NZB errors and missing Block/Articles. How to avoid it

[MrHaugen]

I've been using SABnzbd and Sickbeard for TV Shows for a week now. There is several missing seasons/episodes in my archive, and almost 50% of what I download has either an unusable NZB file or has lots of missing blocks/articles after downloading. I don't mind adding one season or episode manually now and then, but when it happens this regularly, there has to be ways to improve this, or else people would not be using Sicbeard and SABnzbd I think.

My setup:
Sickbeard Alpha 486 (custom J River Media Center integration)
SABnzbd+ 0.6.5

Search Providers (in order used):
NZBMatrix premium membership (NZB search)
Newzbin
Sick Beard Index
NZB.su

Usenet Servers:
UseNetServer (1 month test period)
NewsDeamon (backup block account)

Most of the good NZB files seems to come from NZBMatrix. I've not seen much downloads from Newzbin or Sick Beard Index. If NZB.su is used, I often get Unusable NZB's. When the actual download have completed, 40% or so of my downloads has missing blocks/articles, and I've not seen a single block being downloaded from NewsDeamon (the account still have 0.00 GB used out of my block account).
So, why is not my block account used? Wrong settings, same provider with the same content removed? Is there other search provides that works better together with NZBMatrix than NZB.su? I don't mind paying 10 bucks or so for access to several other search providers, as long as it's not per month. I could also buy more block accounts, and perhaps ONE more monthly news server subscription for this to work better.

You guys have some advice? What is the best combo of search providers and Usenet servers? How can I avoid all this errors and blocks missing?

[shypike]

With the demise of the original newzbin and (for the Dutch) that of FTD,
it has become more difficult to get good NZB files.
Block server are only useful if your NZB files are complete.
Articles missing from the NZB cannot be requested from backup servers either.

[MrHaugen]

Apperently there was something fishy with my Newsdeamon setup. The connection test worked byt my connection log told me otherwise: 2011-07-09 02:57:08,161 ERROR: Cannot connect to server europe.newsdemon.com:119 [400 DENIED*]. I tried changing this to another address. Let's hope that solves some of the blocks missing problems.

[MrHaugen]

Did not catch that replay before my last post.

Articles missing from the NZB cannot be requested from backup servers either.

Ok. And what does that mean exactly? That a backup block account is useless? Do I have to download the whole episode/season again from the block account?
I have tried to do the repair on the downloads, but it only accepts new NBZ files. I tried loading the same NZB again in the hope that if would pick up the missing blocks from another server, but no. It does not seem to fetch blocks from other servers, as you say. Would it help to remove the "backup" option on this server? Is there any way to control primary and secondary servers for downloads? My block account will not last for long if not.

[inpheaux]

Ok. And what does that mean exactly?

An NZB is a list of articles for SABnzbd to download. If your indexer sucks and the article is missing from the NZB itself, nothing will ever tell SABnzbd to download it.

That a backup block account is useless?

Your backup account is worthless, but not for that reason. Your primary server is Usenetserver, which is a Highwinds company. Newsdemon is a Highwinds reseller. If an article is missing on your primary server it'll be just as missing on your backup server too, because they're both using the same feed.

[MrHaugen]

Exactly. That's what I was afraid of.

So, what do you guys use to get most successful downloads possible? What indexers and usenet servers provide the best results this days? Money is not my biggest concern. I want something as reliable as possible, without getting broke.

[inpheaux]

Exactly. That's what I was afraid of.

So, what do you guys use to get most successful downloads possible? What indexers and usenet servers provide the best results this days? Money is not my biggest concern. I want something as reliable as possible, without getting broke.

Supernews (A Giganews company, $10/mo), and nzb.su should be plenty reliable. I'd drop Newzbin from your list of indexers entirely, and swap NZBMatrix and NZB.su on the priority list.

[mavermc]

Hey let us know if switching to this provider works for you. I have the same issue of random rar blocks not coming through so then it locks up and I have to manually extract and even when I do that 7zip will give me an error, sometimes the file is still playable sometimes it's a mess (missing frame index and stuff)

2011-07-07 14:30:12,562 ERROR: Loading C:\FILES\inc\(2009)\__ADMIN__\SABnzbd_article_8ojs2w failed
2011-07-07 14:25:53,203 ERROR: Loading C:\FILES\inc\(2009)\__ADMIN__\SABnzbd_article_b5t4mw failed

And I've tried 2 providers now Astra and now news.usenetserver.com and both give me similar problems, with newest released tv shows it doesn't happen often, but I have gotten fails from just about every indexer so I figured it was a crappy usenet provider. Backlogs almost fail exclusively (80%) but brand new releases only fail about 10% of the time, movies are about 60% fails.

