Version 6.31 Release Candidate 5 Available...

[dexter]

Just a few more finishing touches:

• Added an option to turn Aggressive Assembly mode on or off from the Options/AutoPAR Options menu.
• You can enable or disable the automatic pausing of PAR files in the Options/AutoPAR Options menu
• Fixed bug where New Record counts in the Groups tab were not getting reset if you purged the group.
• Improved the PAR parser. It scans bad par files about 10 times faster than before.
• Modified compaction algorithm to handle when posters put file count info before record count info.

The download link is on the Newsbin Beta Page.

[MilesAhead]

I just installed it twice and selected English as language. The menus look to be in German or a similar language.

[Quade]

Dex is out of contact till morning. Call it 10 hours. I'll try an install here.

[dmcginniss]

Same issue here, the program is now in german.

[SylvainPro]

32 bits in German and 64 bits in english.

[kairk]

same issue with 32 bit

[dexter]

Sorry about that. I was testing the 32 bit German language and forgot to replace it with English before I built the release. It's fixed now.

It was only a problem with the 32 bit build, 64 bit was fine.

[possamai]

The progress bars for the posts are acting funny here........

For some posts it's completely empty but 80% of all the files in that post is already downloaded.

I have 2 servers, one has 2 weeks retention, the other about 3 years..
Files older then 2 weeks are marked in red (which is correct) so everything is downloaded from the other server.
Seems to me the progress bar should be completely red while another color starts taking more and more place.
not here.
Post is 50% downloaded. 33% of the bar is blue (servercolor), 33% is red (not downloadable from the other server) and 33% is white (what?).

it's just weird...
Restarting newsbin changes things a little but doesn't fix it..

[possamai]

asseble incompletes also gives an error.

[23:04:44] ERROR - Assemble -Copy Mode Assembly: yEnc
[23:04:44] ERROR - INT_AssembleFile: Assembly Failed

don't know where the error comes from. assembling the incomplete file works fine I think. Quickpar recognizes is with just that part missing. I don't know what happens under the hood of course..

edit: more logging.

Nuke it from orbit - just to be sure.

[Quade]

How about disabling the crappy server and see what happens? Did you install the new one from scratch? Might check the options and make sure "Aggressive Assembly" isn't enabled. For your setup, it's probably not a good idea. Since you have a server that's failing everything, it's priming the files for early assembly. Since you also have a decent server, you want to push off automatic assembly.

"Copy Mode Assembly" tells me the files aren't completely downloaded when they assemble. So, disable "Aggressive mode" if it's enabled and then turn the retries up to delay automatic assembly. I might set it to 10.

[possamai]

Disabling the crappy server helps fixing the second progressbar issue but the empty bar still exists.
I did not install the latest verson from scratch no, I'm using the same .nbi for ages now
Aggressive assembly is disabled and retries are set to 10 (it'd be nice to be able to set retry time btw).

I can try a fresh nbi, that might help but will I lose my downloadlist if I do that now? I have quite a lot queued up for download now.
I don't think I'll lose it (the downloadlist is stored elsewhere, right?) but I'd like some reassurance.. it took some time finding all this

[Quade]

I doubt the NBI has anything to do with it. When newsbin goes into retry mode. The main progress bar gets cleared. The question is why it's retrying and not completing. It should download to completion in one shot. You should be able to see what it's doing by watching the download.

[possamai]

would excessive logging help?
There was an option to add or change in the nbi for that.. I can keep in running in case it happens again.

The episodes are downloaded now and I started a new download with a fresh nbi.
Only the good server is added.... So far, so good. No issues now.

What happened was that it skipped to retry mode when the download was finished but some files had missing segments/parts.
I did "assemble incompletes" on the individual files and the entire list of files became grey, also the not yet downloaded par-files.

restarting newsbin and quickly unpausing the par files made them download anyway and repair and unrar the files.

at the moment all seems fine now, so let's just hope there was a corruption in the nbi or something or that the crappy server was ruining it. I can add it again though if you want some test results.

[Quade]

What happened was that it skipped to retry mode when the download was finished but some files had missing segments/parts.

This is normal. It's going to do a minimum of 2 retries and as many as you set before it assembles the incompletes itself.

I did "assemble incompletes" on the individual files and the entire list of files became grey, also the not yet downloaded par-files.

I'd suggest leaving it be or reducing the retries down to 2 now that you have you good server working on it.

I think there's a chance you found a problem with manual assembly. I'll have to check it out. You might want to experiment with checking "Disable Automatic Par Unpausing" and see what it does to your results.

[kalone]

Anyone else having a problem with the pause button, it will only pause for a second or two then it resumes running. I am using the 64 bit.

[Quade]

More then likely the scheduler has been turned on and is controlling these states. I'd check the options.

[kalone]

More then likely the scheduler has been turned on and is controlling these states. I'd check the options.

That seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks!

