Feature Request: NZB Files

Started by newsailor, March 22, 2024, 06:44:19 PM

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newsailor

BitTorrent uses .torrent files to tell the client where the tracker is and what files to download. Usenet, a much older system, uses XML files with the extension .NZB to tell the client where the files are.
(There's more here but it's not worth getting into the history.)

As with any tool for downloading large files off the internet, this is chiefly used for downloading Linux and other free, non-copyright-infringing material. Here is an example of such an NZB that can be used to download Ubuntu Server 22.04.2: https://files.catbox.moe/h1nqrc.nzb

Inspecting it in Notepad++, the following lines contain the data I think would be useful in ExifTool:

<file poster="oracelinux@ngPost.com" date="1691426160" subject="[24/31] &quot;ubuntu-22.04.2-live-server-arm64.iso&quot; (1/2708)">Subject (since this is usually used to show what is being downloaded), Date (a Unix epoch), and the name and email of the Poster.
Of course, the email is never accurate, but it's still valuable data. This is all rendered in HTML entities so things like "&amp;" would need to be changed to "&".

<group>alt.binaries.boneless</group>The group the post was made in.

<segment bytes="737792" number="3">2b1bb41dcb6948cca2a700d2344d2856@ngPost</segment>Each "segment" is (I think) up to 15MB of data, meaning a single NZB can hold potentially thousands of segments for a particularly large Linux distribution. Not every one of these lines is important enough to warrant its own line, but a cumulative total of the "bytes" per segment and the "number" of the last segment would be good.

Final output:

  • Subject: [24/31] "ubuntu-22.04.2-live-server-arm64.iso" (1/2708)
  • Poster:  oracelinux@ngPost.com
  • Posted:  Monday, 7 August 2023 16:36:00
  • Group:    alt.binaries.boneless
  • Segments: 2703
  • Size:    1.86 GiB

Thank you for your consideration.

newsailor

To add to this, some NZB files are "messier" than others. This is due to NZB files essentially being a collection of "sessions", with each one receiving its own data points.
Here is an example of a messier NZB, this time for Kali Linux: https://files.catbox.moe/vzeyvo.nzb

StarGeek

Wikipedia's NZB article includes an "example" NZB and some source references.  Basically, it's an XML file with
<!DOCTYPE nzb PUBLIC "-//newzBin//DTD NZB 1.1//EN" "http://www.newzbin.com/DTD/nzb/nzb-1.1.dtd">
"It didn't work" isn't helpful. What was the exact command used and the output.
Read FAQ #3 and use that cmd
Please use the Code button for exiftool output

Please include your OS/Exiftool version/filetype