The perfect setup of qBittorrent, SABnzbd, Radarr, Sonarr, and Lidarr.

This guide assumes you’ll be using some sort of upstream HTTP proxy to provide secure connections (SSL).

Before we get started I want to explain how I setup my environment otherwise these instructions may not make a lot of sense.

All “servers” (like this one) are virtual machines which run inside a Hyper-V environment. The physical host runs Windows Server which also acts as a domain controller. Data downloaded is shared on my network via the physical host using a network share. User validation is performed using AD and each virtual machine is assigned a unique AD account. The network share source is x4 Hitachi 10TB 7200RPM HDD’s configured in a RAID 5 array powered by an LSI card.

Effectively data is downloaded via SABNzbd, saved on the local virtual machine for post-processing (eg: extraction and validation), then copied to the network share located on the physical host.

• This setup keeps things clean, secure and encrypted.
• Allows me for format, change, or upgrade the host OS at any time.
• Provides an excellent balance of performance vs. price vs. maintenance.
• Keeps me in complete control – no automation which break things.

We should ensure our system is up to date:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

Let’s install some basic software:

apt-get install vnstat net-tools ntp build-essential

Although not required, I prefer to install the latest version of cifs-utils, I did note some odd error messages in terminal when using v6.2 (obtained via apt-get install on Debian 9.6):

cd /tmp
wget --no-check-certificate https://download.samba.org/pub/linux-cifs/cifs-utils/cifs-utils-6.8.tar.bz2
tar xvjf cifs-utils-6.8.tar.bz2
cd cifs-utils-6.8
./configure
make && make install

Because we are going save downloaded content on another machine (a folder shared on the network) we can instruct Linux to mount the other machine upon boot. To keep thing secure we can create a file as the user root (cannot be read by other users):

nano /root/.smbauth

Populate with the required network share login information:

username=download-vm
password=password
domain=your-domain

Create a group called “mediaservices”; which will give read and write access to downloaded content:

groupadd mediaservices

Now we need to create a user “mediaservice”:

adduser --gecos --disabled-password --disabled-login mediaservice

Using --gecos instructs the adduser command not to prompt for additional info.

Add the newly created user to the mediaservices group:

usermod -a -G mediaservices mediaservice

Create a directory called downloaded:

mkdir -p /media/downloaded

Edit the file fstab which allows us to automatically mount the network share upon boot:

nano /etc/fstab

Populate with either the DNS name or IP address and the name of the network share (connecting to Windows Server 2008 R2):

//192.168.24.49/Downloaded /media/downloaded cifs uid=1001,gid=1001,credentials=/root/.smbauth,vers=2.1,x-systemd.automount 0 0

In the example above, I’ve defined the user in which a connection should be made, I have also defined what user (uid=1001) and group gid=1001 the files written are used.

• vers=2.1 defines the SMB version. I noted a huge performance gains!
• x-systemd.automount allows the network to automatically activate the share when requested.

We now need to setup a “scratch disk”, a place where downloads can be repaired and extracted (doing this over CIFS is crazy slow – believe me, I’ve tried). Let’s start by downloading a few software requirements / dependencies:

apt-get install xfsprogs gdisk

Create a partition:

gdisk /dev/sdb

I prefer to format using XFS as it’s designed to handle larger files:

mkfs.xfs -f /dev/sdb1

Give it a volume name:

xfs_admin -L scratch /dev/sdb1

Get the ID of the new partition:

blkid /dev/sdb1

Ensure the new volume is mounted upon boot:

nano /etc/fstab

UUID=23e4e74e-9253-4686-b194-635112cf75af /media/scratch xfs defaults 0 0

Give your machine a reboot:

reboot

Create associated directories called scratch:

mkdir -p /media/scratch/completed
mkdir -p /media/scratch/incomplete

Set correct ownership:

chown -R mediaservice:mediaservices /media/scratch

I always install the latest version of unRAR:

cd /tmp
wget --no-check-certificate http://www.rarlab.com/rar/unrarsrc-5.5.8.tar.gz
tar xzf unrarsrc-5.5.8.tar.gz
cd unrar
make && make install