[Telek]

I am still having the same problems ever since 6.3 where 1/4 of my downloads get stuck in "retry" even though all parts show 100% downloaded, par2 file is present, and the files can be extracted directly using WinRAR. Any ideas?

[MilesAhead]

I am still having the same problems ever since 6.3 where 1/4 of my downloads get stuck in "retry" even though all parts show 100% downloaded, par2 file is present, and the files can be extracted directly using WinRAR. Any ideas?

I get that quite a bit also.

[Quade]

Just for grins, how about checking "Disable Autopar Par Unpausing" in the autopar options and see if your symptoms change.

[Telek]

Just for grins, how about checking "Disable Autopar Par Unpausing" in the autopar options and see if your symptoms change.

I enabled that, as well as aggressive assembly mode. Hopefully this will also fix the problem where random downloads are added, then when I check later the entire download is "paused" and even manually resuming doesn't cause NB to start downloading it. Very frustrating.

[Quade]

I'd suggest turning aggressive mode back off. If you're having these problems it's a sign that Aggressive mode isn't for you. Aggressive mode is for people who typically get perfect downloads 100% of the time. It completely disables retries. You need the opposite of aggressive mode. In fact the changes in 6.31 are probably too aggressive for you even with aggressive mode disabled.

What does the status say? "[PAR Process]" means it's been handed off to the par processor to unrar and/or repair. If something else is already repairing or unraring, this set will sit there till the other set is complete.

When you check the block counts what do you see? (Right click properties) you ought to see a list of files, how many blocks they need and how many blocks Newsbin found. Newsbin won't fire up autopar until at least 90% of the blocks are there. The repair block counts should be listed too. You need one repair block per missing block.

[Telek]

Took off aggressive - will let you know once it happens again. I'll pull the properties and status to see what happens when it hangs up.

I may be off base, but it looks like it happens more often on the .rar/r00/r01 old style than the new part01.rar/part02.rar new style.

[Quade]

Yeah, I'm pulling my hair out here trying to figure out why this happens to some people.

I'll play with the .rar thing thanks.

[Quade]

http://www.newsbin.com/downloads/nb631RC6.exe

Want to give this one a try?

[magician1962]

Just a afew thoughts relating to this.

In my own case drive fragmentation is increasing so in unpacking the processor seems to be working a lot harder, which has in some cases kille ddownload speed, though it never happened before.

I have been using a 100Mb connection for about a month compared to 50Mb before, so things come down quicker, but if they can not be unpacked, a queue starts to build. Is it possible that the wait time for each download is exceeded and therefore assemble incompletes applies, assembling the not yet downloaded par parts.

Another thing I have seen is occasions where all the broken parts are not assembled so do not appear to be download. All the good parts exist.

Hoping these may provide a few clues. Will now try RC6 in the morning

[magician1962]

OK with RC6 20 downloads 10GB nothing hanging around, so whatever you have done has improved it for me at least.

As one completes unrar, the next moves to autocomplete and all is well.

[Quade]

Thanks. Dex ran into something. His V scanner seemed to prevent a rename from NB2 to the actual filename and that caused it to hang around in the download list. I added retries to the rename. We'll try an RC7 tonight for people.

What happens when the rename fails is that Newsbin thinks everything is fine and dandy so, it doesn't unleash the PAR files.

[Telek]

Yeah, I'm pulling my hair out here trying to figure out why this happens to some people.

I'll play with the .rar thing thanks.

I just noticed the rc6 file so I will try that, however with RC5 the problem is still there regardless of other settings.

I have also noticed that when posts aren't available the downloads now just sit there locked in "retry" mode forever. Despite the server clearly indicating that the post is not available, the appropriate message showing up in the log, and the little red bar showing up in the status, the file still stays at "downloading".

Additionally when I close down and restart newsbin the download list comes up somewhat randomized - it does not save the order as it used to.

Is there any way to delete the files from the download list WITHOUT deleting the files from disk?

[dexter]

I just noticed the rc6 file so I will try that, however with RC5 the problem is still there regardless of other settings.

RC7 is now available.

I have also noticed that when posts aren't available the downloads now just sit there locked in "retry" mode forever. Despite the server clearly indicating that the post is not available, the appropriate message showing up in the log, and the little red bar showing up in the status, the file still stays at "downloading".

RC7 should address this.

Additionally when I close down and restart newsbin the download list comes up somewhat randomized - it does not save the order as it used to.

I'll leave this for Quade

Is there any way to delete the files from the download list WITHOUT deleting the files from disk?

It should be prompting you whether you want to delete from disk or not when you delete from the Download List.

[Telek]

Great thanks - I'll try RC7.

Another issue that I noticed is the "quick file creation mode". It says that you need to run as administrator, however if you do then you cannot auto-load NZB files anymore.

I normally download NZB files from aggregator sites and have newsbin autoload them for download. However since the web browser is not running as an administrator I just get the popup saying that there is another instance of newsbin running so shutting down to protect the data files.

Is it possible to have it detect that the other instance is running as admin and pass a message to the currently running instance to load the newly downloaded NZB file?

