As many binaries groups users are probably aware, a lot of the regular
posters are using a new obfuscation method to hide copyrighted posts from
the agents who take them down. Nearly all posts involving TV shows and
movies and similar content are being posted using this method. Not only
does each and every rar of the post have a completely different random
assortment of letters and numbers in the subject, but it aso falsely shows
a randomized number of lines.

Unfortunately, together both of those randomizations messes up Agent, which
can't figure out what is what and shows errors and ends up saving multiple
small, incomplete files to your default saved files folder, and the various
rar files to individual sub-folders. To access the shows and movies, you
need to move every one of the rar files from their individual sub-folders
to the default folder, then unrar it.

It's a huge pain in the butt. Some other apps like Newzbin, Nzbget and
Sabnzbd supposedly can handle these posts. Which of those apps do people
here prefer? And do any of them automatically change the titles of the
resulting files to the proper ones, or will I still have to do it manually,
as I've been doing for years under the old obfuscation method?

Has anyone had any luck getting these files with Agent?

Is Forte, Inc even aware of this?
Is anyone there even working on Agent these days? Or has Agent been
completely abandoned again?
I sent a feature request, but only got an automated reply. (It's worth a
shot, I guess!)

It will be sad to move on from agent after over 25 years!
It's still my default email program. I like having an archive of all the
mail I've gotten, even if it's getting HUGE!

On Tue, 10 Aug 2021 03:56:46 -0400, davidhhhSTOPSPAM@bellatlantic.net
wrote:

>As many binaries groups users are probably aware, a lot of the regular
>posters are using a new obfuscation method to hide copyrighted posts from
>the agents who take them down. Nearly all posts involving TV shows and
>movies and similar content are being posted using this method. Not only
>does each and every rar of the post have a completely different random
>assortment of letters and numbers in the subject, but it aso falsely shows
>a randomized number of lines.
>
>Unfortunately, together both of those randomizations messes up Agent, which
>can't figure out what is what and shows errors and ends up saving multiple
>small, incomplete files to your default saved files folder, and the various
>rar files to individual sub-folders. To access the shows and movies, you
>need to move every one of the rar files from their individual sub-folders
>to the default folder, then unrar it.
>
>It's a huge pain in the butt. Some other apps like Newzbin, Nzbget and
>Sabnzbd supposedly can handle these posts. Which of those apps do people
>here prefer?

Newsleecher and Newsbin have no problem handling these posts.

> And do any of them automatically change the titles of the
>resulting files to the proper ones

Depends on whether the uploader has implemented renaming in the PAR2
files.

>Has anyone had any luck getting these files with Agent?

Nobody with any sense downloads binary files with Agent.

>Is Forte, Inc even aware of this?
>Is anyone there even working on Agent these days? Or has Agent been
>completely abandoned again?

Last I heard, the totality of the "Agent Team" was just one guy. Who
bought Forté. No evidence of any "development" has been seen for
years.

> I sent a feature request, but only got an automated reply. (It's worth a
>shot, I guess!)

You reckon? Really??
>
>It will be sad to move on from agent after over 25 years!

It still works better than anything else for non-binary text groups.
Usenet is not just binaries, remember..

>It's still my default email program.

Sad. But there we go... ;-)

Meanwhile, the rest of the world has long ago moved on from ancient
and primitive "Test of Manhood" email programs.

> I like having an archive of all the
>mail I've gotten, even if it's getting HUGE!

You back it up of course? To formats readable by other software,
naturally?

Hello.

davidhhhSTOPSPAM@bellatlantic.net schrieb

>It's a huge pain in the butt.

Yes.

>Some other apps like Newzbin, Nzbget and
>Sabnzbd supposedly can handle these posts. Which of those apps do people
>here prefer?

I use newsbin pro for those groups, but only to get the not scrambled
Postings.
I can't use the scrambled stuff and even if I can delete that stuff
later, it is a huge waste of bandwith.

>as I've been doing for years under the old obfuscation method?

That does not work anymore with this new stuff (as far as I know)
>Has anyone had any luck getting these files with Agent?

I dont use Agent for binaries.

>Is Forte, Inc even aware of this?

I guess they do not care.

davidhhhSTOPSPAM@bellatlantic.net wrote:

>As many binaries groups users are probably aware, a lot of the regular
>posters are using a new obfuscation method to hide copyrighted posts from
>the agents who take them down. Nearly all posts involving TV shows and
>movies and similar content are being posted using this method. Not only
>does each and every rar of the post have a completely different random
>assortment of letters and numbers in the subject, but it aso falsely shows
>a randomized number of lines.

Filters are your friends. A kill filter on "postername begins with a number"
plus another on "subject begins with a number" will work wonders.

Not 100%, but much more manageable.

On Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:30:43 +0200, DAN <dan@no.spam.thanks> wrote:

>davidhhhSTOPSPAM@bellatlantic.net wrote:
>
>>As many binaries groups users are probably aware, a lot of the regular
>>posters are using a new obfuscation method to hide copyrighted posts from
>>the agents who take them down. Nearly all posts involving TV shows and
>>movies and similar content are being posted using this method. Not only
>>does each and every rar of the post have a completely different random
>>assortment of letters and numbers in the subject, but it aso falsely shows
>>a randomized number of lines.
>
>Filters are your friends. A kill filter on "postername begins with a number"
>plus another on "subject begins with a number" will work wonders.

