the Chunk folder a little while ago (at 0/6000 again).

I'll let the system run until it bombs out again and then report back.

[jamesio]

On the same topic, but different direction.

I had just opened the system that runs Newsbin. It was at 6000/6000. The 15 minute timer elapsed and the headers downloaded. The download list filled up with the headers. They downloaded. The memory went back to 6000/6000. The () number went to 22. It then went to 0 (all headers processed). Then the memory dropped to 5997/6000.

No chunks in the Chunks folder. Nothing in download list. No connections connected on the servers tab.

[Jocke69]

NewsBin started after hitting "Help about" and cache goes from 0/200 to 136/200 then quickly drops back to 0/200 in matter of minutes and stops downloading.

[Quade]

Jock, in the options select "Open Data Folder" then do "Properties" on "Chunks" and see how many chunks are in there.

Then I might exit Newsbin, delete the chunks folder, then restart Newsbin and see if you have the same symptoms. If every download just gets 200 chunk in then stalls, it suggests Newsbin can't write to the chunks folder.

[Jocke69]

For me when downloading a 200Mb file help about helps for like 10-15 seconds when it passes that file and downloading smaller files like 2-5mb it works for longer tiles till it hit a bigger file again.

My chunk folder dont contain any file older than 24 hours

[Jocke69]

i have 753 files and 321 Mb in there

[Jocke69]

Now after restart it will probably work about 12 hours or so.

[Quade]

Do you use automatic header downloads? You know, periodically update the groups automatically?

[Jocke69]

Yes every 30 minutes