Version 6.80 Release Candidate 8 Available...

[dexter]

Might be sounding like a broken record at this point but, we hope this will become the final release!

Changes in this version:

• Pause now pauses unrar/repair processing too. Helps with low disk situations.
• Fixed issue when downloading the last file in the set and hitting an error, it didn't fail the set. It just vanished.
• Fixed issue where PAR only sets weren't clearing from the download list.
• Changed logic to better handle when a single media file is posted with multiple par2 files.
• Fixed issue when you expand multiple sets then collapse them out of order. The state was geting screwed up.
• Fixed descriptions for the path variables displayed when you change a download path.
• Fixed issue where the 411 no group errors weren't listing the group.
• Improved handling of out of disk space situation. Now requires 2 times the free space before attempting unrar.
• Now pauses unrars if space gets low. Also requires 10% of the threshold space freed up before it the warning dialog disappears.
• Added the header import folder to periodic data folder cleanup routine. Import folder purging is smarter now. It won't touch a GZ or text file but will purge any extra files.
• Fixed issue when deleting a header download, was taking a very long time to recover.
• Changed method of renaming pars when needed.
• Fixed issue where empty groups weren't getting removed from the download list.
• Fixed issue where Clear Search history wasn't clearing poster history. Also fixed to clear imagedb search history.
• Fixed issue with header backlog counter. Now counts GZ and TXT files only.

The full change history and the download link is on the Newsbin Beta Page.

If you find any issues, please reply to this thread or use our Technical Support Contact Form.

[Quade]

To clarify the change to unraring and free disk space.

If Newsbin attempts to unrar and the destination disk doesn't have 2 times the RAR size free space, it'll pause the unrar and log the error to the logging tab. It'll keep logging every 5 seconds till you clear enough space for it to unrar. Download will continue unless you've disabled "download during unrar".

The normal data and download path free space checking is in place but the unrar free space checking is in addition to that since you can have the unrar path on a different drive than either the data or download folder.

[triskel]

Same problem as with RC 5, 6 and 7: the download of files listed in "Downloading Files" doesn't start.
I have to move all of them to "Wish List" and then back again to "Downloading Files", or close and restart Newsbin.
Reinstalled RC 4: all back to normal.

[Quade]

How many servers are you using? There's got to be something about your setup that I'm not factoring in.

[triskel]

I use 6 servers: 3 Easynews, 2 Giganews, 1 Altopia

[Quade]

How about cutting it down to 1 or 2 servers and see if it still does it. I wonder if one of your servers is dead.

Maybe disable all but altopia and see what happens.

Do any of them have "typical retention" set?

[triskel]

Tried: using only Altopia the download starts.
No typical retention set.
(All servers are active: there is a certain amount of downloads for each of them, and no problem with RC 4 and previous versions)

[Quade]

How about adding a server at a time till it stops working?

[triskel]

I've just tried: now the servers are all there and the download starts!
I really don't know what to say...

[triskel]

Closed and restarted Newsbin; added files to download: stuck again!
It seems that sometimes it works and sometimes it does not.

[Quade]

I think it sounds like you have a dead server or a server that starts sending errors. A dead server could easily give you these symptoms. That's why I suggested starting with Altopia, increasing the servers one at a time and then see if you can get figure out if it stops working after you add a specific server.

I'm not clear why the change from RC4 would make a difference so, I'm trying to gather some data points.

[triskel]

Same servers (or combination of them), different results: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (or starts to work and then stops).
One more time back to RC4 : it works everytime.

[Quade]

I did an experiment yesterday. I duplicated my UNS server entry and made them 2 connections each. So I have 6 UNS servers and one other server. It downloaded perfectly.

Are these servers all the same priority?

[triskel]

Same priority, two connections each.

[Calahan]

Updated Version 6.80RC7 to RC8 and $(RAWSUBJECT) at least didn't create the folder when unpacking.

"Main Download folder":
J:\!G\$(GROUP)\$(RAWSUBJECT)\
"UnRAR folder":
Setup is: L:\!D\$(RAWSUBJECT)\

Downloaded and/or unpacked files went to L:\!D.
As I deleted the Recycle Bin I can't say if the folder was created in the download path or not.
I went back to RC7, but I will test RC8 again to get further info about the Download Folder.

Edit: Just downloaded a set again and the download went to "J:\!G\$(GROUP)". The "$(RAWSUBJECT)" folder was not created either.
Have to go back to RC7...

