Basic media servers

[touchingcloth]

What's a typical way to setup a home media server, specifically for storing films and TV series?

It only needs to be basic in my case - I don't have a fast internet connection or a telly with a higher resolution than 1080p, so I almost always download movies at 2-4GB in size. I reckon based on my non-networked drives that I wouldn't need more than about 16TB of space, though it would be nice to have some form of local redundancy (cloud backups are basically out given my connection speeds), ideally as something like RAID rather than a setup of needing to perform regular backups, though I'd consider that option if it were markedly cheaper and not a pain in the arse.

SSDs are appealing, but only because this is something that's probably going to end up in a cabinet in the living room and I'd like to not hear disc platters whirring and clicking away, especially if the thing has to be on 24/7.

Speaking of being on 24/7, if that's the best way to run these things (I only question it because we often have people coming to look after the house for us, and anything with a technical process in terms of booting and connecting isn't suitable for that) then something which runs at 100W or less would be best, ideally half that to keep the cost of running it comparable with a Netflix subscription.

Finally, what's the best way to connect this sort of thing to a telly? My current solution is to run a file share on my laptop and play stuff via Infuse on an old Apple TV. This works fine, but given that we have lost access to a family member's Netflix account (they're cracking down on sharing, folks!) and having seen the sorry state of the content on it, Amazon and Disney, I'd rather just go back to torrenting. I rarely watch brand new stuff these days, hence being perfectly happy with low resolution and low bitrates. Ideally the solution wouldn't involve Google or Amazon hardware.

[touchingcloth]

(I think the answer is to just buy a NAS box with the right storage and power consumption and run it through some device running Plex, by the way, just checking whether anyone has any wildly different suggestions).

[touchingcloth]

For any lurkers following this thrilling thread, this pretty much turns out to be a nonce-tarter.

Power consumption of most NAS boxes out there seems to come in at well under 100W I mentioned in the OP, with a lot of them drawing under 20W, which is nice.

However, 32TB of storage to RAID down to 16TB is way more than I'd like to pay. What the fuck happened to Moore's Law? 3.5" SATAs ought to start at about 16TB these days based on where they were at last time I remember buying any. Harrumph.

[crankshaft]

You could look into doing it with a Raspberry Pi, a USB drive and Plex. There appear to be many tutorials out there if you're comfortable with doing the setup via a command line.

[jamiefairlie]

Does it need to a formal NAS? I've got a really basic setup which works. Just have a load of hard drives connected to my office PC, which in turn plugs into an ethernet socket. Downstairs where we watch stuff on the big telly, I have another little PC attached to the ethernet, that I hacked to run Windows Media Centre on Win 10. I have a hard drive attached there too where I keep my backlog of new stuff to watch and if I ever want anything from my archive, I just copy it across from my office drives (which are backed up of course). I don't like wifi in the house so it's all wired. If you don't have ethernet, you can do the same thing using powerline adapters that utilize your power network for data, or MOCA which does the same using cable coax outlets.

It's not fancy but it works really well for my needs.

[touchingcloth]

Does it need to a formal NAS? I've got a really basic setup which works. Just have a load of hard drives connected to my office PC, which in turn plugs into an ethernet socket. Downstairs where we watch stuff on the big telly, I have another little PC attached to the ethernet, that I hacked to run Windows Media Centre on Win 10. I have a hard drive attached there too where I keep my backlog of new stuff to watch and if I ever want anything from my archive, I just copy it across from my office drives (which are backed up of course). I don't like wifi in the house so it's all wired. If you don't have ethernet, you can do the same thing using powerline adapters that utilize your power network for data, or MOCA which does the same using cable coax outlets.

It's not fancy but it works really well for my needs.

NAS is best, I think. I don't have a PC I can leave on all of the time, so a dedicated NAS box (which like @crankshaft says could totally be using something like a Raspberry Pi) would be the simplest solution to improve what I do currently, which I  alluded to in my OP and isn't too dissimilar from what it sounds like you do:

My current solution is to run a file share on my laptop and play stuff via Infuse on an old Apple TV.

