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What are you running? Does it happen to be some all in one solution like Synology or Ugreen?
But the gist of it is you get the arrs running in a docker stack, jellyfin running in another. You don't actually have to point them at each other: the arrs dump your films/series into a media folder you define. You tell your jellyfin server what folder has your media and bob's your uncle.
I prefer using Usenet to download my media. Pros, not torrent, less risk. Cons, costs a bit each year.
as always, the answer is "it depends" - everyone has their own unique flavor of *arr stack with different components. Breaking it down, everything revolves around the core apps:
These apps do the majority of the hard work of going from eg. "I want this movie" to "this movie file is now downloaded and placed into a subdirectory on my NAS or storage somewhere"
Realistically, all you need to get started is a download client (usenet, torrent client, whatever - the most popular choice is qbittorrent-nox or an equivalent docker container), your *arr app(s) of choice, and a way to consume and share the media you've now downloaded to your NAS or server (plex, jellyfin, stash, audiobookshelf, VLC, etc)
For consuming media, here's a non-comprehensive list that most people will recommend at least one thing from:
The rest of the *arr ecosystem serves as a way to automate this core idea or fix issues with that automation. An example from my own homelab:
Not all of these will be useful to you, and you'll likely find others that are more useful for your situation. Like I mentioned, everyone's *arr stack is different and unique.
My recommendation: start with an *arr or two, configarr (optional but really recommended - hard to set up but once you do you're good forever), prowlarr (optional but you'll thank yourself later if you ever get into this and end up with more *arrs), and unpackerr (really do recommend this one) and go from there.
For anyone interested in the configarr config I use, here you go. It's somewhat customized to my taste (especially dubs > subs for anime) and there's likely an issue or inconsistency or two in it that someone more familiar might be able to spot, but it works pretty well and I'd say it's a good starting point if you just want to get going.
Note that it's a kubernetes ConfigMap but it's not hard to pull the relevant info into docker for your own needs.
It depends on whether you want to use torrents or have a usenet subscription. You'd do well to look at TRaSH guides, save yourself a lot of headaches if you structure the container's directory structures in the way the guides suggest and then you can just use Prowlarr to manage the actual download requests and send them to your torrent or usenet client.
I use Jellyfin and I suggest you do the same, but honestly you could use whatever you feel like, the *arr stack is going to put everything in the proper folder structure and naming convention so by and large your media server app should be pretty plug and play, just point it at the proper folder and get to scanning.
Ha! That sounds like the exact thing I was looking for. I'll go through the guide and see how well it turns out. Thanks!
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 !
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!
You should be able to find tutorials on YouTube or follow the TRaSH guide. You don't need to expose this stuff to the internet, only your download client like Qbittorrent. For movies and TV, all you'd need is a download client + VPN, sonarr (TV), radarr (movies), Prowlarr (handles indexers/trackers), and possibly Jellyseer for requests from you or those you share with in a single UI. There are other *arrs for music (Lidarr), books, porn, etc too. Lidarr can integrate with SoulSeek if thats what you're using to fill content for Navidrome, but you would use Jellyfin as the media player.
Yes they'll integrate well with Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin. You just paste API keys from one to another to allow them to communicate.
As a bonus, if you go with newsgroups, you don't have to expose anything to the internet!
Haha I feel like I'm way behind anything you mentioned here. I had a bunch of old mp3 files lying around, so for now all I do is upload old/new mp3 files I procure into my nextcloud instance, then use an autosynced nextcloud folder to fill navidrome. I always knew this is a very fragile solution, but your comment seems to be a goldmine of stuff to try. Thanks!
I haven't really been in the music game for a long time either with streaming being so easy and most torrent sites not offering much, but I did try SoulSeek out and it was super nice for acquiring new music. I have not tried the integration with Lidarr, but I think that would make it excellent.
Do you normally pirate content and have something like Jellyfin setup?
I do have like a bunch of old stuff from can't-recall-when. I setup jellyfin while scrolling through the awesome-selfhosted list, but never got to really get it to work because of lack of content
Wiki.servarr.com and trash guides for setup. Like the other person mentioned, you'll want qbit with VPN for torrents or sab for usenet, radar and sonarr, prowlarr, and your media server. Lots of apps you can add later, like seerr for request management.
Recommended containers by the servarr folks are hotio (has built in vpn for the qbit container) or lsio.
I tried to follow servarr head-first, but of course got lost in the jargon since I had next to zero idea of what I'm dealing with. But all these comments (and trash guides, which I somehow never encountered) seem to be great pointers to get me up to speed hehe
I haven't tried any out-of-the-box solution or setup script, so I can't talk about them. if you go diy or want to edit any solution to have internet access exclusively over VPN (or not at all otherwise), I can recommend gluetun. Other than that, I just have a simple docker compose file and a reverse proxy. I recommend not exposing it to the www, but to keep it only accessible in your local network, or tailscale, if your use case allows it. Note: if you set up https, you might be leaking your subdomains in permanent certificate transparency records.
So this is a part I've stumbled on for now. I do host a bunch of other stuff which I share with a few friends, so using tailscale was, for me, a bigger hassle than worth. But now that prowlarr requires a VPN connection for security, I'm on the crossroads on whether to push tailscale for everyone or figure out VPN for just prowlarr. But I suppose that's what gluetun is for? I'll take a look into it anyway, thanks!
Having Prowlarr behind a VPN is not recommended, as some trackers ban VPN use. Instead have Prowlarr on the host network, and route individual trackers via Gluetun’s http proxy.
Deployrr
Cool tool, but not really what has been asked, is it?