this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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How does one get started with the *arr stack? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago by goddard_guryon@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hey guys! After over 2 years of me asking how to take the first steps in self-hosting, I think I've finally got most of the things I need set up (except for a mailcow server proxied through a VPS, but that's for another day). I've been seeing a bunch of posts here about the *arr stack, and only recently it piqued my interest enough to really warrant a serious look. But I'll be honest, it's a bit confusing. For now, I'm just thinking of starting up the whole suite on my machine, then slowly expose to internet the parts I find useful (and shut down the parts I don't). But I really can't find any good...tutorial(?) on how to quickly get the whole stack running, and I'm a bit worried about launching individual apps since I don't know if/how they communicate with each other. So I'll try to summarize my, quite naïve, questions here:

  • how exactly do I set up a quick stack? Is that possible? And more importantly, is that recommended?
  • most of the tutorials/stacks I see online use plex for video streaming, but seeing a lot of negativity around plex and its pricing, I reckon using jellyfin would be better. Does it just plug into the ecosystem as easily as plex apparently does?
  • I've already set up a hack-ish navidrome instance to stream music, but managing files is a real hassle with it. Does sonarr(?) do it any better?

I know most of these questions can be easily answered through some LLM (which I don't wanna rely on) or scouring documentation (which honestly look a bit daunting from my point right now), so I figured it'd be best to ask here. Thanks for any help!

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[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The arr stack is kinda tricky to get started and understand how it all works together, but as soon as it clicks, it's awesome !!

Can't exactly say what, but I kinda got lost and what helped me out was to slowly work one arr service at a time and understand what they actually do. (First only Sonarr after awhile I added prowlarr, then radarr and now slowly testing Seer !)

Trash guide was also helpful specially for custom formats. Just take your time and don't try to much to make your own custom formats... Have seen alot a of people on private trackers blow up their ratio without noticing it.

Best advice I can give you is to just play arround with sonarr or radarr alone and try things out and see what they do ^^ Or try to read and understand the official documentation but you will have a better grasp while doing things :)

Edit: Ohh and forget about asking chatGPT... It will mostly output outdated information an cause you more trouble and leave you even more confused !

[–] goddard_guryon@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 months ago

Good to know I'm not stupid for feeling a little intimidated by the arr stack XD

Actually, I think I will follow this and start with just sonarr to get a feel for it first. I have barely any clue of what 'format' means here, so clearly I'd be better off taking a small step first. Thanks!