In practice, that means I copy things off my 2TB USB drive onto a shared folder on my laptop's SSD, then leave the laptop on while watching stuff.

A dedicated NAS device would avoid two (minor, really) forms of faffery:
1 - Copying stuff back and forth between my (not backed-up) USB drive
2 - Needing to restart shares and Infuse each day to let the telly see the content*

*This need to restart is relatively recent, and I don't know if it's due to changes with how macOS handles file shares between sleep cycles, or how the Apple TV does**, or how the Infuse app*** does.

**The Apple TV is always-on, so it's a shame it doesn't have a USB port which could go into my external drive and itself act as a NAS host.

***Now I think of it, I might give Plex a try as an alternative to the Infuse client to see if this avoids this particular issue. I'm pretty sure I don't need to run a Plex server or anything, because the Apple TV + Infuse seems capable of handling any file format I give it in the bitrates I download stuff (with the notable and recent exception of somex265 files). I don't suppose anyone has any experience with transcoding stuff via the Plex client specifically?

[Sebastian Cobb]

I run a hp microserver with a nas vm (openmediavault - raspberry pi builds exist I think), and another vm running plex in docker and a collection of containers that sit behind a vpn and do torrent-management stuff (look up radarr and sonarr). Draws about 40w on idle which is probably mediocre in terms of low power computing these days but also not really worth replacing on power consumption grounds alone.

I used to have raid mirroring but when I got low on space I bought a single bigger drive and put the previous ones in an enclosure that'll let them be striped and use a raspberry pi nano to allow the microserver to rsync to it.

For playback I use a raspberry pi as a client, I have a fire stick that I've used as well when away from home but it has a bug where it drops the centre channel when downmixing stuff to 2 channel.

One thing you probably want to consider is how to deal with HEVC/x265 files though, not all clients can play these natively so need to be transcoded on the server itself, and it'll probably need a hardware encoder if you want to do this, which based on the file sizes you're talking about might be worth it. If you only want to play from one device then you could make sure that direct plays it though, the raspberry pi 4 does and some android thingies will, but the pi4 was pretty hard to get due to chip shortages.

When I recent (last year or so) looked into possibly upgrading for something that was low-power but could hardware transcode I looked into using a pi or a nvidia jetson (a bit like a raspberry pi but with a decent gpu on it) and it looked like it could be a bit of a pain, the pi4 is capable on paper and the jetson is definitely capable but part of the problem was poor support between plex and the encoders on arm64 and it looking like some shims were required to make it work. I found that an itx board running something like an intel j-series processor would be easier to manage, more powerful but still low power. For example this Asrock board has real-world users claiming 8 watts idle, although a nas build with multiple disks will probably increase that.

Another downside to the pi is I found fewer enclosures for holding multiple full-sized drives. There isn't all that much choice for mini-itx boards either but there is a bit more and they generally seem nicer.

[Huxleys Babkins]

However, 32TB of storage to RAID down to 16TB is way more than I'd like to pay. What the fuck happened to Moore's Law? 3.5" SATAs ought to start at about 16TB these days based on where they were at last time I remember buying any. Harrumph.

Why do you need RAID? For data security? Mirrored RAID isn't as reliable as a proper backup. You'd be better off just getting a single 16TB NAS drive and a much cheaper WD Essentials 16TB USB drive to use as a backup.

That said, I don't back up my media at all (save for the odd rare show, album or movie). I just keep a list of everything on there and I'll just re-download everything again if it fails.

Another option is the Nvidia Shield TV Pro set up with Plex and said Essentials USB drive to hold your media. That way you can plug it straight into your TV and not have to worry about any network stuff at all. I think it only uses something like 7w under load too.

