A missing first article is an inspection result, not a failure

Eweka answers 'no such article' after ~450 ms; a quarter of inspection
requests were for missing articles and each failed job was retried up
to three times. Files get content_type 'missing' instead; homelab also
records it from failure reports of nodes not rebuilt yet.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

app/services/ContentService.ts

@@ -156,6 +156,11 @@ class ContentService {
     const binary = await db.from('binaries').where('file_id', task.fileId).first()
     const { contentType } = probe
     await db.from('files').where('id', file.id).update({ content_type: contentType })
+    if (contentType === 'missing') {
+      // Nothing to read; the binary needn't wait for inspection any more.
+      if (binary) await db.from('binaries').where('id', binary.id).update({ awaiting_inspection: null })
+      return result
+    }
 
     // Fingerprint, so par2 sets (now or later) can name this file exactly.
     if (binary) {
@@ -268,6 +273,7 @@ export function describeContent(filename: string, content: ContentResult | null)
     )
   }
   if (content?.named) lines.push(`"${filename}" got its real name from par2.`)
+  if (content?.contentType === 'missing') lines.push(`"${filename}": the server no longer has its first article.`)
   if (content?.contentType === 'nzbe') lines.push(`"${filename}" is an encrypted NZB container.`)
   if (content?.contentType === 'rclone') lines.push(`"${filename}" is rclone-encrypted.`)
   if (content?.yencName) lines.push(`"${filename}" is "${content.yencName}" (yEnc name).`)

app/services/RemoteContentService.ts

@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ import QueueService from '#services/QueueService'
 import NntpService from '#services/NntpService'
 import ContentService, { describeContent } from '#services/ContentService'
 import ArchiveWalkService from '#services/ArchiveWalkService'
-import type { ContentTask, InspectProbe, InspectTask, WalkProbe } from '#lib/content/probe'
+import { isMissingArticle, type ContentTask, type InspectProbe, type InspectTask, type WalkProbe } from '#lib/content/probe'
 
 /** Inspection first; archive walks (D40) only when it has nothing waiting. */
 const QUEUES = ['collection-queue', 'archive-walk-queue'] as const
@@ -90,6 +90,11 @@ class RemoteContentService {
   /** The probe failed on the node (e.g. a missing article): retried like a local failure. */
   async fail(queue: QueueName, jobId: string, token: string, error: string) {
     const job = await this.job(queue, jobId)
+    // A missing first article from a node that predates the probe's own handling: a result,
+    // not something to retry (each try costs Eweka ~450 ms; LOG.md 2026-10-06 (14)).
+    if (queue === 'collection-queue' && job.data.remote && isMissingArticle(error)) {
+      return this.finish(queue, jobId, token, { size: 0, contentType: 'missing', md5_16k: null, yencName: '' })
+    }
     await this.locked(() => job.moveToFailed(new Error(`node: ${error}`), token, false))
   }