SABnzbd Forums

I am using Frugal usenet as my primary server and a mix of different blocks accounts as backup on SABNzbd 1.1.1. I am using my max number of alloted connections with Frugal usenet, and this works flawlessly for downloads that are within that server's retention.

I have been having an intermittent problem with downloads outside of Frugal's retention: in this case the articles are downloaded from my backup servers (which are set at a lower priority), however every now and then I will get an error "too many connections to server" from Frugal. When this happens Sabnzbd sets the number of connections to Frugal to 0 as evidenced by the connections tab of the status page, which in itself is anoying but not a show stopper, however in addition to this problem the download speed will drop to 0, and it seems that SAB is waiting for the Frugal server to come back up, as the only way to make the download start again is to disable Frugal in the server page. Once this is done the downloads starts again from the backup servers, and things continue without a hitch for some time even if I reenable Frugal straight away in the server page.

Troubleshooting is difficult as the "too many connections" error does not happen every time, usually happens some time after the download has started, and does not always result in the download speed dropping to zero with the backup servers.

Initially I have been using my connections to Frugal split in half between their US and EU server, I have tried to use all the connections to their US server as well as reducing the number of connections by a few but the problem still happens.

Another unrelated problem that has made troubleshooting more difficult is that for some reason the log downloaded from the status page seems to stop after a while. For example I rebooted my home server yesterday around 6:15PM, and when I download the log the entries stop just after 7PM. I have tried restarting SAB but the log does not change after the restart, and only rebooting the computer will make the logging start again.

Is there a fix for these issues?

Thanks for your help!

Can you try 1.2.0RC1? We have included a fix for Too many connections.
https://sabnzbd.org/downloads

Thanks for the prompt reply! I've just installed 1.2.0RC1, I'll test it for a few days and report if it's fixed the problem.

Unfortunately I'm still getting the error with 1.2.0RC1.

Hmm odd, I've seen this too sometimes with Frugal. Will try to reproduce.

I've been seeing this for a very long time and simply ignored it as some kind of strange issue. I have 3 Astraweb servers set up in priority order, ssl-eu.astraweb.com 10-connections, ssl-us.astraweb.com 5-connections and ssl.astraweb.com 5-connections, and even with my allocated 20 connections I still get the message quite often.

We fixed one of the reasons in sabnzbd 1.2.0, but it's very hard to reproduce the issue reliable to test..

Thanks for your help. I just installed 1.2.0 and did some testing, and I'm still getting the error message (I'm not sure if there had been an extra fix since 1.2.0RC1).

One thing I was wondering about, it is unfortunate to get the "too many connections error" but in my experience the most problematic part is the fact that the downloads stop completely after a while, even though the files are available on my backup servers and the error message only concerns the primary server which does not hold the file anyway. As I mentioned in my previous post the only way to restart the downloads is to temporarilly disable the primary server that returned the "too many connections" error. Surprisingly they can be reenabled straight away and in my experience don't seem to give any more errors until the downloads are completed.

Is the fact that the downloads stop completely the desired behaviour? I assume this could be due to a concern that some bandwidth could be consumed from the backup servers when maybe some parts could have been retrieved from the primary? Is there a way in the existing build to toggle to an alternative behaviour where the downloads woud just be completed from the backup servers in case the primary gives errors.

Also I've noticed that sometimes the number of available connections (the second number in the connection count) for my primary comes back to the full count after having dropped to zero when the "too many connections" error happened, and sometimes it just seems to be stuck to zero and never recovers. My impression is that it recovers when the downloads don't hang and just complete from the backup servers, but when it does get stuck then it just stays at zero. I'm not sure what is the design timescale for the connection count to come back up, but sometimes i've seen it being stuck to zero for several hours in the case where I've had to manually intervene and disable/reenable the primary servers to get the downloads going again.

Safihre, would it help if I sent you some logs with the error?