[touchingcloth]

Why do you need RAID? For data security? Mirrored RAID isn't as reliable as a proper backup. You'd be better off just getting a single 16TB NAS drive and a much cheaper WD Essentials 16TB USB drive to use as a backup.

That said, I don't back up my media at all (save for the odd rare show, album or movie). I just keep a list of everything on there and I'll just re-download everything again if it fails.

Another option is the Nvidia Shield TV Pro set up with Plex and said Essentials USB drive to hold your media. That way you can plug it straight into your TV and not have to worry about any network stuff at all. I think it only uses something like 7w under load too.

Data security, aye. My internet speeds are so slow that it would take forever to re-download stuff, and I'm too lazy to bother with manual diff backups to a separate drive. Probably the best thing is for me to work out a decent way of doing that on a Mac and then just running backups monthly or whatever.

I'll take a look at the Nvidia thing, ta.

[The Guppy]

Check if your router has file sharing. My old Netgear one does, but I had to swap it for a DOGSHIT NowTV Hub when I switched ISPs. The freebie router does fuck all. Barely does wifi.

If your router supports it, you just plug in an external drive. It's not a good option, but it's the cheapest option and won't add much to your energy bill.

[Old Thrashbarg]

You could look into doing it with a Raspberry Pi, a USB drive and Plex. There appear to be many tutorials out there if you're comfortable with doing the setup via a command line.

Yeah, Plex server installed on a Pi, USB drive plugged into the Pi, Plex client installed on whatever device you want to watch stuff on. And for added convenience, Transmission installed as a torrent client on the Pi, which you can then access anywhere on your network via a web interface.

Obviously doesn't provide any inbuilt redundancy (two USB drives connected to the Pi and use rsync to backup one to the other?) and if you're downloading a lot it's probably not a good idea to have your torrents going directly onto an external HDD (though less of an issue if you add redundancy), but if you're after a simple setup that's about as simple as you can go.

[touchingcloth]

Router does not do file sharing, or even have a USB port. Sadly.

Yeah, Plex server installed on a Pi, USB drive plugged into the Pi, Plex client installed on whatever device you want to watch stuff on. And for added convenience, Transmission installed as a torrent client on the Pi, which you can then access anywhere on your network via a web interface.

Obviously doesn't provide any inbuilt redundancy (two USB drives connected to the Pi and use rsync to backup one to the other?) and if you're downloading a lot it's probably not a good idea to have your torrents going directly onto an external HDD (though less of an issue if you add redundancy), but if you're after a simple setup that's about as simple as you can go.

What are the benefits of Plex server? Does it operate as a file server or does it only work in tandem with Plex clients?

Part of the benefit of NAS is that I would run Transmission on the laptop where I like the "security" of using a VPN that kills Transmission if the connection drops so that I don't torrent in the clear, as it were.

Also the benefit is I can watch from the laptop if content is hosted on NAS, though I bet they make clients for desktop OSes as well as set top devices.

I'm comfortable with setup and maintenance via the CLI, so long as it's just those two tasks and I wouldn't need to keep a keyboard and mouse by the sofa to be able to watch tv.

[Old Thrashbarg]

What are the benefits of Plex server? Does it operate as a file server or does it only work in tandem with Plex clients?

I was just (perhaps pedantically) separating the two parts of Plex into the server and the client. The server is what people usually refer to as Plex, that organises your files into a library, makes them available for watching, transcodes when they're being streamed, etc. You've then got the client that you'll need to use to watch whatever's in your library. On your laptop, this could just be the web frontend that comes bundled with the server. On other devices that don't have a decent browser to access that web frontend, you'll need to install whatever Plex client they have available, which will connect directly to your server.

[touchingcloth]

So in Plex land, the client is unable to transcode, basically? In Infuse, the server is just NAS, and the client transcodes.

[The Guppy]

You don't need transcoding on the server if you're only using Infuse. So you can save a few quid and get the most basic NAS. No point messing with Plex if you don't need Plex's features.

