I’ll start. Did you know you can run a headless version of JD2 on a raspberry pi? It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but sometimes its nice to throw a bunch of links in there and go to sleep.
stop manually browsing torrent sites! You’re wasting your time.
Download qBittorrent. Download Jackett. Configure Jackett to work inside qBittorrent. You now have a way to search hundreds of trackers all at once within seconds and find literally anything you want.
Get Prowlarr instead of Jackett and then install sonarr/radarr too. No more manual searching at all!
I’ve tried just about every type of automated system Sonarr, Radarr fully integrated with usenet and my libraries etc.
After a while I realised I quite enjoy doing things manually. I get to vet the content a little before I grab it, a bit like going to the video store.
Jackett isn’t automated, it’s just a search tool. You can open any search result in-browser if you wish to double check it. I do it all the time
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As long as you have your quality profiles set up correctly they very rarely grab a bad release, I’ve maybe had to throw out 3 movies and one season of anime it grabbed during the past year I’ve been using a full *arr setup combined with jellyfin and jellyseerr.
And generally it grabbing a bad release is due to it being uploaded on a tracker with little moderation. I tend to blacklist a site once this happens more than once or twice.
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Anime is my biggest use case, and it’s worked great for me.
If you set the series to “Anime” it should use both episode number and absolute numbering when searching for anime. It’s certainly not perfect but it gets the job done most of the time.
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Have you set it up like trash-guides does? Works well for almost any anime I watch. The only issues I have is not finding something because of localized/JP name release that are with embedded subs.
I only auto-dl with sonarr for anime and groups I know like SubsPlease, EraiRaws etc.
Movies are capped to FHD-BD and remuxes are only downloaded manually.
Also because I use a seedbox my storage quota is usually 99% in use and filling it 100% up causes me issues so I am usually paranoid about 1. the quality and 2. what size is being downloaded
You should check out Prowlarr, its like jackett, but integrates better into sonarr/radarr
Prowlarr has a prettier UI but the torrent sites they support are maintained by Jackett. It noone gives credit, at some point Jackett won’t be maintained and Prowlar neither.
Disclaimer: I’m qBittorrent, Jackett, Flaresolverr and Bazarr developer.
Hey thanks for your work. QBT and Jackett are super stable and well done.
Damn, I’m huge fan of yours. Using qBbittorent, Jacket, Flarsolverr and Bazarr in docker. Thanks for your work.
But I never managed to get Jackett plugin to work x)
https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-configure-Jackett-plugin
It has limitations, but qBittorrent is used by 40M users aprox and we are only 3-5 active developers. Managing the open issues don’t let us time to work on new features…
Thanks for the link. I’ve been following these instructions from start. Looks like it’s searching for a while, but ends up saying “Jackett: connection error getting indexer list!”
Who needs new features when the most important ones are working perfectly anyway :)
I dont need a fancy UI for jackett since it’s only needed for the API.
Prowlarr does have the ability to do a search of all indexers including usenet, combined into one results list, which is very nice for finding rare or niche things outside of Sonarr/Radarr.
So I have both installed and configured, but only ever use prowlarr for manual searches cause jackett is working and i’m too lazy to change all my settings in my 6 separate ARR instances.
Made the reverse. Switched to prowlarr and keeping jackett if something does not work on prowlarr.
Thank you for your work on those beloved softwares.
Qbit desktop thin client when? Lol
It’s not in the roadmap. You can run qBittorrent-nox (headless) with the web UI. It works really well with thousands of torrents.
I have all of these programs running on raspberry pi, including Flood (mobile friendly UI for qBittorrent, also supports Deluge), and plex media server. It can’t be easier to watch movies and tv shows that way.
Make an image of your SD card if you haven’t already. Better yet run the OS over USB. sd cards to die.
