newsbin.com

Version 6.50 has been in Alpha testing for 5 weeks and is now to a point where we are ready for a larger audience to run it through its paces. There are many behind the scenes improvements and a couple of new features. Here are the highlights:

• New Watch feature. Configure Newsbin to pull out items of interest during header downloads.
• Ability to launch post unrar processing scripts (Details here)
• Performance improvements for SSD and external media like NAS drives.
• If you use Regular Expressions, you can now enter two unique expressions with a space between them to AND the results together.
• Email notifications now support SMTP authentication (For example, will now work with GMail).

This is an early beta so you may want to save your configuration file just in case. We haven't seen any compatibility issues moving from 6.42 to 6.50 but upgrading from earlier versions is untested.

The download link and more details about this release are available on the Newsbin Beta Page.

Please direct any questions or bug reports as a reply to this thread or through our Technical Support Form.

If you use Regular Expressions, you can now enter two unique expressions with a space between them to AND the results together.

Just to add more detail here. RE's are optional now.

say you were looking for

"Lexus IS300 720p"

Before you'd have to enter its as "Lexus.*is300.*720p|720p.*is300.*Lexus"

if you wanted to make it AND the words together in any order.

Now you can just enter

"Lexus IS300 720p" and the search will require all 3 words be in the subject in any order. The watch lists use this format too. I haven't touched the filter profiles because I'm afraid I might break the existing ones. This works for "find" and for the watch lists.

I've never used REs as I could never understand them, hopefully they're more user friendly now.

As for upgrading an existing installation (6.42RC3) then for me that went OK. Only things I've noticed so far seem to be cosmetic:

1. The grid lines have disappeared.
2. In the Options the last 2 items (Scripts, Advanced) don't have any icons at the side of them.
3. In the Groups List when right clicking on the Watch Lists it only shows 3 items, all the other groups I have show many more options, is that by design?
4. Downloading a duplicate doesn't show the Red Exclamation icon at the side of the post (just the green 'downloaded' icon) nor does it highlight the post in RED like it did previously.

I have my NB install on a Vector 512GB now so the SSD tweaks will be helpful.

Cant get the date column to show file age. Regardless of file age switch setting it just shows date of post.

edit: btw it works fine when viewing groups, just not in the download list

In the ''Groups'' tab I have several GOGs - ''mp3'', ''tv'', ''movies'' besides the Default(?) ones of ''Customs Lists(0)'', ''Watch Topics(0)'' and ''Unsorted(9)''. The ''Unsorted'' one I leave expanded with 9 disparate groups in it.

When I update all the groups none of the ''Unsorted'' groups update - even if the ''Unsorted'' is expanded or closed up - and each one has to be individually updated by right clicking and ''download latest''. The ''Last Updated'' column does not alter until each group has been updated individually

All the other groups/GOGs update with no problems

I've just made a new folder and dragged the groups from ''Unsorted'' into it and they have updated when all the other groups have updated.

I use 2 servers for downloads - Virginmedia for most downloading, its free and Easynews as a fill server. I've just put 5 files in the download list and got a few MB on the first file and then nothing. I've tried changing the Logging to verbose and then debug but it will not change from Normal - so no error messages.

If I uncheck the ''Fill'' from the easynews servers then I start getting a download - recheck them and the download stops.

I've tried altering the server and advanced server settings for Virginmedia but still no joy.

Gone back to 6.42RC3 and everything is working fine.

Think I'll pass on this beta.

Is the Growl support broken? It doesn't seem to save the settings I input for Growl, nor does it generate any notifications. I hadn't tried the Growl support previously, but appears that it was working in previous builds. I'm using a local Growl for Windows server so nothing complicated.

Had success with Watch Topics... nice.

Thanks for all the comments. I'll make notes and get to work.

Meant to mention, does not seem to be a way to set the download path for Watch entries. Would be nice if it would default to the path for the group that is being watched.

I think something is up with the filtering.
I notice if I search for bluray|bdrip|dvdrip|web-dl on a list of headers, some results are missing than if I did web-dl.

For the watch feature, how do you add multiple options for the poster. Is it just a | seperating them?.
Where exactly is the place where you choose where to download them? Has it not been implemented yet?

It's really designed for one poster per watch but, it's just a regular expression so, you could add a couple with "|". Keep in mind that when you're using "|" you want to avoid spaces between the "|" and the word. Spaces trigger "and" mode.

