SABnzbd Forums

Hey everyone,
I've been having some issues with sabnzbd and was hoping you could help. I am running sabnzbd on a dedicated windows machine, with couchpotato and nzbdrone.
Most of the time, sabnzbd works pretty flawlessly, i have a 100 mbit connection and most of the time its able to maximize that, but after a random amount of time, usually a couple days, the speed just craters for no real reason. It will go from 11+ MB/sec and then go to 500KB and less. Often going to 0. When this happens i check my resource manager, and CPU use is negligible (around 3%) and memory usage is usually around 30% (depending on how much of a cache i have given sabnzbd - its at 250M now). I also notice the amount of connections to my news server(s) drops (my main server i have set for 15 connections, my backup i have set to 5). However, if i restart this machine, the speed resumes as normal for a while. Usually a day or 2. I have tried following all the guides i could find for configuring sabnzbd and used the options stated (such as random ip option for the news server) but nothing works until a reboot.
I have had this same issue now on 2 machines, and its seems to happen when the machine gets busy. I just got couch potato working in the last few days and its been doing more work than usual since i gave my lady access to it.
It would happen on my previous machine when it was just running sickbeard and nzbdrone (mostly i just attributed this to the machine itself since it was a painfully slow AMD APU machine - It was running windows 7). And now it appears to be happening on my purpose built machine i just built about 5 days ago. New machine info is :

Version: 0.7.16
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
CPU: Intel i5-4570
RAM: 8GB DDR3
HDD: 500GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive
Install-type: Windows Installer
Firewall Software: Windows Defender (sabnzbd has an exception)
Are you using IPV6? No
Is the issue reproducible? For me, yes.

Now, i have come across quite a few similar issues in the last few days, but most of the time those threads just never get solved with the last bits of advice telling people to check their internet connection. In my case, its not the internet connection as at the same moment that sabnzbd is not able to maintain any throughput, i will get the same NZB file on a machine running right beside it, running through the same networking hardware, and load it up in newsbin and get full speed. Obviously, i don't usually have usenet connections running on multiple machines in my house, i only did it to test the usenet connection when sabnzbd is unable to download.
Is there some kind of program cache that might be filling up if a machine is under load for a few days that might not clear until a reboot? I really don't understand what could possibly be happening here.

A few people have reported similar issues.
It could be some resource exhaustion.
One work-around could be to set a program restart in SABnzbd's scheduler.
Say, once every 12 hours.

Restarting sabnzbd doesn't help... it only seems to help when the PC is restarted.

That is odd.
I cannot say that I've heard that complaint before.
Stopping a program releases all its claimed resources,
or so it should go.

I know. Which confuses me as well. The problem is starting to feel more and more random, as last night i noticed that the speeds were just slow even after a reboot. Fluctuating between about 300KB/sec and 3.5MB/sec. Still well below the speeds that my connection is capable of. Is there some kind of shared temp dir with windows or something? I tried clearing out the complete/incomplete directories hoping that might help (there were a lot of folders/files in there) but it didn't appear to help.
It starting to feel like a pretty random problem so i'm not really sure what i can do. I have tried other problems like nzbget and they don't seem to be able to go above 4 or 5MB/sec so i would prefer to keep using sabnzbd... i just really have no idea if there is anything we can do to fix the issue... i'm not even sure there is one frankly, it could be anything at this point.

I'm experiencing the same thing. Out of the blue. I haven't changed anything. My ISP is Cox (not known for hijacking speed). Speedtests are all consistent, but download speeds are erratic and slow.

riccochet wrote:I have tried other problems like nzbget and they don't seem to be able to go above 4 or 5MB/sec so i would prefer to keep using sabnzbd...

If nzbget is not faster than SABnzbd, then there's definitely something else going on.
As to what, I have no idea
At least, I assume you're not using a wireless connection?

Nope. Its gigabit wired.

Been seeing this issue for the past couple of months as well. It's consistently at or below 500 kb/s.

v0.7.17
2013 Mac Mini
OS X Mavericks 2.6 GHZ Intel Core i7
16GB 1600 MHZ DDR3
G-Technology 6TB Firewire 800 Drive

I have been having the same problem but only after updating to the latest 7.17 version. I have had to start using NewsLeecher instead to utilize my speed.

comicbookman wrote:I have been having the same problem but only after updating to the latest 7.17 version. I have had to start using NewsLeecher instead to utilize my speed.

Does the problem go away if you go back to 0.7.16?

Glad to hear it's not just me then.
SABnzbd Version: 0.7.17
QNAP TS410

Fresh install today after experiencing the fluctuating speeds. Still get same thing. I've reduced server connections from 20 to 5 and speed kinda levels off around 1MBs, which is much less than I can get. Upside is that is doesn't hit 0 anymore....
I've changed providers 3 times and the same thing occurs on each.

update:
played around with the connections and found that with only 2 connections set on any of the providers gives the best performance, but still not full speeds.
I'm prob getting about 60%, but it still fluctuates a bit.

Also, I think it only started after upgrading to the latest version, but can't be 100% sure.

bforty wrote:I'm experiencing the same thing. Out of the blue. I haven't changed anything. My ISP is Cox (not known for hijacking speed). Speedtests are all consistent, but download speeds are erratic and slow.

same this happening here with cox internet. Im wired and out of the blue as of last night SAB is downloading at 1.1MB/s instead of the normal 6.2MB/s. Idownloaded a few nzb downloaders and they all are pulling files at my max bandwidth but SAB will not go faster than 1.1MB, initially i thought it was my ips so i hav cox coming to the house tomorrow but they wont be able to remedy my SAB problem plus i would never show them that im using newsgroups

Both: try a full queue repair from the Status page.

I am an old/new user of sabnzbd and this is my first post here.

Old/new because I had experience with the Linux version of sabnzbd running on a Synology NAS about 3 years ago, but this is my first Windows version.

Latest windows version (0.7.17) is installed in a 32-bit, 3GB DDR2, Windows 7 Pro, running on Zotac Mag HDND01 low power mini PC as I need better performance than the Synology NAS.

Basically, I am seeing the same thing with my newly installed (4 days old) Windows sabnzb, i.e. max download speed at 1.1 MBps as if it were capped. It should be at least maxed out at double that speed, as I have 25Mbps download bandwidth. Strange also how somebody else also maxed out at the same 1.1 MBps. The download data is written to the boot hard drive (1TB Seagate SSHD), not anything external.

I also installed Newsbin in that same PC and it has been running for 2 weeks and it downloads at full speed (2.4 - 2.5 MBps).

Will try the full queue repair, but i am not sure it would do anything as this install is very recent and I have not downloaded a lot of data that could cause a problem with the queue.