Version 6.70 Beta 2 Available...

[dexter]

We were working on a 6.63 version but Quade ended up re-writing the download engine so we felt the big change should be reflected in a more major release number increment. Beta 1 was actually a 6.63 version that was on the IRC channel and available to testers who hang out there. If you enjoy living on the cutting edge and want first stab at releases, that's the place to be. irc.newsbin.com in the #newsbin channel. We host our own irc server and permit SSL connections.

So with all that out of the way, here are the changes for 6.70:

• Installed new engine. No longer pauses download during unrar.
• Changes to how and when the configuration gets auto-saved. Trying to minimize potential for corruption with unexpected exits.
• Sped up the "Purge to Display Age" function by adding an index to the database. First load of posts will be slow because of the new index.
• Split out spam filtering stuff into a dll, LibFileType32.dll or LibFileType64.dll
• When an unrar fails, all files are added to the bad list to cause the Repair DLL to force a rescan of all the files. Made change to catch rare cases where the data changed between writing and repair.
• Fixed issue that occured if you restart with files in the download list originating from NZB files and had the $(NZBFILE) download path variable defined.
• Fixed issue where local searches were resetting the new file counters.
• Fixed issue running under Wine which was preventing unrar if you use the same path for download and unrar.
• Fixed issue downloading full NZB from Sickbeard
• Fixed issue processing rar sets with random PAR filenames.
• Fixed handling corrupt PAR files missing a PARid. Would cause the download to leave the download list prematurely.

The download link is on the Newsbin Beta Page. Any questions, comments, or bug reports can be made by replying to this thread or by using the Technical Support Contact Form. Both Quade and I see messages sent via the contact form.

[mimauk]

6.70 beta2

Just a couple of small points - the progress bar colours are not changing when going from download - par repair(yellow) - unrar(green) - they are staying on as the server colour.

Also the file icons are not changing to the red/exclamation mark for the posters marked as spammers in previous versions

[Quade]

Thanks.

[mimauk]

Hide Old does not appear to be working properly.

I can highlight posts in a group and press the delete key and they disappear immediately but when I open the group again later after an update all the posts appear again although they are coloured as old. They will probably disappear when the display age threshold is reached as this has happened before with other betas.

[Quade]

I can highlight posts in a group and press the delete key and they disappear immediately but when I open the group again later after an update all the posts appear again although they are coloured as old. They will probably disappear when the display age threshold is reached as this has happened before with other betas.

Is the "Hide Old" dropdown selected?

[mimauk]

I can highlight posts in a group and press the delete key and they disappear immediately but when I open the group again later after an update all the posts appear again although they are coloured as old. They will probably disappear when the display age threshold is reached as this has happened before with other betas.

Is the "Hide Old" dropdown selected?

Yes I've got that selected.

[Fisherking]

So with all that out of the way, here are the changes for 6.70:

[list][*]Installed new engine. No longer pauses download during unrar.

So The Chunk Cache adjustment is obsolete now ? Mine is set at 1000 as I have 16Gigs RAM, should I use it as it's default values ?

Thank you again Dex & Quade for this wonderful unique sw

[mimauk]

Some more info about Hide Old behaviour -

Open group tab by right clicking on group and clicking on Show Posts - Hide Old selected on drop down list.

Previously deleted or downloaded posts appear in list.

If you click on the enable filter button - the deleted/downloaded files disappear from list (I don't have any filter criteria selected in the filter drop down boxes)

If you disable the filter button the files re-appear in the list.

Also I had earlier right clicked on a spammer (support at razor) in that group and clicked on delete all posts from poster and confirmed the action in the popup box - they all disappear from the list BUT re-appear in the list when the filter button is disabled. The only way to permanantly delete the spammer is to sort by poster - highlight all the spam posts - hit shift+delete and they disappear permanantly

[Quade]

Good details. I've started to look at it. Thanks.

