Help with Downloading

[mikea01]

Hi,
I am totally new to Usenet and am having problems with downloading. I have learnt enough though to realise that Alt.Binz will do exactly what I want when I fully understand it.
This is what I've been doing to download for example a movie.
1. I've configured Alt.Binz exactly as per the setup guide on Wiki.
2. Selected Binsearch and chose alt.binaries.movies.divx.
3. I browsed new posts in the last 7 days.
4. I then picked a title that had a file size of at least 700Mb. There were meant to be 61 parts I think.
5. I added it to the download queue and before I connected, I looked at the files in the list. Two or 3 were missing, but there were about 7 PAR files on Pause, so I connected and downloaded. Unsurprisingly when the download was complete, it didn't auto unrar because of the missing parts.

Am I right in saying that PAR files will only repair corrupt parts, or parts that have small sections missing? And they cannot fill in for parts that were not downloaded in the first place?

Is the only way of checking to see if all parts are present, is to look and see if they are all present in the download queue before connecting, or is there any other way of knowing this from the file name in the search results before adding it to the download queue?

Thanks in advance
Mike

[Hecks]

If configured properly, Alt.Binz will autounpause enough par2 blocks to repair any incomplete files once the collection has finished downloading (i.e. everything unpaused).  The status of par2 checking and repair will be listed on the PAR2 tab.  At least one par2 file (the small one usually) needs to be downloaded to the same folder as the archive for this to work.  If you don't see anything listed on the PAR2 tab, then no par2 file has been downloaded.

If there aren't enough paused par2 blocks to repair the files, Alt.Binz won't do anything.  Your (detailed) Log should tell you exactly what Alt.Binz has done and why - so this should always be your first port of call for information about downloads.

For general info on how par2 repairing works, please read this:

http://www.slyck.com/ngnew.php

The only way to know if your server carries all the files in the NZB is to try to download them (or use Xpat if your server supports it).  The completion rates listed in the search results reflect only the completion on the server used by the indexing site - e.g. Newzleech uses Giganews.

[mikea01]

Thanks Hecks for your reply. I'm getting the hang of it now.

Mike

[mikea01]

Hi Hecks,

I have moved on a fair way now with my understanding of Usenet and newsgroups. I now search using NZBIndex in Alt.Binz. The server I am subscribing to is NewsGroupDirect. To avoid performing an Xpat search to see if the headers are actually present on my server as listed in NZBIndex, I have made a couple of assumptions:-
1. I ignore NZBIndex search results where the posts are less than 24 hours old. This should mean that any NZB I choose, should of had enough time to propagate through the Usenet network and reach the NewsGroupDirect servers.
2. I also ignore search results that are too many days old in case NewsGroupDirect has a lower retention than NZBIndex.

I have not yet worked out how many days is the maximum, but so far this method is working well for me. I did however select an NZB from alt.binaries.movies.divx which was approx 30 days old. It was showing 100% using NZBIndex, but my server did not have many of the parts. That seems quite low retention, but thats a server issue and nothing to do with Alt.Binz.

Mike