Curious, does nobody use womble or NZBrus? are they both unreliable indexers?

So I changed up my preferred order of indexers as I run this last month out of my usenet, but I am interested to hear if the guy who started this thread has his problems fixed by switching to the supernews provider.

then i'll be switching as well, as this usenet thing i've been trying to do for the past 3 months to make my TV shows more "hands off" has required a lot of work

[shypike]

The error messages that you list have nothing to do with Usenet providers.
It suggests that something goes wrong with saving articles (or reading them later).
It would require analysis of the log files to say anything useful about the causes.

[mavermc]

2011-07-07 14:30:12,562::ERROR::[__init__:803] Loading C:\FILES\inc\Up (2009)\__ADMIN__\SABnzbd_article_8ojs2w failed

2011-07-07 14:30:12,562::INFO::[__init__:804] Traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "sabnzbd\__init__.pyo", line 801, in load_data
WindowsError: [Error 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process: 'C:\\FILES\\inc\\Up (2009)\\__ADMIN__\\SABnzbd_article_8ojs2w'
2011-07-07 14:30:12,578::INFO::[assembler:139] <Article: article=[email protected], bytes=398198, partnum=48, art_id=SABnzbd_article_8ojs2w> missing

I don't understand because what other app could be using the files?

I've got sickbeard and couch patato running on another computer but they're not pulling any data, once the file is done SAB puts the file on to their computer.

I can look into the SAB computer that does the download seems to get into a reading issue when it goes to extract. If this is a file permission issue, why does it still fail when I try to 7zip these files. It was that fact that lead me to believe my usenet provider wasn't very good.

I don't understand how the file could be in use. That's a fresh install of XP, no antivirus, just windows xp firewall, a teamspeak server and utorrent. I have no idea how i keeps getting these read errors unless the downloads are corrupt or the harddrive is bad, but the OS is working just fine and all torrent downloads work great. so that's why I think the downloads are corrupt and I think that's the fault of usenet

[MrHaugen]

Supernews (A Giganews company, $10/mo), and nzb.su should be plenty reliable. I'd drop Newzbin from your list of indexers entirely, and swap NZBMatrix and NZB.su on the priority list.

Thanks Inpheaux. That's the things I want to know about. I started by switching from NZBmatrix to NZB.su and dropping Newzbin. So far it seems like there is much less "corrupted" NZB downloads. I'll have to check closer if it also means that there will be less blocks missing on the media downloads, but I have my doubts. If this is still a big problem I'll try to switch to Supernews and use my Newsdeamon block account in addition. Hope that will solve most of the problems.

[shypike]

2011-07-07 14:30:12,562::ERROR::[__init__:803] Loading C:\FILES\inc\Up (2009)\__ADMIN__\SABnzbd_article_8ojs2w failed
I don't understand because what other app could be using the files?

Apart from a bug in SABnzbd (or the Python run-time library),
what I can think of are virus scanners and indexing programs (like Google Desktop).
Try excluding the "incomplete" folder from the anti-virus program (or indexer).
The virus scanner can do its work on the final destination folder.

[MrHaugen]

I did as inpheaux suggested. Made a 15$ donation to NZB.su, changed it to first priority for indexers. This solved all of my problems with NZB's with errors. Also subscribed to Supernews as you suggested, and used my newsdeamon block account as a backup account for Newsdeamon. So far, I've only used about 700 MB on 200GB downloads. It'll last for a while

I've have not had ONE single NZB error or any missing blocks/articles after I did this changes, or they have been downloaded correctly from my block account. Fantastic! Things like this should be written on the FAQ pages

Thanks for the advice inpheaux!

[free2hear]

sorry to revive this dead thread but tried sab for the 1st time this afternoon and got a load of missing blocks. it's my premiere in usenet and in 5 downloads only one was complete and functional. the other were missing pw's, or missing files, whatever. have astraweb as provider and sab as cliente (quite complicated huh??) i tjhink i understand why they give a load of GB for trial, because you end up downloading a lot of nothing. my bad i didn't "try" nothing and went straight to paid business but with this tax of failure...

any suggestions appreciated

[shypike]

It depend much on what you try to download.
Astraweb is the fastest DMCA takedowner on the planet, so not recommended.
Passwords is just bad luck, you're a victim of scavengers
(scum that reposts other people's posts but encrypted).