Now we can install

apt-get install qbittorrent-nox

Create a startup file:

nano /etc/systemd/system/qbittorrent.service

Populate the startup file as required:

[Unit]
Description=qBittorrent Daemon Service
After=network.target

[Service]
User=mediaservice
Group=mediaservices
ExecStart=/usr/bin/qbittorrent-nox
ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall -w qbittorrent-nox

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enabled the startup file you created:

systemctl enable qbittorrent

We need to agree to the license terms, run qbittorent-nox as the user mediaservice and agree to the terms. You also need to change the port number from :8080 to :8081 (as :8080 is also used by SABNzbd):

su - mediaservice -c "qbittorrent-nox"

We can now install SABNZbd, but we need to add the latest version into our local repositories. Let’s install a prerequisite:

apt-get install dirmngr apt-transport-https

Now add the repository to our sources and update:

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jcfp/nobetas/ubuntu artful main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sabnzbdplus.list
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jcfp/sab-addons/ubuntu artful main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sab-addons.list
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys F13930B14BB9F05F
apt-get update

Install the latest stable version of SABNzbd:

apt-get install sabnzbdplus python-sabyenc par2-tbb

Instruct SABNZbd to run as the user mediaservice and allow access on any local IP:

sed -i 's/USER=/USER=mediaservice/g' /etc/default/sabnzbdplus
sed -i 's/HOST=/HOST=0.0.0.0/g' /etc/default/sabnzbdplus

Add Sonarr to your local machines sources:

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys FDA5DFFC
echo "deb http://apt.sonarr.tv/ master main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sonarr.list

Add the latest version of Mono to your local machines sources:

apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF
echo "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian stable-stretch main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-official-stable.list
apt-get update

Install Sonarr (which will also install the newer version of Mono):

apt-get install nzbdrone

Create a startup file:

nano /etc/systemd/system/sonarr.service

Populate as required:

[Unit]
Description=Sonarr Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
User=mediaservice
Group=mediaservices

Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mono --debug /opt/NzbDrone/NzbDrone.exe -nobrowser
TimeoutStopSec=20
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable to startup file:

systemctl enable sonarr

Download and install Lidarr:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/lidarr/Lidarr/releases/download/v0.5.0.583/Lidarr.develop.0.5.0.583.linux.tar.gz
tar xzf Lidarr.develop.0.5.0.583.linux.tar.gz
cp -R /tmp/Lidarr /opt

Create a startup file:

nano /etc/systemd/system/lidarr.service

Populate as required:

[Unit]
Description=Lidarr Daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
User=mediaservice
Group=mediaservices
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mono --debug /opt/Lidarr/Lidarr.exe -nobrowser
TimeoutStopSec=20
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable the startup file:

systemctl enable lidarr

Download and install Radarr:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/Radarr/Radarr/releases/download/v0.2.0.1217/Radarr.v0.2.0.1217.linux.tar.gz
tar xzf Radarr.v0.2.0.1217.linux.tar.gz
cp -R Radarr /opt/

Create a startup file:

nano /etc/systemd/system/radarr.service

Populate as required:

[Unit]
Description=Radarr Daemon
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
User=mediaservice
Group=mediaservices

Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mono --debug /opt/Radarr/Radarr.exe -nobrowser
TimeoutStopSec=20
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable the startup file:

systemctl enable radarr

Change ownership from root to mediaservice (mediaservices) of the Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr installations:

chown -R mediaservice:mediaservices /opt/

I usually install some sort of Internet traffic manager on any server which downloads / uploads:

apt-get install darkstat

Edit the Darkstat configuration file:

nano /etc/darkstat/init.cfg

Populate as required:

START_DARKSTAT=yes

DIR="/var/lib/darkstat"
PORT="-p 666"

LOCAL="-l 192.168.24.X/255.255.255.0"