Re: [Pan-users] Checking server for missing parts

[john wendel]

On 01/03/2010 06:00 PM, Wayne E. Nail wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-01-03 at 15:52 -0800, john wendel wrote:
> > On 01/03/2010 01:14 PM, Wayne E. Nail wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2010-01-03 at 13:01 -0800, john wendel wrote:
> > > > Anyone know how to check a news server for missing message parts,
> > > > without downloading the data? Using pan? Ideally, I'd like to feed an
> > > > NZB file to something and have it tell me which parts are available and
> > > > missing.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >
> > > > John
> > >
> > > You can search http://www.binsearch.info/ for the same .nzb contents and
> > > in the results, click on 'collection' link to see what parts are
> > > available. Just one example.
> <snip>
>
> > I use binsearch.info, and that is part of the problem. My NSP sometimes
> > doesn't have all the message parts even when binsearch indicates that
> > the post is complete. I assume that this is because binsearch is
> > indexing a different server than the one I am using. Doesn't happen very
> > often.
> >
> > I got curious about this because of the "crazy christmas lights" post.
> > Looks like my NSP is missing lots of parts, but the NZB I got from
> > binsearch looks OK. Maybe something more is going on here.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > John
>
> Indeed.
>
> Repeated instances of<your NSP>  vs<nzb search engine>  returning
> different results -- particularly where<your NSP>  result is a subset of
> <nzb search engine>  result -- indicates need for a better NSP.
[snip]
> Your question revolved around a postulated inherent capability of Pan
> which does not exist (so far as I know); I answered with what I presumed
> to be obvious indications of which tools might be better suited to the
> task. Having a newsreader capable of parsing .nzb files != newsreader
> capable of psychic divination of available parts listed vs. any given
> NSP.

Sorry I didn't make myself clear in earlier posts.

I'm trying to understand the problem described in the "crazy christmas 
lights" post. I have an NZB file (from binsearch.info) that should fetch 
the data, it fails spectacularly with my news server. Pan reports many 
missing articles. I'm suspicious of Pan at this point because some of 
the error status messages appear to be asking for articles that are not 
in the NZB file.

There seem to be 2 possible causes of the failure, [1] Pan is doing the 
right thing and the articles are missing on the newsserver or [2] Pan is 
asking for the wrong articles. I thought it would be useful if I had a 
tool that could query the newsserver for each article listed in the NZB 
and receive a yes/no status, without trying to download 1.6 GB of data.

I don't think that psychic divination is required to validate an NZB 
file against a particular server. You just need to be able to parse each 
"section" of the NZB file, and do a "STAT <article-id>" command to the 
server for each section. You could even do it by hand with a simple 
telnet connection to the server, but it would get tedious for an NZB 
file with 6000 sections.

Regards,

John