I have made an image. One sd card already died, but it worked for a long time. It was at least readonly, and I get most of the files off (I had backup, but I wanted to get the most latest files). Movies and series are on 5TB hard drive, so I don’t have to worry about that. But are usb sticks really more reliable? My friend is using home assistant and he moved data partition to usb stick, just becaues he heard usb sticks are more reliable than sd cards, but not long after that, usb stick stopped working.
Are they all running on the Pi, or just the torrenting tools?
My 5¢, got a similar stack running fine on a Pi 4B 8GB (with Jellyfin instead of Plex). Just gotta make sure to direct play, it does not like transcoding too much, even with hw acceleration
Transcoding is also turned off in my case. But I couldn’t get used to Jellyfin. I tried, but I just couldn’t.
That’s fair, never used Plex but I suppose it’s more polished being a product and all. In my case, I read Plex requires an internet connection to work and I needed my media server to be available offline, so it was a deal-breaker
Jellyfin is actually very polished in my opinion. Using it very often
Works flakey at best. I could transcode but only 1080p anime caused by SSA subs. And it would buffer. A lot.
Today Jellyfin is really good with not causing uneccessary transcoding
Thank you for this. I set this up yesterday and started combing through my list of things that I’ve wanted to download but couldn’t find even on my private trackers. I wish I knew about this sooner!
Sometimes it’s cool to browse sites for FL alone.
When TorrentDB existed I liked zo browse the current hot section just to download stuff and 1. profit from it being FL and 2. increasing my ratio.
Other times I got a fee good recommendations because I was curious why so many downloaded somethingAs a person who is not an advanced pirate, I’m reading the Jackett page and I have no idea what it is or how it works.
Oh wow this sounds pretty often. From time to time I find it hard locate some file. Especially old audiobooks. Would this be a good way to do that? And do you know a mobile equivalent?
Myanonamouse.net is an incredible private tracker for audiobooks that has semi-open sign ups. You just have to pass an interview.
It turns out if you have a library card you can get tons of free audiobooks. I don’t think it counts as piracy but there are other ways to get free books.
I was looking into this like last week but paused it because I’m an idiot who can’t figure out which package to grab off their git lol. I think it is amdx64 but I have intel everything, I know it isn’t arm though.
It’s called amd64 because AMD invented the x86-64 processor instruction set, it works both on Intel and AMD
Thank you! I’m just not used to seeing things named like that, it’s usually just x86 in my experience for some reason so I wasn’t sure, and had nobody to ask haha. Thank you, setting that up immanently!
x86 are 32-bit applications.
amd64 are 64-bit applications.Or sometimes also x86_64
type
uname -min your terminalThanks!
If you have a large steam library, the rin forum has some tools to help backup a good chunk of those games. Usually you can’t run a steam game without the steam client, but steamless and goldberg can make them run without needing the client.
Avoid TS, HDCAM, CAM movies
IPv6 torrenting for the most part goes unchecked by the companies who send threat letters to your ISP. I have a US seedbox which doesn’t have IPv4 and it’s been working great with a lot of public torrents
piracy is a latter.
at the bottom there is the person getting a pirated ware physically from someone who copied it.
then steps later there is rapidshare or whatever filehosters still exist.
more steps up are public torrents and trackers.
then there is forums that use a variety of sharing technologies like (private) torrent or hosters.
nzb is next.
then there is irc - which at best is linked to some of the outer ring ftp servers.
ftp servers run by currygroups is next. and they leech from
the core of scene ftp servers.
sure i missed exotic outlets of the piracy latter like ondemandpiracystreaming, ssd-by-snailmail and so on… we all agree vpn is key. i think irc always has worked better than torrent ever and being easier to access thab nzbs.
Thanks to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/ober found that ipleak.net can be used to check if you VPN is leaking your IP before proceeding with torrenting.
And also using Qbittorrent to tie the client to the VPN by going to Tools > Preferences > Advanced and changing network interface to your VPN.
Somewhat related, you can use iknowwhatyoudownload.com to check and see if your IP address was part of a torrent download recently
This is great, thank you.
That is pretty cool. I just checked it from my cellular connection. Obviously it’s not stuff that I downloaded, it’s still cool to see.