[Quade]

Another option is to set an "NZB Autoload" folder in the options and save your NZB files there. Newsbin will pick them up.

Unless you have a really fast connection, I'm not sure "High Speed" mode is worth it.

[Telek]

Another option is to set an "NZB Autoload" folder in the options and save your NZB files there. Newsbin will pick them up.

Unless you have a really fast connection, I'm not sure "High Speed" mode is worth it.

I have a 75mbit connection normally, but I'm running off a borrowed DSL 3mbit connection right now until my download cap resets in a few days.

The NZB autodownload folder looks like it'll work, thanks.

Running RC7 right now with the same .rar style files that were causing a lot of problems with RC5 so I will let you know in a few hours if it appears to be better. ... stupid download caps.

[Quade]

I get a constant 100 Mbps download speed and I don't use the high speed mode so, you might not need to. It depends on your PC though.

[Telek]

Ok so strange thing - this may have fixed it.

I thought that it was the same problem, as this screen stuck around for a while:



Each of those red blocks would disappear after a minute, and newsbin would keep trying to download them again. The log file said that "no such post exists on server" almost every time. Every few retry cycles it would grab another block. After about 30 minutes of retries it finally had enough, everything went gray, par repair and unrar completed.

So this is certainly better than RC5.

However this brings up the question - if my server (usenetserver.com) returns no such post why do persistent retries eventually retrieve the post??

[Telek]

Oh BTW the right-click and properties on the file did not help - the "autorar properties" window that comes up reported about 240/388 blocks available because apparently that dialog only pays attention to completed files. Any of the temporary (incomplete) files seem to be excluded from that.

[DThor]

The 'it's not here oh wait yes it is' behaviour is precisely what the retry in newsbin is for. Servers aren't perfect,sometimes one node on the farm might be out of sync with another,some data is being copied over and it times out, the posts are new and one has it before the other...lots of potential reasons. This is why aggressive mode is bad if this happens a lot on your server and you dislike downloading pars if you don't really need them. Me, I love aggressive since 95%, of what I download, it just works.

DT

[possamai]

same here..
I thought it was a server issue though since I didn't read anything about it on the forum..
segments just fail and when I retry them they download fine.
The error I get is a timeout or connection failure so it might be 2 completely different issues

UseNet provider: Usenetserver


EDIT: Nevermind.. Someone answered my question while I was typing

[Quade]

Yeah with a screwy server like this, you don't want to use aggressive mode and you might actually want to turn the retries up to 4-5 at least.

What's happening here is every time a new chunk downloads, Newsbin resets the retries back to zero. That's why they're not assembling immediately. Every server is different. I never see anything like this with Giga or AW.

[Telek]

Yeah with a screwy server like this, you don't want to use aggressive mode and you might actually want to turn the retries up to 4-5 at least.

What's happening here is every time a new chunk downloads, Newsbin resets the retries back to zero. That's why they're not assembling immediately. Every server is different. I never see anything like this with Giga or AW.

Great thanks - I was not using aggressive anymore anyway but turned the retries up to 5. We'll see if that helps.

[Telek]

I just noticed the rc6 file so I will try that, however with RC5 the problem is still there regardless of other settings.

RC7 is now available.

I have also noticed that when posts aren't available the downloads now just sit there locked in "retry" mode forever. Despite the server clearly indicating that the post is not available, the appropriate message showing up in the log, and the little red bar showing up in the status, the file still stays at "downloading".

RC7 should address this.

I can confirm that the problem is not fixed.



We can see here that all files are 100% downloaded. On disk they are completely intact and able to extract using WinRAR. However Newsbin is stuck in retry cycle despite all blocks complete, file sizes complete, all statuses "downloaded". I turned up the logging before this problem happened and nothing showed up.

[Quade]

What did autopar properties show? I'll bet there were other files in the PAR set and you don't have enough pars to repair them into existence. Where are the rest of the PARS? Maybe you cropped them out of the image.

I'd want to know what "Properties" right click on the main item showed.

[Telek]

I think I found the problem in this case: the .nfo file is missing. Despite having all required rar files to completely decode the PAR2 includes the .nfo file which is missing.



Is it possible to create a workaround on this? Newsbin is stuck in a "retry" cycle but not actually doing anything because all files are complete.

Edit: Ha! I was doing this at the same time as you posted your reply asking for it...

[magician1962]

Ok used RC6 , worked fine, using RC 7 working fine EVERYTHING is downloading and unpacking.

What might be being missed is that if the unpacking process is not keeping up with the download process, because of either drive fragmentation or other activity on the drive, they will start to queue up.

In my case I have fragmentation, and trying to move a file from the drive will degrade my download speed to 0 at times. The par repair can also do that


One thing I have noticed with RC6/7 my processor is working a lot harder, sometime peaking at above 50% but normally around 30%. Some of this may be due to the fragmentation, but in the past I don't remember it going much above 10%

i7-920 1GB Ram