[Old Thrashbarg]

So in Plex land, the client is unable to transcode, basically? In Infuse, the server is just NAS, and the client transcodes.

Yeah, I think they deliberately avoid putting the transcoding on the client because of the unpredictability of the resources a client might have. Whether that's a web browser on a top spec iMac or an app on a budget phone/TV. I think it has some magic to determine if a client can play whatever file is being requested natively, without requiring any conversion. In which case it can just serve file as it is directly from the library. Though that'll also probably depend on the network connection speed and whether Plex determines if there's any compression necessary (which I expect requires transcoding in a similar way) to be able to serve the file without buffering constantly.

[touchingcloth]

You don't need transcoding on the server if you're only using Infuse. So you can save a few quid and get the most basic NAS. No point messing with Plex if you don't need Plex's features.

Amazing, I'll give that a try. I already have an external drive, so a cheap first step is to build a Raspberry Pi NAS (unless there are even more basic ways to setup a NAS from a USB drive, given that plugging it into the router directly is something I've already ruled out) and see how that compares to my current setup, and I can add more/larger drives in future if I need to.

[touchingcloth]

Turns out Raspberry Pis are a lot more expensive than I thought they were. For some reason I had in mine that they were like £5.

[touchingcloth]

For anyone following or interested, my final solution has been to setup a live persistent Ubuntu drive (there aren't many options for disties that do this, as far as I can tell), and to use this to run Plex.

I tried setting up Samba shares to I could run Infuse, but I kept getting weird quirks where shares would randomly drop off even though I could see them from other devices. I suspect firewall issues or problems with the way Samba and Infuse interact, but it there's very little support information online about running things that way so I fucked it all off and gave Plex a go, and it's working just fine so far.

My next task is to get the server setup to run Transmission, but NordVPN seems to have some very quirky issues with Ubuntu specifically that cause the internet (but not network) to cut out from all devices after working fine for a period, and nothing short of an uninstall will resolve it. No amount of firewall tweaks, service restarts, config file hackery or full reboots would resolve it.

Next step is giving OpenVPN a go, or else a dedicated other approach to torrenting. I have an unused Android handset which might fit the bill...

[Sebastian Cobb]

I have a docker (compose) config I can give you that sets up nordvpn and places transmission, sonarr, radarr and jackett behind it with inbuilt killswitches. You could use all of them or cut out the services you don't want.

Sonarr and Radarr are web-apps that can search and pull in films/tv for you, do automatic scheduling etc. Jackett is a bit in the middle that connects them to torrent indexing services. They're pretty low on resources when not doing anything.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Does anyone think this is worth doing to listen to around 2tb of music (that I currently have on an ssd) on my phone or whatever or do I just give in and pay for a streaming service? I did cancel Spotify after the whole "investing in drone strike companies" thing but no ethical consumption etc etc, yeah?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah you can use Plex for that, part of the reason I set Plex up was because they took google music away. I think you'll either need to buy a Plex pass or make a one-time purchase of the Plex app (only a few quid) in your phone's app store because for annoying reasons they only allow casting on the free version; direct playing from a browser and some other apps are free though. But you can use the browser version from your phone to try it out first anyway.

[touchingcloth]

I have a docker (compose) config I can give you that sets up nordvpn and places transmission, sonarr, radarr and jackett behind it with inbuilt killswitches. You could use all of them or cut out the services you don't want.

Sonarr and Radarr are web-apps that can search and pull in films/tv for you, do automatic scheduling etc. Jackett is a bit in the middle that connects them to torrent indexing services. They're pretty low on resources when not doing anything.

The bolded bit is a...Linux thingummy?

And the rest of the post means I could set things up so that, say, I have the stuff looking for Inside No. 9, and they would scan for torrents of the latest episode, add it to Transmission? (Ideally also moving it from the torrent directory to the Plex one and renaming the folder appropriately, as I've realised already that Plex is quite fussy about this sort of thing).

