SABnzbd Forums

Ok, I've read quite a bit about this but what I have not found is a definitive remedy for this problem.

I would say that roughly 40% of what SAB downloads ends with "FAILED" due to repair blocks. Sometimes it's thousands short, sometimes as few as 3! I am currently using fastusenet.org and SAB is being fed by sickbeard and couch potato.

Anyhow, I've read everything from needing to use a backup server to using a different server. I feel like fastusenet.org is pretty decent, it advertises 1003 day retention and my DL speeds are almost always maxed out.

If SAB does not have enough blocks to repair a file and it appends a "FAILED" to the folder, does that mean SAB is done with it or will SAB continue to search for the necessary blocks. also, would I have the same result if I delete the "FAILED" folder and files and then send the same NZB for download?

I'm sure this post will frustrate some people here so in advance I extend my apologies. However, I definitely encounter this problem with frequency and so I would like to find a definitive course of action.

Thanks in advance.

All depends on the quality of the NZB files.
If a poor post doesn't have enough par2 files for repair, you're screwed.
Both SickBeard and CouchPotato depend on the quality of the indexing sites they use.
SABnzbd cannot make up or find additional par2 files.
Hands-off automation also means a bigger chance on failures.

BTW: we are working on a pre-download check that will determine if enough data is
on the server. Not perfect and time-consuming, but it will reduce the number of failed downloads.

Thank you. That makes pretty good sense to me.

I have a paid nzbmatrix membership. Given the info you've suggested, is there a better indexing service I should be using? I think I've got sickbeard and couchpotato looking at nzbmatrix first, then wombles index, then nzb.su.

Does that sound sufficient? You also mentioned that "hands off automation" has it's downsides like this. should I manually search for the NZB files which have failed to download entirely?

You may just have had bad luck.
I frequently use nzbmatrix but apart from it wobbly API, I have few complaints about its NZB files.
Most of the time I manually lookup items, looking for completeness and comments.
When you encounter a bad NZB, look on the nzbmatrix website for alternatives.

I have the same problem with getting Insufficient repair blocks only for some files. I was using nzbmatrix and usenetserver. I just signed up to giganews as well to see if it is any better (as per suggestions in other threads here).

I have 3 very large files I downloaded (20 gig each) with only 2-8 missing repair blocks. Now I have a new news server do I need to try and re-download the complete file, or is there a way to get sabnzbd+ to only try to fetch the parts that are incorrect?

As you may discover I am very new to the usenet world of today (Mostly have used torrents in the past). Any information leading me to how to recover from such errors without needing to redownload everything will be very welcome.

Thank You

You'll need to remove the files that miss parts (they're smaller than their peers)
from the "incomplete" job folder.
After that "Retry" the job from History.
SABnzbd cannot fill missing parts of a file afterwards.

Disturbing trend; might be my Scottish ancestry but I don't like to see such waste. Whatever issues are causing a 40% failure rate should be troubleshooted into oblivion.

If your source of NZBs is unreliable, then SABnzbd isn't the right tool to use.
Of course it is possible to scrape together posts from bits and pieces, like in the old days.
But in that case you'd better go back to NewsLeecher and headering.

We are working on a pre-download check to filter out any potential bad downloads.
It will be slow, but may mean less failed downloads.
At least, assuming that the NZB itself is sufficiently complete.
Inspecting the NZB itself may be an option too, but rather tricky.

BTW: I don't see it as the task of the SABnzbd team to find out why NZB's are poor.
We move when it's suspected that SABnzbd fails when other programs succeed with the
same NZB and the same provider.

As I said in another thread, I have almost the perfect setup of providers now I think. Before the changes I had 40% downloads missing blocks and 15% bad NZB's downloaded. The bad NZB's is NZBMatrix' fault, and the high amount of missing blockes was partially Usenetserver's fault (together with the block account being worthless as it's the same provider).

I change my search providers to
1. NZB.su (One time Donation arond 12$+)
2. NZBMatrix (One time fee 10$?)
3. Sickbeard Index (free)

Usenet Servers
1. Supernews (main)
2. Newsdeamon (block account)

This seems to work perfectly! I've not had a SINGLE error 5 days now. Downloading constantly with 1.3 MB/s. That's approximately 561 GB data, with only 700 MB used from my block account at Newsdeamon. That is a good ratio imo.

I'm sure there is other combinations of search providers and usenet servers that can provide similar results. But I'll not change my setup in a long time I believe.

moveright wrote:Ok, I've read quite a bit about this but what I have not found is a definitive remedy for this problem.

I would say that roughly 40% of what SAB downloads ends with "FAILED" due to repair blocks. Sometimes it's thousands short, sometimes as few as 3! I am currently using fastusenet.org and SAB is being fed by sickbeard and couch potato.

Anyhow, I've read everything from needing to use a backup server to using a different server. I feel like fastusenet.org is pretty decent, it advertises 1003 day retention and my DL speeds are almost always maxed out.

If SAB does not have enough blocks to repair a file and it appends a "FAILED" to the folder, does that mean SAB is done with it or will SAB continue to search for the necessary blocks. also, would I have the same result if I delete the "FAILED" folder and files and then send the same NZB for download?

I'm sure this post will frustrate some people here so in advance I extend my apologies. However, I definitely encounter this problem with frequency and so I would like to find a definitive course of action.

Thanks in advance.

Hi at first i had the same problem but after i set both below options to off (in Switches)
- Detect Duplicate Downloads
- Ignore Samples

I also set processing to only repair, so i don't know exactly what did the trick but all worked fine afterwards

Jopie58 wrote:

moveright wrote:Ok, I've read quite a bit about this but what I have not found is a definitive remedy for this problem.
Hi at first i had the same problem but after i set both below options to off (in Switches)
- Detect Duplicate Downloads
- Ignore Samples

It's "ignore samples", at least when you set it to "do not download".
Some posters make the mistake of including the samples in their main par2 set.
Obviously this can make a repair fail because the samples were never downloaded.
The latest release of SABnzbd quietly downloads the samples anyway, when you retry the failed job.

Detect duplicate downloads will only reject complete NZBs or put them in paused mode.