Higher Retry Count/Retry Count option

[CranialBlaze]

Something i feel will be a great add, partly as it caused some trouble with 1 of my DL's this week.

I was downloading a file that was 170 days old, within my servers 200 day retention, but for some reason, numerous block were missing from the later files, now putting it into altbinz solves the issue as my retry count is set to 999 and my server does eventually retrieve the missing block from the source or alternate servers, from experience it takes normally between 1 and 5 retries.

The other problem is here in backwards south africa, the ISP's have ridiculous shaping on nntp that practically amounts to castration, getting 10k during peak hours is now considered a miracle. So the combination of time outs and missing blocks, sabnzbd for certain files successfully downloaded 0 blocks, yet removed the file from the q and created the file int he download directory essentially blank.

With sabnzbd i have the retry count at 999 and the retry wait period set at 5 min, with this configuration the only time i ever had serious trouble was when files were incorrectly uploaded originally.

If asbnzbd could give us those options, or maybe even increase the retry count and possibly even move files with missing block to the bottom of the q or just a timed pause to give the server time to get the blocks, i am sure many servers support this method it would help a great deal, as with todays download it downloaded 12 files each with 24 total blocks, but 5 had 0 blocks and of the rest the most was 13 competed block for a single file. I have those exact same files in altbinz and its getting all the blocks, its just taking longer than usual, but its downloading what next in the q during the breaks.

I would rather wait longer for a specific download to finish instead of having to start all over again or have to rely on an inferior product to complete the task.

[shypike]

This is a bit of a strange proposal.
In fact, SABnzbd has infinite retries.
As long as the Usenet server doesn't actually answer that an article is missing, it will try forever.
If you have a server that actively answers that it doesn't have an article, but still gives it
if you ask often enough, that's one dumb server.
The retries (and timeouts) are meant for servers that fail to respond at all (which happens a lot).
I find it hard to believe that alt.binz keeps asking when the server says it doesn't have the article.

You did not declare your server to be "optional"?
Because we use that as a deadlock breaker.

[CranialBlaze]

I have seen in SA's logs notices of article missing, but as i said with altbinz it still gets them.

In the past i had only ever seen that happen with files older than 200 days, i have seen in altbinz connection list i think its the 400 or 401 error where it says article not found and sometimes it gets the article on the next retry other times it takes way longer, i have seen a 15mb file form a series ep take up to 2 hours to complete, bu by that point almost all the files from that ep are near completion and when the par check runs through i get 100% article presence, no damaged files and no trouble on extraction.

Personally i would not say its stupid, if the blocks not there it can only report it as missing, i don't think there would be a hold on i will go fetch it command, but in my experience it has always fetched it and alt has managed to retried said missing article on a later retry, as i said i had that problem with my download today and alt rite now is sitting downloading the same files that sab had incompletely downloaded, and its taking some time, but 1 of the files that sab had downloaded 0 articles from is now sitting on 97% and i can say with almost certainty that there are no missing articles.

its possible that other news servers also retrieve missing articles under such circumstances, it could just be that altbinz is the only 1 that refuses to accept missing as an answer and under most circumstances most end users would never notice especially as most servers these days have 500+ days of retention, which in the grand scheme is ridiculously long and unless u have a download with  large amount of missing articles you will never notice the tricks that are apparently exclusive to altbinz.

If i remember correctly it may have something to do with the "Article cmd" option in altbinz, i have no idea what it does but i was told its a good idea to tick it, have never tried without it enabled.

Also just to clarify, i only have 1 news server loaded as i only have 1 news server account and do not have a backup solutions, mostly because of how altbinz has worked int he past, i have successfully downloaded a series of 368 days old on my Cheapernews server with 200 day retention, i only ever got about 60% of my maximum, but at the end of it all i got every episode without downloading a single par file.

I don't mind having alt as a backup, but it would be nice if i did not have to use it at all.

[shypike]

It's still very weird and protocol-breaking server behavior and you're the first one that reports this issue.
We're not exactly enthusiastic about implementing such a feature.
(BTW: I found the alt.binz reference. You are correct, it has this feature.)

I'll discuss it with the team.
We generally not keen on implementing complex features for a very small user group.

[CranialBlaze]

Understandable, its not an extreme issue for me, i seldom download files this old and with so many shows on break rite now i dont mind making use of altbinz.

My biggest reason for jumping to SA after about 2 years with alt is that i have a media pc/download pc, and with sab i don't need to vnc into the machine to checkup on downloads, and it often happened that i absentmindedly vnc'd in while someone was watching something.

Also the RSS management is a lot easier to update and modify, especially as you guys support multiple feeds, allows me to be a lot more specific with my filters, the email is just a bonus, now i just need to figure out why my blackberry doe snot like the mobile template, but i will worry more about that once i get my Storm2.

Also i plan on changing news servers in the near future, i just want to see how the recently discovered player works with our ISP's insanely pathetic limiting policies for nntp. They have shaped traffic to sub 10kbps on all nntp, p2p and popular fileshare sites like rapidshapre using the ip as well as protocol shaping. Recent reports that newsdemon is a good way around it as they have ssl on port 80 as well as there traffic is sent via the tcp protocol instead of the nntp so as far as any computer algorithm is concerned its essentially web traffic so there are currently no limitations imposed, but i will wait till about a month or 2 after FIFA is done and then see if the rose bush has grown big nasty thorns

Thanks for the great ap