[touchingcloth]

Also, I assume the best way to run a persistent live disty would be on a small external SSD? I've got it rigged together on a 32GB SD card split 50/50 between OS and an NTFS partition (this is what mkusb does by default, and it seems a reasonably sound way of ensuring that the data partition works between Linux, Mac, Windows), but with the way the activity light pings on the card while running I'm pretty sure the flash storage will be junk before too long.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The bolded bit is a...Linux thingummy?

Docker is a container system, it will run on Linux or OSX or Windows. At a high level it's a bit like running things in a VM but smaller.
Installation instructions here: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/install-docker-compose-on-ubuntu-20-04

And the rest of the post means I could set things up so that, say, I have the stuff looking for Inside No. 9, and they would scan for torrents of the latest episode, add it to Transmission? (Ideally also moving it from the torrent directory to the Plex one and renaming the folder appropriately, as I've realised already that Plex is quite fussy about this sort of thing).

Yes exactly that - it can move things once downloads into Plex's libary and Plex will scan them, it's pretty nice opening Plex to see a new episode in "recently added" without having to do anything. In fact it can even do this via "hard links" so that while the torrent client is still seeding the file is present in both directories but they point to the same object on disc saving hdd space, then once you've hit your seed limit it cleans everything up.

One minor fiddly thing is that it typically only copies the video file, and .sub files in the same directory, so sometimes I have to manually copy a subs subdirectory on foriegn films, however that's actually fixable as it can run post-download scripts itself, I just haven't bothered to write one (or copy one from someone else) yet.

[touchingcloth]

Docker is a container system, it will run on Linux or OSX or Windows. At a high level it's a bit like running things in a VM but smaller.
Installation instructions here: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/install-docker-compose-on-ubuntu-20-04

Yes exactly that - it can move things once downloads into Plex's libary and Plex will scan them, it's pretty nice opening Plex to see a new episode in "recently added" without having to do anything. In fact it can even do this via "hard links" so that while the torrent client is still seeding the file is present in both directories but they point to the same object on disc saving hdd space, then once you've hit your seed limit it cleans everything up.

One minor fiddly thing is that it typically only copies the video file, and .sub files in the same directory, so sometimes I have to manually copy a subs subdirectory on foriegn films, however that's actually fixable as it can run post-download scripts itself, I just haven't bothered to write one (or copy one from someone else) yet.

Is the config easy to share? Link me up if so, but if it's faffy at all don't bother and I'll take a look at installing Docker and shout if your config seems like it would be useful.

Do you know if that setup can handle only downloading files of certain sizes/bitrates? I usually go for the smaller options just cos my internet is piss poor and I don't want to be swamping it with torrents 24/7.

Interesting on the subtitles. I haven't tried actually using them in Plex yet, but when I had a look around it seemed to imply that it would be able to find them in the same way that most music players find artwork, i.e. have a stab at what the content is, then find likely-sounding subs from the internet and let you add them that way during playback.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Also, I assume the best way to run a persistent live disty would be on a small external SSD? I've got it rigged together on a 32GB SD card split 50/50 between OS and an NTFS partition (this is what mkusb does by default, and it seems a reasonably sound way of ensuring that the data partition works between Linux, Mac, Windows), but with the way the activity light pings on the card while running I'm pretty sure the flash storage will be junk before too long.

Is there any particular reason a live distro would give an advantage over a straight install in this scenario? I'm failing to see the advantage, if you want to be able to read/write to an area on other systems you could still create a partition to do that, but once it's set up it's almost always easier to do this via sftp than pulling drives out.

You could probably optimise your SD card to thrash it less, this usually involves turning off things like logging. An SSD will inherently give better life and speed though and given they're about £20 for 250gb these days (link) you'll probably save yourself some headaches.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Is the config easy to share? Link me up if so, but if it's faffy at all don't bother and I'll take a look at installing Docker and shout if your config seems like it would be useful.

