Three usenet servers, priority based on availability

[urbanriot]

I never realized I had this issue until I received an NZB file from a friend with the same usenet provider and I couldn't get it...

I have three usenet providers, each with more potentially available than the other but sometimes each one will have something the others do not have. Basically I want to prioritize one usenet server as the primary usenet server but if this primary server doesn't have the data, which it often doesn't, it will go to one of the other ones and if the other one doesn't have the data, it will go to the next one.

Currently what's happening now is that my downloads are cancelling out unless I disable two out of the three servers so it defaults to the one I know has the data.

Is it possible to get such a configuration as I described in paragraph 2? Thanks in advance!

[shypike]

I don't recognize the issue you describe.
SABnzbd has only two priority levels, not three.
However, i've never seen that disabling servers was necessary to complete a download.
First all primary servers are tried until one has the required article.
After that, the backup servers are tried.
So unless one of the servers sends fake articles that SABnzbd doesn't recognize
as invalid, I don't see how what you describe can happen.

[urbanriot]

First all primary servers are tried until one has the required article.
After that, the backup servers are tried.

Perhaps I've simply had a bad configuration since I switched to sabnzb almost a year ago and hopefully you can advise me on how I can obtain an ideal configuration.

With Newsbin, I set my most reliable server as the server to download headers yet set it as a "Fill Server" which is described as "Only use server if no other server has the post" and I set my other backup server as a "Fill Server" as well, while my primary server (the fastest but least reliable in posts) would grab as much as it could and one of the other two would fill in the gaps. This was reliable and I also tested it again with what sabnzb can't complete, and it completes those as well.

With sabnzb we have options "Backup server" and "Optional", from my understanding of the documentation "Optional" probably wouldn't apply to me since my servers are connectedly reliable, just not post reliable, and "Backup server" is the same as Newsbin's "fill server". So if I have my 'primary server' without any check boxes and the other two servers with check boxes on "Backup server", it will try to grab posts from the other two servers and move along?

If that's the ideal method then there's something else enabled that's causing this to quit out with either "Aborted, cannot be completed" or "Download failed - Out of your server's retention" as I need to disable the other two servers for it to use one of the backup servers as the primary server.

[shypike]

SABnzbd only knows primary and backup servers.
"Optional" is to be used only for very unreliable servers that would otherwise block downloads.
(They are ignored for 10 minutes when they cause too many timeouts.)
You most reliable server should be "backup", the fast one should be "primary".