Yes, I'm a n00b

[MagicNakor]

Well, somewhat, anyway. I haven't used newsgroups in years, and it seems as though I've almost entirely forgotten how. Haha.

Anyhow, I've installed GrabIt and followed the guide here. Everything seems to work just fine, excepting whatever I've downloaded turns into 0 byte .txt files. It's not a retention problem, since it isn't more than two days old. I'm fairly certain it's only just over 24 hours.

I am seeming to get a lot of "article not found." I'm not really sure why, since I got the link from here. Before I left for work, though, I had a number of "incomplete" .rar files mixed in with all the text ones. I wonder if they change once they complete....400+megs is a lot of space for .txt files.

[Hanz™]

Nope, that is definitely a retention problem. Definitely.

[MagicNakor]

It will say it's not found for a number of things, but will download regardless.

Nothing (save one...maybe) is over 48 hours old. I'll have to see what's transpired since I've been at work.

Edit: I got a call from home, and apparently (from the one server that's finished) I've got 600megs of .txt files. :/ Only two more hours...

[MagicNakor]

Alright...so. Of the 90 or so part files I've got, numbers 00 through 30, 59, and the .nfo are either .txt files (with or without 0 bytes- a few are a couple megs in size), or "incomplete" .rar files. The others appear to be fine.

[Damnatory]

The text files are a problem with grabit not decoding them properly as they finish downloading. Maybe you have another processor intense program working in the background, that tends to cause decoding errors. Another thing is maybe you have the priority of the decoding to low and CPU is using all the resources for other applications, just depriving grabit's decoder altogether.

I had this problem with grabit for quite a while, then after a few reinstalls it just started working properly.

Now, for the .rar files that actually decoded, are they complete? (Using QuickPar?) If the .rars are missing tons of blocks, I would say that it really is a retention problem, but could also be caused by the same decoding problem grabit has sometimes.

Edit:

Alright...so. Of the 90 or so part files I've got, numbers 00 through 30, 59, and the .nfo are either .txt files (with or without 0 bytes- a few are a couple megs in size), or "incomplete" .rar files. The others appear to be fine.

Oh, didn't see this... Yeah, it is definatly a retention problem. The ones that have a just a few megs were dropping off of your usenest server faster than you were downloading them.

[1Bullet]

I to have to agree, that this is a retention problem. I also would asume you using you ISP news. Many ISP are running 24 hour and as little as 18 hour retention in some groups.

[RealitY]

I would guess retention also. I would first suggest a reinstall of GrabIt and a test of a smaller recent archive to see what happens. You could also test with a different news reader which I suggest Newsleecher as the best. You can test with their trial even just to see if theres any difference.

The silly thing about GrabIt compared to Newsleecher is that if GrabIt is grabbing an NZB and is set to save incomplete files it will place a bunch of text files for zero byte files whereas Newsleecher wont dl anything as nothing is really there to get on the server your using.

If both the reinstall and the alternate reader give the same results then you can be sure its a retention issue...

[3RA1N1AC]

I to have to agree, that this is a retention problem. I also would asume you using you ISP news. Many ISP are running 24 hour and as little as 18 hour retention in some groups.

i'd go with this answer, personally. i only started using newsgroups in the last few months, but from what i've read it seems ISPs used to have a pretty lax attitude about binaries and you could actually use an ISP news server effectively for binary downloads. then sometime in the last few years most of the major U.S. ISPs threw away all of the popular binary groups and cut their retention down to such a level that they're basically only good for reading text posts. till recently i think users in other countries haven't had such a rough time with their ISP news servers, but i did see some rather angry complaints about an Australian ISP crippling (or totally shutting down?) its newsgroup service. dunno about U.K. ISPs, but if they haven't followed suit yet then it's prolly only a matter of time.

so if you're indeed using your ISP's news server, that's likely the problem and you'll wanna consider shopping around for a good binary-centric "premium" news-provider (i.e. requires a paid subscription that's separate from your ISP) like newshosting.com, giganews.com, or whatever. which could get your binary retention up to about 40-45 days, give or take a few.

[brotherdoobie]

I agree. It's a retention problem. I am curious, do you use Zone Alarm?
Different versions of Zone Alarm (updates) have problems decoding yEnc
headers, this will also leave a 0 byte text file in your dl directory.

With Zone Alarm running, the yenc header info is changed:
=ybegin li ne

Turn off ZoneAlarm, and the line is downloaded correctly as:

=ybegin line

Peace bd