That’s because you are not the only one who is using that ip address, generally you share it with other people. But if you download something, you’ll definitely see that downloaded thing among others.
I get a big red exclamation point and “The address 140...** is not in the database” Is this a sign that I have NordVPN set up correctly or not? Thanks for mentioning ipleak.net!
If you really want to build an awesome Plex/Jellyfin library, start using Usenet instead of torrents.
Please tell me what I can get on usenet that isn’t on PTP, BTN, or RED.
I would bet that 99/100 releases are uploaded to private trackers before usenet.
I’d like to know this as well. Haven’t used Usenet for over 10 years. PTP, BTN, and Red are all I need. Seed box and Plex. I’m into indie/obscure films also, so what would Usenet offer that they don’t?
You should look into Karagarga
It isn’t availability that makes me prefer Usenet, but its speed and security features.
The download speed on any popular release will max out even the fastest connections. I assume the retention for less popular content is a lot better on trackers, but I don’t have enough experience with usenet to say that for sure.
security features
What features?
Usenet connections can be encrypted. No need for a VPN or any other obfuscation.
Torrents can be encrypted as well, and there isn’t a need for a VPN unless you use public trackers, which I don’t recommend.
What is the monthly fee for Usenet? I’m more in favor of decentralized systems with the use of seedboxes to speed up distribution, but I’m not against usenet either.
What is the monthly fee for Usenet?
About 5 bucks a month or a little less if you pay by the year.
If you have cabal and able to maintain ratio (yeah BTN is ratio less) you don’t need Usenet
But thats such a small proportion of people. Usenet is what I recommend to entry level people who want top tier access but aren’t will to spend time/effort/networking but will spend money m
I’ve personally found that usenet isn’t that good unless you’re trying to grab things immediately. I find trying to grab older stuff really hit or miss, mostly miss.
Use two providers on different networks. They can fill in the gaps for each other.
Right, get a block account with another provider on a different backbone and you should be good to go!
Most indexers have a request form for content. Ive used the one on NZBGeek numeous times and gotten what I wanted within a day or two.
Idk man, Usenet was solid for me for years but now everything is DMCAd in a flash.
Huh, a couple years ago everything was being DMCAd haven’t come accross that issue in awhile, at least me personally.
what is usenet just a DDL site?
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Affordable? I’m not here to pay people for things, that’s for sure 😅
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SlavArt Revolt bots are THE WAY to go for high quality music from almost any service
I love you. I was finally able to get a flac file for one of my favorite pieces of music of all time.
Also look into Soulseek if you’re looking for FLAC files.
Glad i could help, happy sailing o7
This is awesome. Any site to direct download entire playlists?
Depending on the size of the playlist i guess ? I’ve been able to get the bots to download them from Spotify if they are under 100 songs or so
How do they work, do you know?
There is a bit of a learning curve. Please read thoroughly. https://rentry.co/slavart
If you are looking for German (or German + English dual language) content it can be very hard to find stuff on public torrent trackers and it’s pretty hard to get onto private German trackers - but don’t worry, there is a solution:
Usenet and the indexer sceneNZBs.com that specialises in German releases have got you covered!
If you want to automate the search for German Dual Language content using Radarr/Sonarr I made a guide (that also works for torrents too): https://github.com/PCJones/radarr-sonarr-german-dual-language
Google searches show the DMCA takedown notices that list the sites that illegally stream content. It seems to me that if an interested party were to search for something on google and happened to see the DMCA take down notice, they might peruse that takedown request and see a number of sites that might illegally host such copyrighted content - so they know what sites to avoid of course.
😉
Unfortunately they’ve recently stopped doing this. It was a great way to stick it to the man though
Must depend on the search. I just checked, and the links were still there same as always.
OMG! What a great way to stay safe online. This is a great tip. Guys remember, you wouldn’t download a car!
Synology NAS (with SynoCommunity) + Transmission + Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr/etc + Kodi
It’s amazing, the new episodes or movies just show up right there in the media center, with correct metadata, ready to be watched.
