Re: [Pan-users] PAR2 - how to, with Pan?

[Douglas Bollinger]

On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 00:04:47 -0400
Michael Leone <address@hidden> wrote:

> I've seen references in the archives, to folks asking for this support
> to be in Pan, and the answer was also no (for various reasons). OK ..
> but then, how do you use such things with Pan? Do you download all the
> multiple parts of a binary posting, *and* the PAR2 files; save them
> somewhere; and then run some program on them? 

It's simple.  You need the par2 binary and probably the rar binary as well,
since rar is used very heavily in the binary groups.

Download all the rar segments; usually the subject line ends like
"file.part20.rar".  Then you need the PAR2 file, usually the subject line
ends like "file.PAR2" and at least one PAR2 restore segment
"file.vol000+01.PAR2".

When you are done downloading all the files, run par2 like this- "par2 r
file.PAR2".  This command will check all the rar segments.  If you need
more recovery segments par2 will inform you of this and then you must
download more restore files.  Note that usually the poster will upload par2
restore files of different sizes, so if you just need one block you can
download the smaller sized file.

If you were missing a segment, par2 will fix it using the recovery
segments.  Keep rerunning par2 until it reports zero errors.  Extract the
files from the rar archive with "rar x file.part01.rar".

Sounds like a lot of work, but it's very easy once you have done it a few
times.  I've d/l quite a bit of video with Pan from the binary groups
without problems.  Really the only problem I have with Pan is that it will
choke when the header archives get >500K, which is very easy to do with a
premium newsserver and a active binary group.  I just setup a rule to
delete posts that are older than a week and that keeps the post database to
a point that Pan can handle.

-- 
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
                -- Groucho Marx