newsbin.com

6.80 Beta 4 seems to have a problem for me, because...

I've fallen back to 6.73 and the problem disappeared.

(Is there still a place to d/l 6.80 Beta 2?)

The issue? Most filesets don't complete. On those that fail, sometimes I see it doing the par repair but it stops. Properties on most that fail show just one missing file. Sounds normal, right?

But this suddenly/immediately started w/upgrade from 6.80 b2 to 6.80 Beta 4. On most .NZBs. When it never happened w/6.80 Beta 2. And once I fell back to 6.73 they all UN-RAR immediately.

Here's my notes from before falling back to 6.73:
I retried the failing ones a bunch (some that should be immune to takedown).

I switched off my main (giganews) server and verified my fill (tweaknews) server is delivering data AOK.

I'm getting my NZBs from NZBGeek, so I checked and saw nobody has mentioned this on their forum.

http://www.newsbin.com/downloads/nb680B5.exe

How about trying this one.

Quade wrote:http://www.newsbin.com/downloads/nb680B5.exe

How about trying this one.

That didn't resolve the issue.

I'll PM you my test NZB (which w/6.73 for a couple seconds does PAR Repair, then goes on to UN-RAR successfully).

I gotta say, Quade, you are a great programmer. Because, speaking as myself a programmer and former supervisor of programmers, and after (what, a dozen?) years using Newsbin Betas, this is the very first time I ever found a beta broke anything. And that's spectacular, nobody's perfect, and in the programming game being anywhere near this close to perfect is astonishingly spectacular. Which is why I think Newsbin is the only program I even use betas for.

Oh, I noticed that (I'm assuming the fault is with my Windows 8.1), after I install Newbin I gotta reboot before Windows lets me drag an NZB into Newsbin.

I gotta say, Quade, you are a great programmer. Because, speaking as myself a programmer and former supervisor of programmers, and after (what, a dozen?) years using Newsbin Betas, this is the very first time I ever found a beta broke anything. And that's spectacular, nobody's perfect, and in the programming game being anywhere near this close to perfect is astonishingly spectacular. Which is why I think Newsbin is the only program I even use betas for.

Usenet is a bizarre place where people will even damage uploads on purpose so they only download with a specific download tool. Every PC is different too. Honestly my biggest issue is security software breaking things.

Things that tend to break in the beta's are the more oddball and less used features which are prone to "bit rot". I'll say up front that I'm having no issue with repair right now so, I'm expecting your problem to be something oddball too.

Just for grins, how about moving all the PAR repair dll's out of the "program files" folder and then try some downloads. That will force Newsbin to use the internal repair library instead of the one in the DLL.

You don't see any errors in the logging tab related to unrar and repair?

I grabbed the content of the NZB.

It downloaded and unrared perfectly for me. I think there must be something in the log tab that would explain the problem. Like maybe it can't write to the unrar folder or something.

Quade wrote:Just for grins, how about moving all the PAR repair dll's out of the "program files" folder and then try some downloads. That will force Newsbin to use the internal repair library instead of the one in the DLL.

You don't see any errors in the logging tab related to unrar and repair?

BINGO!
With the PAR repair DLL renamed to par2repair.dllX
that NZB un-RAR-ed perfectly on beta5.

(is this a useful clue to a fix?)

so I guess there was no reason for me to look at the Logging tab (though i did, and don't see anything that strikes me as remarkable).

What kind of CPU do you have? AMD?

Quade wrote:What kind of CPU do you have? AMD?

Yes, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+

That's probably the key right there. The new beta is probably built in a way that the AMD CPU doesn't like. I'll have to research it.

Quade wrote:That's probably the key right there. The new beta is probably built in a way that the AMD CPU doesn't like. I'll have to research it.

Quade: same issue on an INTEL CPU computer. Sorry I didn't test that sooner.

I noticed that the new b5 went public so I tried it (that test.nzb) on an Intel PC, and same issue. Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 3.2GHz

Though it did of course work when I removed par2repair.dll
And it (that test.nzb) still works on my AMD PC with par2repair.dll removed

Quade: same issue on an INTEL CPU computer. Sorry I didn't test that sooner.

How old of an Intel CPU?

Quade wrote:

Quade: same issue on an INTEL CPU computer. Sorry I didn't test that sooner.

How old of an Intel CPU?

2004
(like my other PC; I'm broke.)

2004
(like my other PC; I'm broke.)

Ok thanks. I noted the issue again.

FYI
Issue not yet resolved with 6.80b6

Also, I note that during the 'issue', the PAR Repair goes to VERY high. Here's one at 4240129715%
(I've also seen the ten-digit number start with 6, 8, or 9.)

With 6.80b8 this issue is resolved. (Great work as always, Quade!)

At first I thought it was resolved, and was just failing differently.

(It PAR-repaired briefly then appears to UNRAR successfully, but really just seemed to disappear. No files appeared in the UNRAR directory, just a single [IIRC PAR file] remained in the download directory, and Logging looked fine to me.)

Then *after* I tried my 'test' NZB *without* the par2repair.dll, I noticed that one of the runs (not sure with or without the par2repair.dll) had unrar-ed successfully in an UNRAR directory I haven't used for a year (on the C drive).

Then I noticed that my UnRAR Folder had an extra "\" like this
I:\share-I\NewsBin-DECODE\\$(NZBFILE)\
after the sub-folder name.

So I cleared the UnRAR Folder setting and re-created it, and then WITH the par2repair.dll from 6.80b8 my test NZB completed AOK.

I have no idea how long that "\\" was in there. However, the issue also appeared on another PC, and I doubt I could have made the same error in it (though I can't confirm that since I did a fresh install on that PC a few weeks ago).

So I cleared the UnRAR Folder setting and re-created it, and then WITH the par2repair.dll from 6.80b8 my test NZB completed AOK.

I wouldn't expect the second slash to cause problems but if it did, it did.

Sometimes it might be better to remove the DLL and just use the emergency repair code in Newsbin.