I never tried out all these “arr” services because I thought they only deliver english language. Is it possible to use other languages?
Yeah you can can choose a language profile and download movies/tv whichever language you want
They can work with other languages, but it can take a while to find a correct setup
I have done basically the same thing. With a few differences.
I setup Transmission and SaBnzbd on the NAS but offloaded sonarr/radar/prowlarr + jellyfin to my server so it’s not taking up resources from the NAS.
Found Usenet to download significantly faster overall and sonarr/radar get releases from them much quicker then torrents. Only about 1/15 downloads end up being torrents.
Also overseerr is an amazing tool that you should add into your system. I use it for myself but I also have made accounts for my family so instead of asking me to download something they can just press two buttons and it automatically does the rest.
How much space are you guys running for these setups?
I’m running a mini-ITX system with three 3.5" drives, the case dimensions for it are 240x207x401mm. It’s a pretty tight package, and way smaller and more efficient than the dual Xeon Dell T7500 I used to run.
I’ve been doing basically the same thing on a QNAP NAS slowly as I find time to learn.
My current setup is NAS with a docker running Jellyfin (Plex alternative that is FOSS and also better in my opinion). I setup a reverse-proxy via https to Jellyfin on the NAS.
I have VPN+Prowlarr+Radarr+Sonarr+Lidarr+qBittorrent setup on my PC and uploading locally to the NAS for Jellyfin.
I have a domain purchased and using DDNS to point the url to my IP, though that doesn’t appear to be working properly right now.
So as is, it works quite well at least on my local network, but when I find the time I’ll get the domain working so I can properly login to Jellyfin remotely with it. Then next up is moving the torrent setup onto the NAS in it’s own docker stack.
My NAS also has two physical network interfaces so I’m also going to setup the other one to be exclusively a VPN connection so I can let different docker stacks use different network interfaces. (VPN for torrent docker stack and non-VPN for remoting into the NAS or something. I’m not sure yet.)
Look into jellyseerr. It’s a really nice way to add content and to let others add content.
Jellyseer is great even though im the only one using it in my house, the ui is much nicer than radarr/sonarrs for downloading and seeing trending films and tv
I seriously need to learn all of this stuff. For years I’ve just been doing the same thing. Turn on my VPN, find the movie or show I want on whatever torrent site, download it with qBittorent and then hook my laptop up to my receiver and play it with VLC.
20 some years and I’m still doing it that way, except that I use Plex so I can watch stuff on the TV. I use Prowlarr once in a great while if I’m having a hard time finding something but I don’t DL anywhere near as much as I used to.
Yeah I’ve been doing the same way for so long and honestly I don’t have any problems other than the couple of times I forgot to enable the VPN and got a slap on the wrist from my ISP. The shows I like to watch are spread out across so many services that it would cost me a fortune to subscribe to them all, so I do use eztv a lot and before that RARBG (RIP).
I’m disabled and on a fixed income and there’s no way I can afford 4 or 5 streaming services. I don’t even watch that much other than an occasional series like Silo and a movie once in a while. I think a lot more stuff is tracked now than it used to be(I even got hit for an older game) and it’s just not worth it to try without a VPN.
Silo was really good! Can’t wait for season 2. I got hot for downloading Pretty In Pink for my wife. Hahaha!
Never saw Pretty in Pink but enjoyed Molly Ringworm in The Breakfast Club. I also have a Kindle and am on the 3rd book in the Silo series. The other thing about e-books is that even bestsellers aren’t tracked by anyone. There are nowhere near as many books on various sites as there are movies and TV shows, but you can still find just about anything.
I have this same setup on Synology using docker and funnel all the searches through Jackett and Transmission downloads through a gluetun VPN container. Living in the UK it was a game charger on the ISP restrictions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbSfaKwyfXE
Thanks! I needed this, have been doing something similar but through a VM on the synology and it is not really workings
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=xbSfaKwyfXE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Why can’t I full screen it?
