conflict between "strict" and tasks in group of se

[Robert2413]

I set up a server group called "Giganews" consisting of two GN servers. One offers a discount; the other doesn't, so I always want to download from the 'discounted' server unless a desired article is not on it.

In Properties, I set up the discounted server as 'high' priority and the remaining server as 'lowest strict'. I set maximum tasks for the discounted server to 6 and for the low priority server to 2. I then set 'maximum tasks at a time' in the Giganews server group to 8.

The result is that UE seems to ignore the 'strict' priority on the more expensive server by using both servers even when the desired article is available on the 'discounted' server. I finally got the behavior I wanted by resetting the 'maximum tasks at a time' in the Giganews server group to 6; then the 'strict' server was no longer used.

So I think this is one of these low-priority bugs that probably should be fixed sooner or later, because it seems that the 'strict' property should override the 'maximum tasks at a time' in the server group.

[alex]

try to disable the expensive server (context menu, servers pane in workspace), delete downloaded bodies for a partial where you think it failed and then mark it for download again.

does it succeed?

for memory economical types of groups it doesn't show on which server an article can be found so there is a possibility the discounted server didn't have the parts or gave some error. if you look at the article pane (maybe to limit bandwidth to 1K so all will go slower) you should see it trying the discounted server first, then downloading the same part from the expensive server.

also if you check the article properties (e.g. from task manager, context menu, properties) while it is still downloading - you should see some error (e.g. "no such article" and the culprit server), again you can limit bandwidth so it won't go too fast and you have time to check it.

i can check the code here if it is something else.

[Robert2413]

I reset the 'maximum number of tasks' to 8 in the GigaNews group and then disabled the expensive server. Now a test article was downloaded fully using only the cheap server. Then I deleted the bodies and enabled the expensive server and once again, the expensive server was used as part of the download.

I also tried changing the maximum tasks for the cheap server to 8 in Properties, but I still saw the expensive server was used occasionally.

When I checked the total number of MB that the cheap and expensive server downloaded so far since I've used UE, it turns out that the expensive server has downloaded almost 50% as much as the cheap server even though the expensive server has always been set as 'lowest strict'.

[alex]

i didn't read carefully your post yesterday, i was catching a tricky bug, was a bit difficult to reproduce.

you need to mark the cheap server preference as 'strict', strict means it won't go down to lower preference servers, otherwise - from lower to higher - 'strict' doesn't make sense.

by default 'strict' is checked everywhere as i remember, did you uncheck it for the discounted server or it was unchecked?

[Robert2413]

The cheap server's preference is "High" and the "strict" check box is not checked. The expensive server's preference is "Lowest" and the "strict" box is checked.

The expensive server is news.giganews.com and the cheap server is news-50.giganews.com. In general, they both get the same headers at almost the same time. Because of a very old promotional deal (introduced to get people to use news-50 when it was first brought online), I get a 33% discount for anything downloaded from news-50.giganews.com compared to news.giganews.com.

[alex]

so you need to check 'strict' for the cheap server.

"stict" is default (for a new server, although you can also to tune the defaults) because it is what most people want, it means you unchecked it yourself.

if you uncheck strict in your case it means ue prefers the cheap server but if all cheap server task slots are in use and there are available task slots one the expensive server - it will be used too.

[Robert2413]

Thanks. I had forgotten how the "stict" heirarcy works. It works fine now.