Do you know if that setup can handle only downloading files of certain sizes/bitrates? I usually go for the smaller options just cos my internet is piss poor and I don't want to be swamping it with torrents 24/7.

Interesting on the subtitles. I haven't tried actually using them in Plex yet, but when I had a look around it seemed to imply that it would be able to find them in the same way that most music players find artwork, i.e. have a stab at what the content is, then find likely-sounding subs from the internet and let you add them that way during playback.

Yes it's a single docker-compose file that tells it what images to fire up (docker will download them automatically) and some paths to set. There's some point-and-click set up in a couple of the services for first run but it's not hard.

Do you know if that setup can handle only downloading files of certain sizes/bitrates? I usually go for the smaller options just cos my internet is piss poor and I don't want to be swamping it with torrents 24/7.

Yes. I tend to tell mine to ignore 4k downloads, although more tuning is available from these screens - you define the file sizes for each definition and in the second screen tell the system which ones to look for:




You can also set operating hours in Transmission - so things download overnight if you don't want to choke your internet connection during the day.

Plex can indeed find its own subtitles, so I sometimes use that instead of copying the release version if it's easier.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Code Select Expand

version: "3.7"

x-linuxserver-common-vars: &linuxserver-common-vars
  PUID: 1000
  PGID: 1000
  TZ: Europe/London

services:
  vpn:
    image: bubuntux/nordvpn:latest
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
      - SYS_MODULE
    devices:
      - /dev/net/tun
    environment:     
      - USER=${VPN_USER}
      - PASS=${VPN_PASS}
      - CONNECT=${VPN_COUNTRY}
      - TECHNOLOGY=${VPN_TECH}
      - DEBUG=on
      - GROUPID=0
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
    sysctls:
      net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter: 2
    restart: unless-stopped

  transmission:
    image: ghcr.io/linuxserver/transmission:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: "service:vpn"
    environment:
      <<: *linuxserver-common-vars
      TRANSMISSION_WEB_HOME: /combustion-release/
      USER: ${TRANSMISSION_USER}
      PASS: ${TRANSMISSION_PASS}
    depends_on:
      - vpn
    volumes:
    - ./config/transmission:/config
    - /mnt/dataonnas/transmission:/downloads
    - ./transmission_watch:/watch

  jackett:
    image: ghcr.io/linuxserver/jackett:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: "service:vpn"
    environment:
      <<: *linuxserver-common-vars
      AUTO_UPDATE: "true"
    volumes:
    - ./config/jackett:/config
    - /mnt/dataonnas/transmission:/downloads 

  radarr:
    image: ghcr.io/linuxserver/radarr:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: "service:vpn"
    environment:
      <<: *linuxserver-common-vars
    depends_on:
      - vpn
      - transmission
    volumes:
      - ./config/radarr:/config
      - /mnt/dataonnas/#vids#/:/movies
      - /mnt/dataonnas/transmission:/downloads

  sonarr:
    image: ghcr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: "service:vpn"
    environment:
      <<: *linuxserver-common-vars
    depends_on:
      - vpn
      - transmission
    volumes:
      - ./config/sonarr:/config
      - /mnt/dataonnas/#vids#/:/tv
      - /mnt/dataonnas/transmission:/downloads

  web:
    image: dperson/nginx:latest
    depends_on:                                                                             
      - transmission
      - jackett
      - radarr       
      - vpn
    links:
      - vpn:transmission
      - vpn:jackett
      - vpn:radarr
      - vpn:sonarr
    tmpfs:                                                                                 
    - /run                                                                               
    - /tmp                                                                               
    - /var/cache/nginx
    ports:                                                                                 
      - 80:80                                                                               
      - 443:443                                                                             
    command: ['-w', "http://jackett:9117;/jackett",'-w', "http://radarr:7878;/radarr", '-w', "http://sonarr:8989;/sonarr",'-w', "http://transmission:9091;/transmission/" ]
    restart: unless-stopped