Where exactly is the place where you choose where to download them? Has it not been implemented yet?

You see the watch item you generated? You see the new file count number? You can:

1 - Load the watch like a group and add from there. From the right click

2 - Put the watch into automode.

A watch is essentially like any other group. It's just filled in with filtered results of the header download. Then you add to download like any other group.

I considered per watch download folder. It seemed like it would make things more complicated. I can re-consider in the future.

Is anyone having issues with AW today?

If not, then it's possible I've done something with the watch selection that has made me unable to download anything since. I'm not familiar with the auto mode feature, I thought you meant the group feature where you automatically download all new headers to the download list. I moved the watch item over to a new folder to be able to enable it, but then decided to try and move it back but with no success, so deleted the new folder and previous watch item, now it seems items relating to AW (my main server) will not download (i.e headers and downloads), but it seems headers are fine for other servers. If I restart the program it will temporarily start downloading again before doing nothing (usually a single part).
Nothing mentioned in the log section.

I moved the watch item over to a new folder to be able to enable it, but then decided to try and move it back but with no success, so deleted the new folder and previous watch item

Unclear on what this means. Basically, if you want a watch topic, right click in the watch topic area, make a new one, enter what you want to filter on, hit OK. Automode probably just means the Automatic Download button, meaning 'just get it' rather than list it. Moving watch items to a new folder, I don't follow - you're moving what exactly from where to where? I can't imagine watch filters stop you from downloading anything, but it is a new feature... Do you mean Newsbin simply cannot download anything, in any manner? Or just the watch filter doesn't work?

AW is working fine for me, btw.

DT

re838uk wrote:, now it seems items relating to AW (my main server) will not download (i.e headers and downloads), but it seems headers are fine for other servers. If I restart the program it will temporarily start downloading again before doing nothing (usually a single part).
Nothing mentioned in the log section.

This was happening to me with Virginmedia my main server, but I didn't do anything with Watch or anything else beforehand. That's why I went back to 6.42

Had NB crash twice adding a lot of headers(4000+) to download list. Earlier versions never did this.

DThor wrote:

I moved the watch item over to a new folder to be able to enable it, but then decided to try and move it back but with no success, so deleted the new folder and previous watch item

Unclear on what this means. Basically, if you want a watch topic, right click in the watch topic area, make a new one, enter what you want to filter on, hit OK. Automode probably just means the Automatic Download button, meaning 'just get it' rather than list it. Moving watch items to a new folder, I don't follow - you're moving what exactly from where to where? I can't imagine watch filters stop you from downloading anything, but it is a new feature... Do you mean Newsbin simply cannot download anything, in any manner? Or just the watch filter doesn't work?

AW is working fine for me, btw.

DT

In the group list tab, you can create a new folder via right click menu and move group(s) to it. Since you can choose the download path for these folders but not the watch folder, I figured that was what was meant by the Auto-mode thing. So I created a new folder, and moved it there. And that seems to be where the issues have started from. The only time I can get anything from Astraweb is when I do a restart, it will download the headers and part of the first download in the list, but doing another header group just grabs the headers from blocknews and leaves a long list of stationary header requests for AW. Adding through nzb or through header posts makes no difference.

I'd delete whatever you did and start over.

I have to make sure you can't move watch list items though so, that's a good find.

I installed v6.50 yesterday, and it appeared everything was fine on the upgrade. I have newsbin set to automatically dl headers from all newsgroups. When I opened newsbin after updating, it would not do anything at all. I could not even manually dl headers. Went back to v6.42 and all worked as usual.

Will try one more time later today. Forgot to check out the logging tab yesterday.

Kirm


Well I went through the upgrade process again today, with the same results. It will not even dl headers automatically nor manually. All settings appear correct.
Logging tab was not much help:

[13:55:02] HIGH PAR Pausing: Enabled
[13:55:02] HIGH Par2Repair - Multi-core 1.3

The new files listing are all at 0. Reverted back to v6.42 and all is well.

Another day, and some more play. I installed v6.50 in a virtual machine, with basically the same results. The only groups that would dl headers were the groups already there. Added a few new ones and what I found was that the only groups that were updating headers were ones place in a folder, v6.50 will not automatically dl headers unless they are out of the unsorted group. Move any new groups to any folder, and then they will update. Right clicking to dl headers will work if the groups are in the unsorted folder. Hopefully this will be fixed on next beta.

