Pause post-processing while downloading

[zztopless]

Hi everyone,

First of all, a big thanks to the makers of sabnzb - after much frustration with newsbin pro and grabit, the speed and stability of sabnzb is amazing.

I was just wondering if it is possible to enable post processing, but only have it run when there are no downloads running.  The reason this would be useful, it that I am in Australia and have unlimited off-peak, so  I only download in the wee hours of the morning.  I notice when the hdd has to decode/unrar at the same time as downloading, the speed drops off, from 70-80mbps to 30-40 (which is understandable, giving that hdd's not handle doing to things at once).

Would prefer to do all post-processing when I can't download large files anyway, including joining, as that also slows things down a bit.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
zz

[shypike]

This is planned for a future release.

[zztopless]

This is planned for a future release.

Awesome, look forward to it

[shypike]

Likely the first major release after we do 0.5.2 (bug fixing only).

[Schism]

So did this ever get implemented? Because I still don't see the option

[shypike]

What has been implemented (a long time ago):
- Start and stop post-processing in the Scheduler
- Pause downloading while post-processing.

[Schism]

Well I'm downloading at Uni and only want to do post processing after all downloads are finished, or only at home where I have a faster CPU and USB3.0 speeds. Am I going to have to enable a schedule for this?

[shypike]

That's the solution.
We don't think "no pp during download" is useful for many people.
BTW: I don't see how having a faster CPU at home is going to help.
Are you planning on moving unprocessed jobs on another system?

[Schism]

During PP my download speeds are only 2 or 3Mb/s, or less. Post processing is taking longer than my downloads are with these older optiplex systems, however downloads when PP isn't running easily hit 10MB/s on the college network. I'm not sure how much the CPUs are playing a part in this, but I figured the combination of my i5-3570k and USB3 speeds at home would accomplish PP much faster while maximizing class download time.

[shypike]

So you're downloading on one system and post-processing on another one.
It's far from trivial to accomplish that on two different systems.
Not having the option is the least of your problems.
I assume that you download at school to an external disk and take that home at night?
If you set it up carefully you can do that, all of SABnzbd data should be on the external disk
and the drive letter should be the same on both systems.
I suggest that you use the scheduler to block post-processing during school hours.

[Schism]

I may try that. I don't live on campus, so I'm basically here for anywhere from 1.15 to 3 hours at a time. I'm downloading to a 2.5 external 500gb harddrive with USB3 capability, but the computers at campus do not have USB3 ports (though it's backward compatible at a lower speed). I don't mind post processing on the school computers *if* all downloads are finished, but otherwise the PP is slow enough that I usually get downloads queuing up waiting for PP, while PP also slows the download speed to 2 or 3MB/s, sometimes as low as 1.5MB/s average.

[iSteven]

I think the OP has already explained the problem pretty well but hear me out:

Currently I have SABnzbd configured to download only during the night and do all post processing during the day. The reason being my ISP imposing bandwidth caps on users who download "a lot" during the day.

On a typical day this means that my downloads will happily sit in the queue until midnight, which is when the scheduler resumes downloading and suspends post-processing. After the minimal amount of bytes in order to reconstruct the source files are in, those downloads just sit there until 8 AM when downloading is suspended and post-processing is resumed by the scheduler. If I'm lucky and all parts are complete, that's the end of that. However if I'm missing a couple of blocks, my downloads will sit in the queue for another ~15 hours before downloading is again resumed at midnight and par2 files can be downloaded. It then takes another ~8 hours before post-processing will resume again. Especially older content (uploaded years ago) can take days for everything to smooth out.

So why don't I leave post-processing enabled during the night? Processing power. Checking for errors, repairing and unpacking is a really tough job for my poor little NAS. I'm afraid downloading and post-processing at the same time is just a little more than it can take.

The solution? Pause post-processing while downloading. The main priority is still downloading, so post-processing should not interrupt that in any way. However when there's no download activity, all of those system resources suddenly become available for other activities such as checking for errors. Sadly this is something that the scheduler can't do.

[jcfp]

Assuming your download speed is fast enough to not need all night just for the leeching itself, you could just pause postprocessing during d/l via the normal settings (and only have the downloading on a schedule). Otherwise, maybe run a script on queue finish, to overrule the scheduler and restart postproc ahead of the scheduled fixed 8am starting time? Not entirely sure if this is even possible, I don't have any such problems.

[iSteven]

I like your thinking. However I'm fairly sure that post-processing would have to be enabled for any such scripts to run in the first place.

[rudnicke]

It would be great to have a manual "pause post-processing" button.