The steps are essentially:
create a directory and save the above as docker-compose.yaml, update the /mnt/dataonnas paths to be wherever your media libraries are going to be.
create a .env file (example below)- this file will set up environment variables for the containers to use this contains credentials etc, I am using a separate .env file here so the secrets aren't in the template itself meaning I can check it into version control without giving anything away (docker has a way to keep things properly secret but it's more convoluted and I accept the risk of storing my vpn password in the clear on my own pc):

.env:

Code Select Expand

VPN_USER=touchingcloth   
VPN_PASS=touchingclothpassword
VPN_COUNTRY=SE
VPN_TECH=Nordlynx
TRANSMISSION_USER=touchingcloth
TRANSMISSION_PASS=touchingclothpassword

The system uses nginx as a reverse-proxy to make the containers more accessible, this means you can get at them with http://your-machine-or-ip/radarr, http://your-machine-or-ip/sonarr rather than having to remember ports. However this requires spinning up the containers first and setting a url mapping, to do this
comment out the "network_mode" line
expose the ports so you can connect directly via your host pc
so for radarr:

Code Select Expand

  radarr:
    image: ghcr.io/linuxserver/radarr:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
#    network_mode: "service:vpn"
    ports: "7878:7878" # add this
    environment:
      <<: *linuxserver-common-vars
    depends_on:
      - vpn
      - transmission
    volumes:
      - ./config/radarr:/config
      - /mnt/dataonnas/#vids#/:/movies
      - /mnt/dataonnas/transmission:/downloads

Then you can create a user and login to set the base-path:

After that you can delete the port and uncomment the service line, this should then make the system accessible via /radarr. Config for sonarr is the same (look at nginx to get the correct port) and similar for jackett, but the UI is different.

Connecting the torrent client is pretty self-explanatory, and the setup of what jackett should index will require some decision making on your part (based on what you want it to index) so you're probably better reading a guide for that part (just google "radarr jackett config" or whatever).

oh yeah to actually run the containers the command is "docker-compose up" or "docker-compose up -d" to run in the background, you can start individual services with "docker-compose up transmission" for instance, but the depends_on tags mean, for instance, starting transmission will also start the vpn container.

[touchingcloth]

Is there any particular reason a live distro would give an advantage over a straight install in this scenario? I'm failing to see the advantage, if you want to be able to read/write to an area on other systems you could still create a partition to do that, but once it's set up it's almost always easier to do this via sftp than pulling drives out.

I used to download to and share files for Infuse from a Macbook, but my partner has picked up a lot of work recently and so the it is now in more or less constant use by her during my working day which is when I used to set it up in the background to download stuff, and downloading during the evenings doesn't typically work well for us because we often watch stuff on streaming, and it's too much hassle to be constantly turning torrents off and back on again so that they don't affect the streaming and we've got torrented stuff ready to go if there's nothing good to stream (which is always, as anyone on the Netflix will know).

I'm using a live Linux so that I can do torrenting on my work Windows laptop, which has Bitlocker on it and I don't fancy trying to attempt to get it dual booting and inevitably fucking the MBR and needing to get the company IT folks in to sort things out following my misuse of company property. Straight live is shite because none of the config persists, hence switching to live + persistence for a relatively tolerable hybrid solution.

So the only advantage is how it works for the hardware I have available, and me being too much of a cheapskate to buy dedicated hardware (if I did, I'm thinking it would be a laptop rather than a tower/microserver/whatever, unless people are aware of e.g. cheap tablets which could run a Plex server reasonably enough, and the ability to do something like rsync to backup the Plex library).

A mate has an old (~2015) Raspberry Pi going begging. Reckon that could be a contender to run a Plex server plus VPN and torrent setup?

Are people even doing torrenting these days? I've got some friends who stream stuff on sites like those ones that people watch football on, but every time I've tried they're absolutely swamped with popups to the point where the odd one manages to slip through multiple blockers, so torrenting is what I'm familiar with and works pretty well for now.