Which model Synology? I’m hoping to do this as well as store family photos soon
Don’t cheap out on a NAS, I got an entry level Synology when I first started it was great for learning but was quite slow. I needed to sell that and buy a more powerful model to get one that could run Docker. I went for 716+ which I bought used off eBay and works well for me, the difference in speed is night and day. Ram can be upgraded onboard if required. Good luck 👍
Awesome, thanks for the advice, I’ll look into that model!
Would a DS220+ be a similar model or less capable? I can’t seem to find a comparison
The 220+ was the first model I had, I found this slow and didn’t natively support docker as part of the package manager. Docker compatibility should be a priority when buying if delving into some setups mentioned here it just makes everything so much more convenient. The 16 series model is expensive to buy new, I picked mine up used from eBay from someone who was upgrading to a newer model. You can Google Docker compatibility for Synology models and get a list of models that work with it and narrow your choices down to these.
Oooo amazing advice, thanks so much for steering me in the right direction!
Is there a guide to get all that setup?
General information on all the software setup and configuration: https://wiki.servarr.com/
Flexible solution based on docker but complicated for a beginner: https://nick-rondeau.medium.com/creating-the-ultimate-media-server-with-docker-portainer-plex-and-ubuntu-server-f47a4503897f
Simple script based solution (easy for beginner but less flexible): https://swizzin.ltd/
The modularity of docker makes this great! I have a docker stack with overseerr, 2x sonarr, 3x radarr, 2x readarr, lidarr, unpackerr and sabnzbd. Another stack with nordvpn and qbittorrent. It’s so easy to setup and it becomes very powerful.
I have some users on Plex that simply do some requests on overseerr, I approve them, then everything gets downloaded automatically. They just have to wait for it to be available. I used to be suscribed to Netflix, not anymore since their offering dropped while their prices raised.
Why do you run multiple *arr containers? What can two or three do that one couldn’t?
The other reply is right!
- I run 3 radarr: 1 for 1080p, 1 for 4k and 1 for 3d. (I share the 1080p, it’s bilingual too, the 3d one is for fun)
- I run 2 sonarr: 1 for English, 1 for French (since most often the series aren’t bilingual, they’re one language or the other)
- I run 2 readarr: 1 for ebooks and 1 for audiobooks. (Sometimes I want the same book in audio form and in text)
This is probably a dumb question but how do you run Sonarr twice?
Also, where do you get your French content? I’m having a hell of a time finding places
Lack of knowledge isn’t dumb, it’s just lack of knowledge. You can’t know everything.
I run 2 docker containers, named slightly differently (my setup is a bit more complicated within a stack though). Then I map a different port for the FR one so it doesn’t conflict. Of course, you need a different config volume. Then once the container is up, you can I link my FR sonarr to my EN one. So when I request something on my EN Sonarr, it also adds it to my FR Sonarr.
I also do that with movies, but for HD and 4K instead. I manage multi-language differently.
I’ll PM you for my source of French content.
Thank you for the detailed response. This might be the shove I need to look into docker haha.
I would appreciate a pm with a source - thank you!
Radarr/Sonarr can’t handle multiple versions of the same movie/episode, so a lot of people have a second instance for 4K movies (so they can have both a 1080p and a 4K version of the same movie). Also if you have a lot of anime it can be worth it to have a Sonarr instance configured just for that
You are my hero. Can this power be learned or do you have to run a story arc for some internet wizard?
This can be learned. I did this through trial and error and basically learning about docker. I’m now proud of my setup but I sanked a lot of hours into it.
I don’t know overseerr yet, sounds like it might be useful for my gf 🤔 Also never heard of unpacker, gotta check out the advantages of that.
I only recently finally got into docker and it’s amazing. Good thing I spent the extra bucks for the NAS that supports it back when I bought it some years ago. Maybe I’ll switch Sonarr/Readarr/Readarr and Prowlarr to docker too, so that I can manage everything the same way.