[Quade]

So The Chunk Cache adjustment is obsolete now ? Mine is set at 1000 as I have 16Gigs RAM, should I use it as it's default values ?

I missed this. The chunk cache is still used but it's not used in the same way. For optimal performance you still want it larger than the largest files by chunks.

So if you typically download files with 250 chunks say, you'll get better performance if the cache is larger than that. Unraring and downloading at the same time might also make use of the cache. It depends on how fast your disks are.

[Fisherking]

So The Chunk Cache adjustment is obsolete now ? Mine is set at 1000 as I have 16Gigs RAM, should I use it as it's default values ?

I missed this. The chunk cache is still used but it's not used in the same way. For optimal performance you still want it larger than the largest files by chunks.

So if you typically download files with 250 chunks say, you'll get better performance if the cache is larger than that. Unraring and downloading at the same time might also make use of the cache. It depends on how fast your disks are.

My Setup Is as below :

Win7 64 Bit 16Gigs RAM

System Disk is on a SSD, NB data folder is on SSD

Downloads goes to the separate HDD drive

UnRAR also goes to another separate HDD drive, so I experience no freezing.

My Chunk Cache Size is 1000

The problem is, sometime I find chunks in the ssd/nb/data/chunks folder. This annoys me cause it minimizes the life of SSD.

So as I have plenty of RAM, is it possible to make "this" chunk operation entirely in RAM ? I don't want any re-written data on the SSD. I always use NZBs, never do header DL

Thank you again

[Quade]

The problem is, sometime I find chunks in the ssd/nb/data/chunks folder. This annoys me cause it minimizes the life of SSD.

Chunks get written out when the chunk cache gets close to empty. There are so many variables and gotchas, I don't think you can ever be sure they won't get written to disk. I consider writing to disk to be less of an issue than slowing the download. Slowing/stalling the download is the only way to prevent the cache from running out when it gets low.

The "don't write to disk while unraring" flag isn't currently hooked up but when it is, you'll be able to prevent writing cache blocks, at the expense of download speed. Download will just stop when the cache gets full during unrar.

[itimpi]

The problem is, sometime I find chunks in the ssd/nb/data/chunks folder. This annoys me cause it minimizes the life of SSD.

With the number of writes supported on modern SSD's I would have thought that this is unlikely to be a real issue.

[Fisherking]

The problem is, sometime I find chunks in the ssd/nb/data/chunks folder. This annoys me cause it minimizes the life of SSD.

With the number of writes supported on modern SSD's I would have thought that this is unlikely to be a real issue.

Well, I have a SanDisk Extreme Pro, and it has a lifetime writes of 80TB. I already filled 8TB in 3 months according to Dashboard and SMART, and the remaining life of it appears as %99 as of now in a short time. So, the SSDs are still an unknown bomb. They could be dead randomly in any time. Why take risks as we have plenty of RAMs ?

[Quade]

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the- ... e-all-dead

Good read about real world SSD life expectency.

[Fisherking]

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

Good read about real world SSD life expectency.

Yes, that is an interesting article. I've already read that. They are talking about petabytes. I hope that it's true.

Btw, this new beta has not leftovers in the chunk folder. So far so good, it works flawlessly, at least for me.

Many thanks again for both of you.

[Questar_99]

Something strange with amount to be downloaded / time to completion going on. Add files to the download queue and they don't update until a download of an existing item in the queue completes.

[kirm]

Not sure how long this one has been happening, but with this beta release I tried to unlock a poster that I had previously locked out. It will not unlock that poster, and this is with a group that I have no filters enabled. First time doing this in quite some time, but this poster stays locked out. Do I have to do a manual delete to remove this lockout?

[Quade]

Something strange with amount to be downloaded / time to completion going on. Add files to the download queue and they don't update until a download of an existing item in the queue completes.

I can understand why it does that. Have to think of a solution. Has to do with the dynamic nature of the new download list.

