unrar failing on good rars

[gquiring]

I am randomly getting file creation errors when unraring good rar sets. I have plenty of disk space. The only thing I can guess is the file name length. I had two downloads recently where the file names were somewhat large. The file name in the rar was 73 characters and the path was equally as long. Are there any length limitation in NB? I am using 601B5.

[DThor]

There is an imposed limit on path length, basically Newsbin won't allow lengths that exceed what windows will be able to parse, for obvious reasons. Newsbin could allow it, but then you couldn't do anything with it.

Options are to make your download path shallower, or temporarily download to a shallower location, like C:Downloads. Note for Vista/Win 7 you won't have permissions for this, so you'll need to manage that, a location on a data disk would be better.

DT

[gquiring]

The path and file lengths work with accessing and unraring with other utilities so it's either a limitation with NB or some other kink.

[Quade]

Might have nothing to do with length. That's your idea. It sounded reasonable. There's a windows wide 255 char total path length. That's path and filename. I could exceed that but, I won't. Explorer can't access any file or path beyond the 255 char limit so, I'm not going to exceed it.

It could be your virus scanner blocking the initial unrar too. Who knows. Maybe you should check you V scanner logs. It shouldn't be that hard for you to figure this out. Use a shallow path and see if the problem goes away. Count the number of chars in the path. All D and I can do is throw ideas out there. It's up to you to figure out what's happening. I have no issues downloading and unraring. My files aren't close to the path limit though either. I downloaded 100 gigs from my test server today in preparation for the next beta release. They all unrared. Until you can figure out what's actually going on, I'm not going to take action. Newsbin internally prevent paths that are too long but, the RAR library is it's own thing and it might not be as careful as I am.

[DThor]

You weren't clear in your initial post - are the long filenames absolutely tied to the file creation errors? The file length thing is imposed because your average user will fire up file explorer and not see it. Yes, some apps might work with longer paths, but not file explorer. It was a conscious decision. It may be this whole issue has nothing to do with that, anyway. Try the same files to a shallower path. Does it work?

DT

[gquiring]

I am not saying it's absolutely the length, I have plenty of downloads/unraring that works fine. The ones that failed all seem to have long paths/filenames which is the reason I speculated it might be that. It can't be my virus scanner as I can manually unrar the file with no issues. The contents of the rars are a mkv (movie) file. I'm just trying to understand why these last 3 rar sets I downloaded all failed with file creation errors.

[Quade]

t can't be my virus scanner as I can manually unrar the file with no issues

You can't make that assumption. Newsbin doesn't retry an unrar and I don't know if the real winrar does or not. Virus scanners like to get first crack at new files and can get in the way. I'm not saying it is the scanner but, you can't just discount the idea out of hand.

[gquiring]

Scanned the files, no issues.

[DThor]

I think you're missing Quade's point, but anyway, if you try to download to a shallower path, does it work? There's obviously something different about these posts, your guess of length is a good first guess.

DT

[gquiring]

It's a bit time consuming as the mkv files are 15gig each. Trying again with no filename added to the NZB folder name.

[Quade]

I'll see if I can figure out the embedded path and shorten the total path length. It means the unrar folders are guaranteed to be incorrect in these cases though. Perhaps of the path is too long, I just remove the embedded path.

[gquiring]

I'll see if I can figure out the embedded path and shorten the total path length. It means the unrar folders are guaranteed to be incorrect in these cases though. Perhaps of the path is too long, I just remove the embedded path.

That would ideal, I don't think many would care if the paths got truncated.

The one thing I realized when I unrared the mkv file I did not create the huge directory name. I use Total Commander to unrar and just dragged the file out. I did a rough count and it's possible with the paths I am going over 255 with these rar sets.

[mho]

Suggestion: If the internal path is too long, UnRAR to a directory like nb.<nnnn> and put a file inside it containing the name it "should" have been, so people can identify any possible mess:

Code: Select all

nb.0001/
    AUDIO_TS
    VIDEO_TS/
    newsbin.fileinfo
    [...]

where newsbin.fileinfo contains something like

Code: Select all

this_is_the_exceedingly_long_folder_name_that_the_poster_insisted_on_using

- mho

[mho]

where newsbin.fileinfo

Would have to be something like newsbin-fileinfo.txt, of course...
(I tend not to think about windows pecularities like file extensions actually matter:-))

- mho