Hi everyone! I’m planning to deploy my server with an ARR-Suite and would appreciate some tips and tricks before I start, so I don’t have to tear it down later. I want to automate it as much as possible while keeping it relatively simple, as I’m a beginner.
Firstly, I’m looking to download movies, TV shows, and some audiobooks. I am interested in using both Usenet and Torrents. I am German and prefer most of my media to be in German. I understand that most torrent trackers and Usenet groups are in English, but I’m primarily looking for German content. Can you recommend some public trackers or groups for this?
I understand that if you want to use private trackers and contribute to the community, you should seed for extended periods. How can I set it up so that I can seed for a long time while still using the files, renaming them, and moving them to my preferred directories without disrupting the seeding process? Are there any good tutorials or videos you would recommend?
I have tried to start this project multiple times, but I often run into the issue of wanting an automated system that renames and organizes these files into my desired directories without destroying the seeding process and without duplicating files, as I have limited storage.
If this post is not appropriate for this community and should be in a homelab forum, please let me know. I would love to hear about your setups and best practices.
I think the limited storage is the cause of your reservations. If you could just buy a few large HDDs, you can pool them all into a RAID array and then store your library and downloads on said pool. The arrs can then create hardlinks which allow you to have “two” copies of a file while only using the storage space of a single one. One stays in Qbittorrent and the other gets renamed and moved to your library automatically. You retain the files until both copies are deleted.
As far as setup goes, Trash guides are popular as mentioned in other comments. I ran all this on Windows for over a decade but recently setup proxmox and host everything in docker containers now (along with a bunch of other non-media related stuff). It got to a point where everything started running like shit on Windows and I regret not setting things up on a Linux based OS long ago because my library has become quite large and I was essentially ‘trapped’ in an unfriendly OS with no easy way out (I essentially had to buy and build a whole new pool of drives and then move all my media over weeks to avoid losses), so I would seriously consider a Linux based setup if you’re not already.
I have no advice on German media, but I would suggest trying to get into private trackers like you intend. Long-term seeding and freeleech files will take you a long way even if you have terrible upload speeds. I’ve built up dozens of TBs of upload credit with a 10Mbps upload speed just off bonus points and the little actual uploading I could do.
[1] is a great usenet guide. For automation look at TRaSH guides (Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr) and their german section.
If you have questions the discord server in the linked [1] guide is quite helpful. They created the german trash guide.
For german trackers there are non that are public, but a lot of private ones are really easy to get into. immortuos has a forum to apply for an invite and a one of the better general trackers but they do lack anime for that i would recommend anime datenbank tracker you can apply for an invite in their irc chat. There are of course more trackers but these 2 should be enough.
Edit: forgot to mention 2 things, prowlarr and jackett let you filter all trackers by language, this makes it easy to find new german trackers and see if you can apply for an invite or see if someone is willing to invite on the immortuos forum (its nor that active so it kight take some time).
For setting up the *arr suite someone linked this in an older thread here, idk how good that is but it might be worth a try.
You can add overseer for jellyfin, emby, plex based on your preferance, and it connects to sonarr and radarr. Overseer is good for finding recommendations and adding them to your queue. The reason I’m talking about it is you can specify your language and your region for recommendations to help you find good content. As for downloading it, in prowlarr when you search for an indexer to add (public or private) you can filter based on language. Unfortunately when I did it just now for de-DE the 30 or so indexers that popped up are all private. I don’t know their quality, but that is at least a list to start with investigating how to join.
I do know the BIG english ones have a lot of content including content in other languages or dubbed and marked as multi-language or multi-subs. My recommendation is to google around for big public indexers reguardless of language, add them and search for the content you want while also working to get added to the local private ones.
Docker is your friend.
I have reinstated my server last weekend with a single big docker-compse file. I made a mistake and just restarted the docker-compose and it was fixed.
To avoid having to mix/delete/rename files. Make a shared volume. So that your download client downloads to the same actual folder as where your sonarr puts it. But to be fair, sonarr does things like renaming, so that it often doesn’t work that way. I just ended up making a cron job that deletes files older than 7 days from my downloads folder every Sunday at midnight. Hopefully that’s enough time to get a decent share ratio, if not, tough luck.
If anyone has a better solution to keep your download client (qbittorrent for me) uploading after sonarr moved the file, tell me.
The German language part is a tough one. I’ve been looking for Dutch dubbed children cartoons, but I haven’t found anything yet.
You should absolutely avoid using the same folder for downloads and media library. If you want such a setup, you should use hardlinks.
You’re right. Hardlinks have to be on the same partition though. My “downloads” folder is on my internal harddrive and me sonarr folders are on an ssd. That’s why it didn’t work.
Have you checked out https://trash-guides.info/
I found it to be the most helpful guide out there for understanding the ARRs and should answer most of your questions.
