incomplete files never fill in

[shawn]

I've noticed this for a while and it is still occuring in the latest beta. What happens is that I will get the latest headers and a post will show up as incomplete. A few hours later I will start up NBP again and download the latest headers and the post will still be incomplete. Yet if I check on the web site (Easynews) the post is complete. Even the next day the post still shows as incomplete even if I download special 500,000 headers to see if it was filled in.

This doesn't happen with every post but seems to happen every week with a few posts. Any one else seeing this?

For instance I'm looking at one post that consists of 17 rar files, a nfo and sfv file and 7 par files. That shows up on the Easynews web site (the files were posted last night over 8 hours ago) and yet in NBP 4 incomplete rar files are showing, along with a nfo and a par file.

[Quade]

In the server advanced options, I'd set the overlap to 200 and see if that solves this. Some servers aren't 100% synchronized so, there can be gaps between one header download and the next. You might see some files becoming new again because of the overlap. Particularly if it's a low post count group.

The Web interface and headers are only remotely related on Easy. Just something to keep in mind. For example you can have posts on the group that might or might no be reflected in the headers.

[shawn]

Yes, I know the web servers are separate from the NNTP servers. That's why I used the other search interface that only checks the NNTP servers. I also thought about the propagation issue between servers which is why I checked again this morning when the upload of the headers was finished by midnight so that there would be plenty of time for the headers to propagate throughout the Easynews server farm.

I'll give the overlap change a try but I really don't expect it to help since this is alt.binaries.teevee which gets a moderate amount of daily traffic.
Thanks for the quick response.

[Quade]

I'll give the overlap change a try but I really don't expect it to help since this is alt.binaries.teevee which gets a moderate amount of daily traffic.

I should have probably explained overlap. Usenet is a sliding window of posts. Like a treadmill, new posts are added to the font and old posts fall off the back.

When Newsbin downloads headers, it notes the last index it downloaded and starts a new header download a "last index + 1". What overlap changes is at what position it downloads headers from. Instead of "last index +1" it becomes "last index - overlap + 1" So, some old headers are download that overlap headers you already have stored on disk. It doesn't matter how busy the group is. Without overlap, the server has to be perfect. With some servers that's not a problem and when you ask for "last index + 1" that's what you get. With other servers that have multiple servers servicing the clients, sometimes it's not perfect and you get some gaps.

Another thing you might check is to expand the incomplete set with the + icon and see if it's actually complete. Sometimes the completeness flag doesn't get toggled.

I mentioned low traffic groups only because low traffic ones will show more artifacts from using overlap. Teevee is a moderately busy group.

[shawn]

Yes, I've seen the other incomplete issue where one file is incomplete but everything else is there so there's more than enough to rebuild the post with Par files or where the post is complete but marked as incomlete. Neither is the case for this post because as I stated above only 4 files show up when I expand the post in Newsbin Pro so it's still showing up as incomplete in NBP.

[TBlack]

Quade,

Great explanation....two thumbs up!!

Thanks!!!