Not sure how long this one has been happening, but with this beta release I tried to unlock a poster that I had previously locked out. It will not unlock that poster, and this is with a group that I have no filters enabled. First time doing this in quite some time, but this poster stays locked out. Do I have to do a manual delete to remove this lockout?

I'll try it. Might just be broken. After you unlock, what happens if you just re-load the group?

[kirm]

I'll try it. Might just be broken. After you unlock, what happens if you just re-load the group?

Noticed this after just installing latest beta, unfortunately this is the first time I have done this in probably 5 years. Did reload and system reboot yesterday, and tried again today, showing same symptoms for me again today. Figured I better report this one, its not something that is done very often.

[Axthor]

Hello

6.70B2 - Build 4471

Four servers defined - Green, Yellow, Orange and Blue (in that order) for the "Set Server Color' option. Green and Yellow enabled, Orange and Blue not enabled.

When downloading Blue is the only color showing in the 'Download List', 'Current Progress'. Looking at the servers and expanding I do see Connected for Green and Yellow (four each as in the config definition); for the Orange and Blue, I do see 'Disconnected. It appears you are displaying the color of the last server defined in the servers definition for all download progress, no matter which server is being accessed.

Haven't rebooted but did close and reopen Newsbin. I did install this version a few days ago but didn't notice this change (but wasn't really looking at download progress).

Not a major glitch but... (don't see this mentioned in this thread)

Axthor

[itimpi]

You need to be careful in using Blue for a server as that is the colour Newsbin uses if there are a large number of parts to the past.

[Axthor]

Hi itimpi

Good spotting for me. I expanded an active downloading 'Blue' thread and saw the colors I was expecting. I was thinking that I was seeing a disabled server downloading pieces. The color for that server is now changed.

I don't remember that Blue in previous versions but it might be age related here

Thanks,
Axthor

[JHawk]

Updated to this version and now Newsbin is not saving changes made within the scheduler.

I can edit the ini directly.

thanks

[BZee]

Hi itimpi

Good spotting for me. I expanded an active downloading 'Blue' thread and saw the colors I was expecting. I was thinking that I was seeing a disabled server downloading pieces. The color for that server is now changed.

I don't remember that Blue in previous versions but it might be age related here

Thanks,
Axthor

I'm seeing bright blue progress bars for individual pictures with single or multiple [2 or 3] parts (not a color I have set for a server). also the 'Current Progress:' area is not divided by lines for multi-part pictures (but the blue shading does fill in the correct part areas).

[Quade]

Updated to this version and now Newsbin is not saving changes made within the scheduler.

Yeah, it's on my list. Might look at it today.

[Quade]

Noticed this after just installing latest beta, unfortunately this is the first time I have done this in probably 5 years. Did reload and system reboot yesterday, and tried again today, showing same symptoms for me again today. Figured I better report this one, its not something that is done very often.

Standard poster unlocking is working for me. That's when the poster actually matches what's add to the post filter. What doesn't work is if you try to unlock an RE that you used to filter the poster. Because the RE isn't the exact text of the poster you're trying to unlock.

In my case I unlocked the poster RE in the options.

[kirm]

In my case I unlocked the poster RE in the options.

You kinda lost me on the "RE".

I lockout said poster by right-clicking while in a group. Now if I click on the disable/enable icon on the toolbar, it will now show all the files from said poster. Now if I right-click again and use the same principle but rather choose unlock said poster, this will not unlock said poster. As soon as I re-enable filters with the icon on toolbar, that said poster should now be visible in that group, but they are not. They still remain locked out.

The only place I found in options was under poster settings which lists all the dirty-rotten scammers. This does not give me any options to edit under this screen.

I remember newsbin allowing me to do it this way years ago, but now it will not. Hope I explained this more thoroughly.

Thanks

[Quade]

The only place I found in options was under poster settings which lists all the dirty-rotten scammers. This does not give me any options to edit under this screen.

This is the same list that you adding a poster gets added to. These is only one poster list. Meaning if you looked through the list, you could see the guy you locked out.