Kirm

Would there be any problems caused by deleting all of the *.66 files located in Newsbin's <data folder>/chunks folder remaining after the successful download of the first multipart file I downloaded after upgrading from version 6.42 to version 6.50b1?

And why do those *.66 files remain after successful download of a file?

If you're not downloading anything you can wipe the chunks folder. It's not real aggressive about cleaning them out. It cleans them when the file finishes download and periodically it cleans out older ones.

When right clicking on empty space in Downloading Files tab, it deselects the current selected row, and should hide those commands that won't be executed like Properties or Move to Top etc

An option to bring back the grid lines as before

It no longer hangs up when I tries to delete something, so thats nice

It still needs to know how to unrar those files like 138171-2.par or 138172-0.par (just examples), or if there is a workaround, please let me know.

clear filter history is broken

It still needs to know how to unrar those files like 138171-2.par or 138172-0.par (just examples), or if there is a workaround, please let me know.

I have a set like this on my server and it unrars fine. What's the actual error?

It just says insufficient data to UnRAR138172-0.par2, even though I tested it QuickPAR manually.

If I attempt to AutoPAR->unRAR/Join Files, it just says
---------------------------
Warning
---------------------------
Quick UnRAR: No filename found
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
And popups this Quick UnRAR progress bar that never does anything at all. No status or anything.

I can send 2 of the nzbs to you for testing if you want, just let me know how to do that through here.

You're showing PARS but, it's the rars that contain the files.

Are the files compacted together in a single line? Mine are. Might explain why it works for me and not for you.

So basically we're SOL?

It's a beta. He's trying to get more details so he can fix it.

DT

So basically we're SOL?

If running beta software, known to have issues, is too stressful for you, you might want to go back to the release.

I've been trying to figure out exactly what you're doing, to figure out what's going on but, you're not being any help.

It has been this way since the previous stable release, and it's multiline downloads for one nzb file, but then again the par is referring to the valid files in the folder so. This issue has been in there for several releases now.

Like I said in my earlier post, perhaps I can send you the nzb, that is if you want it. Let me know.

Bizarre issue when using Different colour scheme something isn't right see picture below it does not look normal
I just tell you may like to know that something may have gone wrong anyway give up the good work Paul

It has been this way since the previous stable release, and it's multiline downloads for one nzb file

Sending it would be great. ts@newsbin.com

You can rar them up but, don't zip them. Our email server rejects zips.

Tried your NZB. Added the largest set, 6 gigs, watched it download. As each file downloaded it was renamed to the proper filename. When it was done, it unrared.

Your symptoms suggest autopar is disabled or isn't working. Did you see at least one PAR download?

Hi Quade, I tried out this beta and it looks good but I didn't do much in it. I just downloaded the headers for a.b.games with 6.42 and installed it then went to Save Files to Custom List and it wouldn't do it. It just hung but it didn't freeze. I was able to stop it and exit to reinstall 6.42. Will check it out again later to see if any other problems arise.

I did notice that scrolling thru the posts is nice and smooth and like the commas in the headers count. It's much easier to read now and I also like that the search button is moved back to the left of the search box. Now I won't be hitting the wrong button all the time.

Thank you for doing that and have a good day,

Tattoo

Quade wrote:Tried your NZB. Added the largest set, 6 gigs, watched it download. As each file downloaded it was renamed to the proper filename. When it was done, it unrared.

Your symptoms suggest autopar is disabled or isn't working. Did you see at least one PAR download?

Thanks for checking it out. Autopar works fine as far as I can see, and the PARs are downloaded. IIRC the downloads are actually from the previous stable release, which didn't work so great, so maybe updating to the beta made it not work as well since it was created by the previous version. It doesn't matter now, as B2 works very nicely!

as B2 works very nicely!

That's good to hear. Thanks.

Is there anything specific that needs to be set for SSD, or it is all internal changes/assumptions? I searched around but nothing quickly came up.

Internal. SSD's don't like pre-allocating. 6.50 doesn't pre-allocate. There are some other tweeks I'll eventually expose in the options. They'd not needed most of the time.

Quade wrote:Internal. SSD's don't like pre-allocating. 6.50 doesn't pre-allocate. There are some other tweeks I'll eventually expose in the options. They'd not needed most of the time.

Perfect, thanks Quade.