Could you (pretty please) remove unwanted characters as "-" and blanks (maybe "_", ".", "," and so on too?) from the right side of the folder name?
Such characters makes no sense at the end of a folder name, I think.
At the moment, in many groups where I use $(RAWSUBJECT), the folder names end with " - ", which is unnessessary. I have to rename them all manually.

Don't know what it means but I got this error message in the log:
[04/23 12:04:57] ERROR BR: Read Failure: 16384 to read 0 Actual Read Code: 18446744071562145798
[04/23 12:04:57] ERROR BR: Read Failure - Would Block
[04/23 12:04:57] ERROR NEWS SERVER ERROR: Astraweb NNTPServer: Bad Compressed Header Format

I got this lines when I opened a group and a header update occured.
After that error, I retried the header update and no error lines were shown in the log.
(There were no new headers both times.)

[Quade]

The read failure just means the connection dropped out. The compress headers error was removed for RC8. So, you must be seeing it in RC7.

I'll look at "RAWSUBJECT". You only get a raw subject if it can actually find it in the subject field after cleanup.

[Kraut2003]

Same here $(RAWSUBJECT) seems to be broken - not working on RC8
(Win 10 PRO 64 bit German, 16 GB RAM Core I7 CPU - DL Folder is NAS (Synology) / Data Folder is Local

[abandonedbrain]

[quote="Quade"]The read failure just means the connection dropped out. The compress headers error was removed for RC8. So, you must be seeing it in RC7.

I can confirm, I see this in RC7. Having a lot of weird issues with RC7. I'm coming from the last stable release, so I don't know when they might have started if I'd installed each RC. UsenetSearch in the program is failing quite frequently with odd errors:

ERROR BR: Read Failure: 16384 to read 0 Actual Read Code: 18446744071562145798
ERROR BR: Read Failure - Would Block
ERROR WebClient: Error reading HTTP status line

(the last, followed by a pop-up window from the program regarding UsenetSearch Error, but I didn't get a chance to screenshot that)

Haven't been having any problems with the stable release prior to updating last week to RC7. I use Astraweb and UsenetBucket, and I always connect via NordVPN. Running in CrossOver for Mac in a Win 8 bottle (which has worked extremely well for years, thanks for that!), if it matters.

[mister_loaf]

RC-8 still has the "pause" bug.

Pause the program and a few seconds later it un-pauses itself.

Please fix This is extremely annoying.

Thank You.

[Quade]

Pause the program and a few seconds later it un-pauses itself.

I can't repro your results with RC8.

If you look down at the status bar, where is says "...Ready | Running | Full Speed | XXXXX|" what does it XXXX say? It should say "Disabled". If not, click it till it says "disabled". Then try pausing again. In the network options make sure "Use Pause Timeout" is unchecked.

[mister_loaf]

Pause the program and a few seconds later it un-pauses itself.

I can't repro your results with RC8.

If you look down at the status bar, where is says "...Ready | Running | Full Speed | XXXXX|" what does it XXXX say? It should say "Disabled". If not, click it till it says "disabled". Then try pausing again. In the network options make sure "Use Pause Timeout" is unchecked.

Yes, "Use Pause Timeout" is unchecked

OK. Clicked on the thing that said "Enabled" and changed it to "Disabled". That seemed to fix the problem.

But that's for the Scheduler. Why would enabling the Scheduler cause the program to automatically un-pause itself every time I pause it? Seems like a bug that needs to be fixed. Just for fun, here's a screen cap of the bug in action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1wCvOtas0

Also, there's a slight design flaw in the layout of the program. I have a large monitor. I don't run Newsbin full screen. I just have it large enough so I can see the things I need to see -- article name, date, current download status. The buttons at the bottom of the screen don't scale according to window size, so at my size, not all the things at the bottom are visible.

For example, the Scheduler button you wanted me to click on to change Enabled to Disabled, I couldn't figure out what you were talking about. There was nothing there. Turns out I had that one hidden (right click on status bar, uncheck the box) because I never use the scheduler. BUT, even after I checked the box to make it visible I still didn't see it until I expanded the Newsbin window out quite a bit larger than I normally run.

Oh well, working fine now.

[Quade]

But that's for the Scheduler. Why would enabling the Scheduler cause the program to automatically un-pause itself every time I pause it?

The scheduler overrides the pause button. It's always overridden the pause button. You could certainly argue that the pause button should override the scheduler but currently it doesn't.

The status bar areas are just a convenience. All of that functionality is accessible through the tool bar or the options. The only real way to fix the scaling is probably to replace the existing GUI. I'm working towards that but 6.80 will still have the old GUI for now.