However, kill filing the obfuscated postings is precisely NOT what
he's trying to do.

As I understand it, he's trying to identify/rename them in order to
download the stuff that's being made hard to identify. This is a
completely different issue.

On Wed, 11 Aug 2021 08:36:45 +0200, none@given.com wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:30:43 +0200, DAN <dan@no.spam.thanks> wrote:
>
>>davidhhhSTOPSPAM@bellatlantic.net wrote:
>>
>>>As many binaries groups users are probably aware, a lot of the regular
>>>posters are using a new obfuscation method to hide copyrighted posts from
>>>the agents who take them down. Nearly all posts involving TV shows and
>>>movies and similar content are being posted using this method. Not only
>>>does each and every rar of the post have a completely different random
>>>assortment of letters and numbers in the subject, but it aso falsely shows
>>>a randomized number of lines.
>>
>>Filters are your friends. A kill filter on "postername begins with a number"
>>plus another on "subject begins with a number" will work wonders.
>
>However, kill filing the obfuscated postings is precisely NOT what
>he's trying to do.
>
>As I understand it, he's trying to identify/rename them in order to
>download the stuff that's being made hard to identify. This is a
>completely different issue.

Exactly. With binaries, I usually don't even download the headers. I use
nzb's. I don't even care so much about renaming them (although that would
certainly be convenient!) I want to be able to download them without
having a full set of incorrect mkv (or whatever file type) file, as well as
an additional stet of rar files, each in their own folder (filename(x)),
that have to be manually moved to the main folder before I can unrar them!

On Wed, 01 Sep 2021 11:04:00 -0400, davidhhh@bellatlantic.net wrote:

> >As I understand it, he's trying to identify/rename them in order to
> >download the stuff that's being made hard to identify. This is a
> >completely different issue.

> Exactly. With binaries, I usually don't even download the headers. I use
> nzb's. I don't even care so much about renaming them (although that would
> certainly be convenient!) I want to be able to download them without
> having a full set of incorrect mkv (or whatever file type) file, as well as
> an additional stet of rar files, each in their own folder (filename(x)),
> that have to be manually moved to the main folder before I can unrar them!

For anyone who's not already aware, this does all of those things:
https://sabnzbd.org/
And you can't beat the price.

--
Bob
St Francis would have done better to preach to the cats

On Thu, 02 Sep 2021 07:34:57 +0300, Opinicus
<gezgin@spamcop.net.which.is.not.quite.invalid> wrote:

>On Wed, 01 Sep 2021 11:04:00 -0400, davidhhh@bellatlantic.net wrote:
>
>
>> >As I understand it, he's trying to identify/rename them in order to
>> >download the stuff that's being made hard to identify. This is a
>> >completely different issue.
>
>> Exactly. With binaries, I usually don't even download the headers. I use
>> nzb's. I don't even care so much about renaming them (although that would
>> certainly be convenient!) I want to be able to download them without
>> having a full set of incorrect mkv (or whatever file type) file, as well as
>> an additional stet of rar files, each in their own folder (filename(x)),
>> that have to be manually moved to the main folder before I can unrar them!
>
>For anyone who's not already aware, this does all of those things:
>https://sabnzbd.org/
>And you can't beat the price.

That's probably what I'm going to end up using. Still, after decades with
Agent, and with Agent still my email program of choice, it's sad having to
move on.

As a last ditch effort, is there any setting that I can change that will
stop it from putting all of the individual rar files into their own
separate folders?

To clarify, with any NZB of a file set using this method, each post has its
own file with random letters and numbers. Agent correctly downloads the
actual file, but I think it gets confused when the number of lines doesn't
match the random number that they put in the obfuscation. So, it saves an
unrarred partial file with the correct obfuscated file name 123XYZ.mkv in
the default saved files folder, with the size of just one of the rars.
Meanwhile, it saves the proper rar files to the subfolder 123XYS.files.

For each subsequent post, it saves an unrarred partial file names
123XYZ(1),mkv to the default folder, and the correct rare file (perhaps
123XYZ.part1.rar to a subfolder named 123XYZ.files(1) and so on with (1),
(2), etc.

One of those mkv files is the size of one rar file, and the rest are zero
bytes. Those are easy enough to just delete.

The big problem I"m having is that it saves each rar file to a SEPARATE
folder, with the names 123XYZ.files, 123XYZ.files(2), 123XYZ,files(3), etc.
for larger files, there can by 100 or more rar files. That means I have to
manually move each and every one of those 100 rar files back to the default
folder in order to unrar them.

Is there some setting I could change so that all of these files that it
saves because it gets an error when trying to unrar end up in the SAME
sub-folder, instead of different ones?

If I could fix that, manually unrarring and deleting the files woudln't be
that much of a difficulty. But having to move 50-100+ rar files for every
file I download is way more effort than it's worth.

