SABnzbd Forums

Hey all, I'm having trouble with the "On failure, try alternative NZB" feature working on sabnzbd. I've spent quite a few hours googling this, and I can't seem to come across any reason why this isn't working! I will download a .nzb file, sabnzbd will not be able to find all the articles, and thus the file will abort (and enter a failed status). Rather than look for an alternative .nzb file, it seems like the process just stops there!

I have made sure that I have enabled the "On failure, try alternative NZB" option in Switches. I also know my indexer supports this feature (I use dognzbd). For as much as I have scoured the Internet, I don't really see any advice for this other than making sure that the indexer supports it and the feature is enabled in sabnzbd. I have searched this forum as well, and did see anyone else having this problem.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on what I can do to resolve this issue! Thanks for your time!

Indeed you should look inside the NZB, there it will show a Failure-URL.
But: it doesn't mean that they actually linked a failed-URL to this NZB.
You can see that if you actually copy that URL and open it in a browser, does it download a new NZB?
If it does: could you send me the original NZB at [email protected] so I can give it a try?

Sorry to take so long to reply! I was able to get a solution later on by talking to "ll" on an IRC channel I found for Sabnzbd. The issue ended up not being with Sabnzbd.

The problem was that Couch Potato was not passing along the X-Header information from DogNZB to Sabnzbd. This X-Header information is quite important, as it also the Failure-URL. It looks like Couch Potato has it's own means of handling failed NZBs, which does not rely on the "On failure, try alternative NZB" feature provided by SabNZBD. I was able to fix the problem by troubleshooting CouchPotato.

Thank you for your response!

Try Sonarr! It will make your life much much easier Handeling all this failure stuff perfectly.