I'm not able to reproduce your result so maybe it got fixed in some of the other fixes.

About RE's.

<<< r26R1o >>> <ztuf_lpuc72cux1@a_3sipyknr.com>
<<< rcFsoF >>> <mq44pw4hbn3we72@mnk8ym6tgs.com>
<<< s3BXyw >>> <vf_lp7crkduyebx@6ehxajaznf.com>
<<< s8doXv >>> <5bj7sropo5c667g@5qm1kpkeuo.com>
<<< SbH8Zt >>> <7rrb2_8sshd337r@n7hf56fil6.com>
<<< Tnimc_ >>> <sw8jyqkmply43gh@kk8i7gbltx.com>

I have a group and someone using random poster addresses is posting crap. If you lock them all out, you'll eventually destroy Newsbin's performance. I can "Add Poster Keywords" in the right click menu and add

"<<<.*>>>"

Without quotes to the filter and that one entry catches all poster addresses that look like this. I don't recommend using the poster lockout heavily because the more you lock, the slower Newsbin will get.

[kirm]

This is the same list that you adding a poster gets added to. These is only one poster list. Meaning if you looked through the list, you could see the guy you locked out.

OK, this is where I first noticed posters name was still being kept unlocked. The only way to remove it for me would be to manually edit. There have been alot of spammers lately, but the one I am locking out was not a RE, as I put it, garbled crap. lol

Will try on next build to see what happens. I only have about 20 posters locked out, may clear it all and start over, but this was to remove the ones that put hundreds of crap posts in groups.

Thanks

[Kent_Diego]

I recently had my user information erased in Newsbin 6.70 beta 2. How it happened was I double clicked on Newsbin icon and did a second double click by mistake before Newsbin opened. I got message saying Newsbin was already running and will close to prevent overwriting user data. I then lost all server and group information. There was no backup.

It would be nice if every time Newsbin saved the configuration data it would make a backup of the configuration file. Maybe more than one for a history of configurations in case of deletion.

Thanks
Kent

[dexter]

There is a backup. Go under the Options menu at the top of the Newsbin window and look for "Load Backup Configuration on Restart". Then close and restart Newsbin and you'll get a list of configurations that were auto-saved. Choose one from when Newsbin was last configured correctly and you should be all set.

[pdf256]

Probe files via the ctrl-R is returning some binary data again. You had this issue in some prior betas and then fixed it.

pdf

[Quade]

thanks

[BZee]

Probe files via the ctrl-R is returning some binary data again. You had this issue in some prior betas and then fixed it.

pdf

NB6.62 was doing this but seemed intermittent. I hadn't had time to run tests to determine when it happened and what triggered it. NB6.61 was fine.

[Quade]

The next beta is doing it too. I added it to my list though.

[kirm]

Will try on next build to see what happens. I only have about 20 posters locked out, may clear it all and start over, but this was to remove the ones that put hundreds of crap posts in groups.

Appears to working correctly in beta 3.

Thanks

[Quade]

Ok great.

[TBlack]

6.70B3

Ctrl-R is generating some 14K, 55K, 98K and 102K Files in the Read Posts Directory. Think it's broken. Let me know if you want samples.

Thanks

[BZee]

I'm seeing bright blue progress bars for individual pictures with single or multiple [2 or 3] parts (not a color I have set for a server). also the 'Current Progress:' area is not divided by lines for multi-part pictures (but the blue shading does fill in the correct part areas).

Still the same in beta 3. I prefer seeing different colors for different servers (I can visually see how often fill servers kick in).

[BZee]

The amount of "Free space available in the Data|Download folders" as shown in the Status Bar is too large (same in B3 and B4). NB6.62 shows the correct size.

[TBlack]

Might also want to check the Download/Upload Speeds on the Taskbar as well. Seems 10% higher than it should. 6.62 & 3 versions were much closer.

Thanks