I was so close to going legal and signing up for Netflix, and then all the other platforms started to pop up and the content got split over all those. I just want one platform for all my favourite shows and movies. It should be shared like with Spotify/Google-/Apple-/YouTube-Music, not the exclusive chaos that it is now.
Unpackerr is good to unpack torrent files when they are multiple rar files for example. It seems to do its job, I have less failed imports and less manual intervension.
I used to be legit. Then Netflix started to cancel my shows, they raised the price and other platforms started to pop up. I said fuck it and went the way of piracy. I’m legit with gaming and music since there are convenient solutions for those.
Just curious, why do you prefer Kodi over Plex?
I have a dated opinion, it’s probably still true, but compute power is much cheaper now.
If your player doesn’t support the format, Plex will transcode it on the server – which is extremely slow if all you have is just a junk pc as server, while on Kodi (or what I personally use, Infuse), you can use any file server, like smb, and they’ll just play. No fuss, any lags will definitely be a network issue.
I only watch on one device (Nvidia Shield Pro) directly and do not need streaming over the net. Because of this I have also not looked into Jellyfin much either.
Overall I got to know Kodi first and like the customization and add-ons etc. I have my library/metadata set up that way and am too lazy to check the others out and maybe switch (don’t fix a running system, right? xD)
Awesome true! I haven’t used Kodi since it switched from XBMC on a modded OG xbox. I love everything plex has to offer but in the same mindset, i haven’t looked much beyond plex because it works for my needs. Thanks for the input.
Docker, if you can run it on your hardware (either your normal system or on dedicated hardware) is a Swiss army knife that can help level up your acquisitions, and provides you with an isolated application environment if you don’t want to install the applications directly to your device. For media specifically, there is a suite of applications under the same *arr naming scheme that allows you to index, monitor for releases of, and acquire different television shows, movies, music, and books.
Some container maintainers build in different capabilities into their torrent client containers, such as Binhex’s qBittorrent and Deluge applications, that have VPN connectivity built in, so any network traffic running through that container will automatically use your VPN provider’s WireGuard or OpenVPN capabilities, depending on who you use. Once you have that running and your tags tuned in the *arr apps, you have a headless, mostly independent machine constantly working on acquiring and upgrading your media.
Sidenote: the *arr apps can be controlled by mobile apps like LunaSea on iOS, and nzb360 on Android. The latter can also integrate with your torrent clients.
Get into private trackers if you can and then you won’t have to worry much about any of this.
i’ve been pirating things for ~15 years and still don’t understand private trackers
What’s the confusion? They’re just like public ones, but pristinely organized, extremely well seeded, and you’re less likely to get a letter from your ISP for torrenting with them.
and you’re less likely to get a letter from your ISP for torrenting with them.
isn’t that why we’re using vpn?
Yea, but you don’t need one with a private tracker.
cool thank you
the getting into them part haha
Ah, you just need to pass an interview for many, which involves doing some reading and waiting in an irc channel
I can find just about anything I want through public trackers or DDL sites, so I haven’t bothered to look into them.
yeah pretty much. but the 5-10% I never found would be nice to look for again
Same, being elitist about who you share japanese cartoons or whatever with just seems weird.
NO
Your username makes me think you go around in elliptic orbits just to say NO at things due to your skepticism. :)
I really want to thank you for this post, it opens up some long hidden secrets and gems inside the piracy world <3
I want to add something to this thread for my advanced pirates: irc xdcc chats for directly downloading content use http://sunxdcc.com to search for the content you are lookin for! (though, it’s very manual)
Not that advanced, but two things I found useful:
- If you’re in a country that blocks torrent websites but not trackers (eg. UK), visit the sites via Tor browser.
- Rutracker.org and Rutracker.ru are surprisingly not blocked in the UK and have lots of good software. They’re BBCode-style forums, so fairly obvious how to navigate/search them even if you don’t speak Russian. If you want to read the description or comments of a specific torrent, pop the page into google translate.
