SABnzbd Forums

I'm not a veteran when it comes to using Sab. I've been using Newsleecher for the last 4 or 5 years. I decided to switch to Sab so that I could use it in conjunction with Sickbeard on my Windows Home Server. Initially, both of those applications worked fine. I had to learn on the fly, the ins and outs of Sickbeard, but as far as actually downloading things, Sab did this without a problem. Then all of a sudden a few days ago, I noticed that it was no longer downloading anything. I would see snatched items in Sickbeard but I would see nothing downloading and nothing in the History section showing that anything had downloaded or errored out.

Then at some point I went into Sickbeard and changed a snatched item to Wanted and Sab started to do something. It gave the Fetching URL error.

URL Fetching failed; (Problem accessing nzbmatrix server (error:no_nzb_found)

So I hit Google and started searching. It seemed a decent number of people had my problem so I was confident I'd find a resolution. But everyone seemed to have a different fix. One person said that it was a Windows error and they rebooted their system and no longer had the issue. That didn't work for me. Another person said it was a problem with the nzb files from NZBmatrix having extra crap on the end of it or something....that just left me more confused than when I started. Another person said it may be Nzbmatrix in general since they always go down. The problem with that was that I confirmed the site to be up. On top of that, I could take the link that had my errored/unfetched link that had my api key and paste it in my Chrome browser and it would behave just like all other NZB links behave for me. It would download the NZB and auto open that file type for me. Since I still have Newsleecher as my default handler on windows, that NZB would then open in that program....but the point is the link worked. I even tried switching to a different site. I let Sickbeard pull from the Sickbeard site and the "http::\\momo" link that was sent to Sab still would not download anything.

So I decided to check the logs. I really didn't know what the hell I was looking at for the most part, nor did I know what exactly to look for. The only thing that I noticed that I thought kinda stood out was that I saw a number of files pointing to my incomplete downloads folder and at the tail end of the file names they had something like this:

\__ADMIN__\SABnzbd_nzf_5xgh2l removed
\__ADMIN__\SABnzbd_nzf_35hlib removed
\__ADMIN__\SABnzbd_nzf_m7p3ik removed

And it would go on like that for about 10 or 15 more rows. Now, like I said, I really don't know what that is and I'm not suggesting its the cause of anything, just putting that out there just in case it is something.

So now I'm left with a non working Sab application. I've even tried loading NZBs in manually after they were downloaded to my PC and they still wouldn't work. I've checked the API settings to make sure they were correct and they are all good. I'm not sure what else there is to do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I just went ahead and uninstalled then reinstalled Sab. That solved my problems. I'd be interested in any other solutions outside of the ones I mentioned in my original post, just in case this ever happens again.

Does "uninstalled" mean including data?
It's very unlikely that the actual program files are screwed (not impossible, but very unlikely).
Data corruption is more likely.
BTW: the odd file names you are perfectly OK, these are just temporary files used to save state and articles.

The nzbmatrix API service is independent of the normal website and has problems of its own.
The message "no_nzb_found" is coming directly from nzbmatrix.
It occurs regularly that NZB files that are on the web site are not available through the API.
In fact, the nzbmatrix site states that there is at minimum a delay between availability on the website and the API
(and sometimes an infinite delay, so it seems).

I'm not sure what causes the problem though.
It maybe that the queue is clogged with non-working nzbmatrix fetch attempts.
Unfortunately SABnzbd doesn't always respond well to nzbmatrix API issues.
Should you come across repeatable issues again, please report this here.

I come across these issues with Nzbmatrix often and they usually resolve themselves without any further action from me.
However I do have that issue right now and it seems to be repeatable, so i would be happy to provide whatever information you require to help with recognising & reporting these errors.
Also as this appears to be a common occurence perhaps you could edit the thread title to include 'nzbmatrix errors' and sticky it. i think people keep posting threads as a result of the nzbmatrix api issues assuming the issue is at the sab end.

Like I said: the nzbmatrix.com has issues, but also SABnzbd doesn't always seem to handle it properly.
Having said that, all the times I have tested, there's never an issue with either.
(Except for the missing NZB problem, but I think SABnzbd handles that correctly now but obviously cannot solve it.)
This is the area of intermittent problems, almost impossible to reproduce when needed and therefor hard to solve.

I'll follow up on your suggestion.

BTW: a couple of check questions:
- Does it help to remove all nzbmatrix entries in the queue?
- Does a restart of SABnzbd do anything positive?

See, I was having this problem for about 3 or 4 days. At first I thought it could be an NZBMatrix problem, but Sab was having the same problem fetching urls from other sites. So it wasn't just a NZBMatrix issue. I'm sure NZBMatrix does have issues and that site probably could cause a similar issue but in this particular case I believe it was something wrong with Sab. Like I said in my initial post, when I took the link that Sab was having trouble with and copied that same exact link into my web browser, it behaved like it should. But Sab just couldn't do anything with it or any other link or actual NZB.

To answer the other question, when I uninstalled Sab, it gave me some check boxes and asked what parts I wanted to uninstall. I left everything checked so I assume it uninstalled everything having to do with Sab. I didn't touch any of my data(downloaded tv shows and movies). But once I reinstalled the app, everything has been working like a champ. I'm just hoping it doesn't screw up again since I don't know what happened the first time.

OK, so it probably is corruption of the admin data files.
The uninstaller never deletes what you downloaded, just the administration of it.
I'll see what I can do about it.

shypike wrote:Like I said: the nzbmatrix.com has issues, but also SABnzbd doesn't always seem to handle it properly.
Having said that, all the times I have tested, there's never an issue with either.
(Except for the missing NZB problem, but I think SABnzbd handles that correctly now but obviously cannot solve it.)
This is the area of intermittent problems, almost impossible to reproduce when needed and therefor hard to solve.

I'll follow up on your suggestion.

BTW: a couple of check questions:
- Does it help to remove all nzbmatrix entries in the queue?
- Does a restart of SABnzbd do anything positive?

Sorry, although I thought my issue was related to the nzbmatrix api issues, I've now realised its just an issue with one particular nzb as downloading/adding it manually also causes the same error.

autofires wrote: Sorry, although I thought my issue was related to the nzbmatrix api issues, I've now realised its just an issue with one particular nzb as downloading/adding it manually also causes the same error.

So, if I understand correctly:
- You downloaded the NZB successfully from the nzbmatrix website
- When adding the NZB to SABnzbd it gives problems

If so, what kind of problems exactly?