If you are using Agent 8.0, try turning off MegaJoin and check the PAR2
and unRAR the archives yourself. I use MultiPar and 7-Zip.

On 9/16/2021 3:12 AM, davidhhh@bellatlantic.net wrote:
> On Thu, 02 Sep 2021 07:34:57 +0300, Opinicus
> <gezgin@spamcop.net.which.is.not.quite.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 01 Sep 2021 11:04:00 -0400, davidhhh@bellatlantic.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> As I understand it, he's trying to identify/rename them in order to
>>>> download the stuff that's being made hard to identify. This is a
>>>> completely different issue.
>>
>>> Exactly. With binaries, I usually don't even download the headers. I use
>>> nzb's. I don't even care so much about renaming them (although that would
>>> certainly be convenient!) I want to be able to download them without
>>> having a full set of incorrect mkv (or whatever file type) file, as well as
>>> an additional stet of rar files, each in their own folder (filename(x)),
>>> that have to be manually moved to the main folder before I can unrar them!
>>
>> For anyone who's not already aware, this does all of those things:
>> https://sabnzbd.org/
>> And you can't beat the price.
>
> That's probably what I'm going to end up using. Still, after decades with
> Agent, and with Agent still my email program of choice, it's sad having to
> move on.
>
> As a last ditch effort, is there any setting that I can change that will
> stop it from putting all of the individual rar files into their own
> separate folders?
>
> To clarify, with any NZB of a file set using this method, each post has its
> own file with random letters and numbers. Agent correctly downloads the
> actual file, but I think it gets confused when the number of lines doesn't
> match the random number that they put in the obfuscation. So, it saves an
> unrarred partial file with the correct obfuscated file name 123XYZ.mkv in
> the default saved files folder, with the size of just one of the rars.
> Meanwhile, it saves the proper rar files to the subfolder 123XYS.files.
>
> For each subsequent post, it saves an unrarred partial file names
> 123XYZ(1),mkv to the default folder, and the correct rare file (perhaps
> 123XYZ.part1.rar to a subfolder named 123XYZ.files(1) and so on with (1),
> (2), etc.
>
> One of those mkv files is the size of one rar file, and the rest are zero
> bytes. Those are easy enough to just delete.
>
> The big problem I"m having is that it saves each rar file to a SEPARATE
> folder, with the names 123XYZ.files, 123XYZ.files(2), 123XYZ,files(3), etc.
> for larger files, there can by 100 or more rar files. That means I have to
> manually move each and every one of those 100 rar files back to the default
> folder in order to unrar them.
>
> Is there some setting I could change so that all of these files that it
> saves because it gets an error when trying to unrar end up in the SAME
> sub-folder, instead of different ones?
>
> If I could fix that, manually unrarring and deleting the files woudln't be
> that much of a difficulty. But having to move 50-100+ rar files for every
> file I download is way more effort than it's worth.
>

On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 04:12:38 -0400, davidhhh@bellatlantic.net wrote:

> As a last ditch effort, is there any setting that I can change that will
> stop it from putting all of the individual rar files into their own
> separate folders?

8<!

There must be because that's what I was doing before I moved on to
SABnzbd. Just to be sure, I just now used Agent to download a new-obfd
vid the old-fashioned way and when everything had settled down, this
is what my download folder looks like:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/krpwfxs5igp7ram/agent_obfd_nzb_download_folder_result.jpg?dl=0
or
https://bit.ly/3AvJvla

The 9c53078ab6954926a290f15bfe054f15\ folder at the top of the
screenshot is the result of my having right-clicked on one of the RAR
files and told ToCo to unpack it into that folder as per:

https://bit.ly/39c29Tg
or
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yerpqiwxmmrlayw/agent_obfd_nzb_download_folder_result2.jpg.jpg?dl=0

It's still a dog's dinner as far as I'm concerned however. SABnzb is
so much better at this.

--
Bob
St Francis would have done better to preach to the cats

On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 04:12:38 -0400, davidhhh@bellatlantic.net wrote:

> As a last ditch effort, is there any setting that I can change that will
> stop it from putting all of the individual rar files into their own
> separate folders?

On the MegaJoin settings panel ("Usenet Archives"), look at the check-box
nearest the bottom.
<http://img4.imagetitan.com/img.php?image=24_5ji6k093if65fh.gif>
Click the Help button there if you want more description.

Go to the Agent Newsreader FAQ entry "Where are archive elements stored
as I download them", and see numbered point #2.
<https://web.archive.org/web/20200627063700/http://www.forteinc.com/agent/faq.php#F0278FF36D69734585257D1E0010AA84>

🙄

--
Kind regards
Ralph

ζητεῖτε καὶ εὑρήσετε

On Fri, 17 Sep 2021 13:05:53 +0300, Opinicus
<gezgin@spamcop.net.which.is.not.quite.invalid> wrote:

>It's still a dog's dinner as far as I'm concerned however. SABnzb is
>so much better at this.

Exactly. As always, it's a matter of using the best tool for the job
concerned -- and being willing to change to that tool when the
favorite tool is no longer up to the job.

Agent still has a lot of excellent aspects, but it's not up to snuff
with others, and one has to face up to that reality and act
accordingly.