Downloading oldest records without a Purge.

[Quade]

User contacted me, he wanted to see records older than 900 day but, his "Storage Age" was 900 so, the old records had already been purged. I thought up a way for him to do it I thought I'd document here.

1 - Set the "Storage Age" to 1500
2 - Set the "Download Age" to 1500
3 - For the group you want to download, go into the spool_v6 folder and delete the "Range.db3" file for this group.
4 - Right click the group and "Download Latest".

This will make Newsbin start downloading headers from the oldest records on the server.

- While the header download is going. Use "Load Special" to load up the group from 1500 days ago to 900.
- When the header download gets a point where you see headers from 1500 to 900 days old. Delete the header download from the download list.
- This method fills in the missing headers. You can let it continue downloading all the rest of the headers but, it's not needed if you already have headers from before.

Then:
1 - Set the "Download Age" to 2
2 - Delete the range.db3 for the group again.
3 - Download Latest.

Newsbin will download 2 days worth of headers. This last step resets Newsbin to just download the newest Headers instead of all the headers from when you deleted the header download.

This will give you the total header range without having to re-download them all.

[dane]

Thanks for posting this. I was going to ask how to download only the last 20 days - wondered why download special couldn't be in terms of age instead of number of posts - but I see from this all I need to do is change the download age to 20, d/l the headers, then set it back to 2 day.

Got it.
da dane

[staminajunkie]

Thanks this really helped with the error I was receiving also

[pusaqall]

This works and helped me a lot. I would like to say thanks.

[namsilat]

This is going to sound stupid, but how do you tell during header download it's progressing from 1500 to 900 days old?

[Quade]

If you have the group loaded, the new records should show up during the download. Once they run into the records you already have, you can stop the header download.

[orygun]

Arrgh. I have the need, periodically, to do so. However, even after following this (and short of deleting NB itself), removing all download records, purging, cussing, and a few other things, all without success, I have come to the conclusion that there must be a simple way to load older posts with just one or two clicks.

Thanks.

Edit: version 6.51b2 Build 3143.

[Quade]

Is there a question hidden in there somewhere?

1 - You can only load, what you've previously downloaded.

2 - "Load Special" lets you load any range of existing headers you have.

3 - If you're not seeing the posts n the data range you think should be there. Load them all at least once and see what you have.

4 - "Storage Age" will purge old records. You won't have any on disk older than the storage age.

Simplest way to overlay old headers on new is to "Post Storage/Use Download Age", set a long "Download Age" then download headers normally. There's really no benefit to this over just re-downloading headers.

[orygun]

My apologies-- yes, but it wasn't actually written as a question. So: is there a One-Click, or Two-Click way to selectively download older posts?

Currently, age is set to four days, as recommended. Once in a while, I want to find something older- say, 900 days, without having to click, delete, change dates, etc., and then reverse changes, as outlined in the original post.

I suppose using a nzb service would bypass such a requirement, but having grown used to the ease and slickness of NB (no more hours of combining/par'ing, fixing), I may have become too demanding in my laziness.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks.

[itimpi]

As far as I know there is no quick way to do this.

A large part of the reason is that the NNTP protocol provides no way to download by date - only by record number. The only way for the client to determine the date is to actually download headers and look at their content.

[Quade]

Currently, age is set to four days, as recommended. Once in a while, I want to find something older- say, 900 days, without having to click, delete, change dates, etc., and then reverse changes, as outlined in the original post.

There are 2 ages.

1 - The age the posts are stored on disk (Storage Age).

2 - The age that it displays by default (Display Age).

If you want to be able to examine 900 day old posts, I'd set the storage age to 900, "Post Storage/Use download age" and download 900 days worth of headers. Keep them on disk so, you can load them again later. Then you can load whatever age range you want up to 900 days old. Then set the "Display Age" to 4 so, it only ever loads up 4 days worth when you're examining the groups normally. In that way, you always have the ability to search through old posts while having the quick loading of a short display age.

That's how Newsbin was designed to work. Then you don't have to bother with trying to micromanage the groups.

[orygun]

Thanks for those replies-- makes more sense explained that way.

Thinking that the 900-day bit would take a fairly large data file-- would not do on something that is the busiest group, but probably not too much of a hassle on the regular groups.

I'll give it a shot and see.