newsbin.com

Sometimes it happens occasionally but usually restarting NewsBin solves the problem. But this time I have encountered a post that NEVER shows up.
I tried it with Newsbin versions 6.55 final, 6.62 final and 6.70 beta 4 - the result is always the same:

Files (rar parts and par2 blocks) are shown as downloaded but never show up in the download folder. And then (naturally) I am getting errors:
ERROR AssembleSpoolFile - Unable to open Spool file

Other posts appear in exactly the same folder without problems, so it is not my hard drive or the download path. Maybe something specific in that post or its name that NewsBin does not like.
In particular, the file names begin with "Con." - maybe the output is redirected to console or something.

I am not sure if I am allowed to post the details of that particular post here. So the details sent to Quade in a PM.

You can PM me the specific post but not post it here. I'd be looking at the download path for these files. I wonder if you have some "per group" download paths set and they're set for a drive that no longer exists.


Edit: I see you already did.

"J:\NNTP\Unsorted\"

Does this drive still exist?

Dex says he can reproduce your results.

Maybe something specific in that post or its name that NewsBin does not like.
In particular, the file names begin with "Con." - maybe the output is redirected to console or something.

I actually think you found a bug in windows. I do think you're correct about the "Con" part. Windows simply refuses to even attempt to open the files. I've tracked it right down to the specific call into windows itself.

There's a very good explanation of this behaviour here: http://superuser.com/questions/613313/why-cant-we-make-con-prn-null-folder-in-windows.

Is it possible to use a different call to create those files? Because I can create files with such names manually - no problem. For example, with FAR SHIFT-F4.

A possible workaround: if a file name begins with such a sensitive prefix followed by a dot, perhaps it would be possible to add something in front of it or to replace the dot with underscore, etc.
That would allow to create the downloaded files, but if the file inside the rar also has the name Con.something.... there might be a problem with extracting it. Or perhaps not - if I can create such a file, perhaps unrar can as well.

It's already fixed. At least this particular set. Honestly this is the first time it's come up in many years so I don't think it's a common problem.

Thank you very much.

I also see that the files are extracted from rars (and so, created successfully) even though their names also begin with "Con."
However, such files cause problems when attempting to play them, so I had to rename them after all