Archiving / Ended Comics / Main Display Error

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DrSeussFreak
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Archiving / Ended Comics / Main Display Error

Post by DrSeussFreak »

So let me start by saying I love everyone who has ever written any code for Mylar. I have been using it for over a year and the improvements recently are immense and amazing. The transformation has been spectacular to watch and this went from a low value application to the highest value app running on my Synology NAS.

So 3 issues I am reporting today

1) So I constantly have issues with "Archived" comics where the file name matches the format I have set in the settings, yet when I archive a file it shows as 0 bytes, and when I tell Mylar to update active comics it goes from archived to skipped. I cannot figure it out, and it is really disruptive as I have put ALL of my 40GB collection into Mylar's folder so all my older books are managed, and this is 200+ series that keep going from fully archived to missing lots of issues.

2) Comic series that are ended keep getting updated when I click "update active comics", but shouldn't they be inactive, or am I missing the understanding on what active means here.

3) I have 4 issues of a 4 issue series archived and instead of showing 4/4 completed, it shows I have 0/4. I believe this is tied to issue #1, as this comic has the issue described there.
"Adults are nothing but obsolete children, and the hell to them" - Theodor Seuss Geisel
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evilhero
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Re: Archiving / Ended Comics / Main Display Error

Post by evilhero »

Well I'm glad that it's getting better with each commit instead of getting worse (from a user standpoint I mean). It's always good to hear that it's saving time for users rather than making more work for them.
1) So I constantly have issues with "Archived" comics where the file name matches the format I have set in the settings, yet when I archive a file it shows as 0 bytes, and when I tell Mylar to update active comics it goes from archived to skipped. I cannot figure it out, and it is really disruptive as I have put ALL of my 40GB collection into Mylar's folder so all my older books are managed, and this is 200+ series that keep going from fully archived to missing lots of issues.
Yeah that's not typical behavior - Archiving should still retain the location and thereby file-size of the Archived issue. I've seen it happen though on more than one occasion where it's an Archived 0 byte file, but that's usually due to the filename that it 'thinks' is there isn't there anymore (whether it was moved, renamed whatever). Mylar only retains the filename & filesize during a file check.If the file exists and is what Mylar has 'on file' for that issue, then it gets marked as Downloaded. If the file it has 'on file' doesn't exist in the location anymore, Mylar assumes it has been moved off elsewhere or even deleted and marks it as Archived accordingly. I'm not sure as to how you're using the Archived feature if Mylar monitors the folders as series directories already. Marking a file as archived, and then having Mylar rescan the given directory, having the file still exist within that directory, may be the problem (which I can't confirm or deny at this point). Usually the Archive feature is to mark issues that are no longer available within the series directory so that things don't get downloaded again, and one can see if the file exists in a different location or not. Is there a particular reason that you're marking the issues as Archived if they already exist within the series directory (Mylar would mark them as Downloaded if they exist regardless of how they got into the directory). I believe this is the same terminology that Sickbeard uses as well (and probably other similar programs).
2) Comic series that are ended keep getting updated when I click "update active comics", but shouldn't they be inactive, or am I missing the understanding on what active means here.
Within the context of Mylar, Active is different than Ended. Here's the breakdown:

Active / Paused : If a series is Active, it's being monitored by Mylar (checking for issues, updates etc). If a series is Paused (or Inactive), then Mylar won't do anything related to the series when it comes to maintaining things (checking for issues, db updates etc). It basically ignores doing anything with that series.

Ended / Continuing : Mylar uses publishing dates to determine if a series is currently ongoing (Continuing), or if it's Ended. It's not an exact science, and there's no available data on CV for it to poll to determine if a series is ongoing or ended, so Mylar has to pretty much do the calculations internally in order to figure out (Generally if a series hasn't had an issue published in 3 months, it gets kicked as Ended by Mylar - although you can set this to different time frames within the config.ini based on publishers).

There was a problem where series that were actually ongoing were being marked as Ended mistakenly - and Mylar uses this Status to search for items on the Weekly pull-list for downloading (it only checks ongoing series,since series that are Ended wouldn't have new issues published). This was done so that series that have reboots within the same year get marked correctly since it's possible to have two #1 issues within the same year for different volumes of the same series. I think that this was mainly due to the year rollover from 2013-2014 that caused alot of problems, since the calculations that Mylar used for determining the series was taking an incorrect value for the year.

If you have series that aren't Ended, but Mylar has marked them as Ended instead of as Continuous - you'll have to a do a Refresh Series for the given serie(s), or run the Force Update Active Comics and let it update them accordingly. I'll probably be adding in a subcommand to the Force Update Active Comics in the very near future, so that it can only update comics that are in Ended status (and perhaps have a last issue published in 2013/2014) thereby saving some overhead and unnecessary time.
3) I have 4 issues of a 4 issue series archived and instead of showing 4/4 completed, it shows I have 0/4. I believe this is tied to issue #1, as this comic has the issue described there.
Yep, this is probably due to the same issue above.

Hope this helps explain some stuff - and I'll be looking into some of the problems associated with Archiving and Active Comics.

If you have any other questions or need some clarification about something, feel free to ask away :)
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DrSeussFreak
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Re: Archiving / Ended Comics / Main Display Error

Post by DrSeussFreak »

I appreciate your replies. I would be happy to provide any logs or have a webex so you can see how mine is setup so you can personally see the issues (specifically 1 & 3 since 2 was just an understanding of the terminology).
"Adults are nothing but obsolete children, and the hell to them" - Theodor Seuss Geisel
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