Maybe this will help other Sick Beard refugees and offer the design team some insight on a newb’s perspective coming into the NZBDrone fold.
NZBDrone doesn’t seem to like mapped network drives. My spider web of servers and workstations all follow the same mapped network drive configurations so I am used to simply pointing to drive “Q” for say, “Ended TV Shows” or “S” for “Current TV Shows”. Once I noticed NZBDrone didn’t appear to like this, I went in and changed the service to run under a “super admin” account I have on all my boxes to ensure there is never a permissions issue for service-related products like this, Subsonic, etc. Even changing the service to run under this account, NZBDrone will still not use my shares. It is the only tool in my arsenal that doesn’t like the shares. I realize the work around is to use full UNC paths; but those might change over time; if I change a drive’s server location, I simply change my mapping to that drive, and everything continues to work as before. If I have to use UNC paths, I may have a LOT of updating to do down the road if I have to move a drive around. Could there be a more elegant solution?
I also noticed an inconvenience when trying to add a show remotely via a web browser, mostly when using a UNC for the first time. If you start typing a server name and you bungle it (namely because your tablet’s keyboard thinks it can spell better than you), say \\server2box and it chooses to change it to something else - the event driven type ahead looking for folders at that location starts generating a lot of notification pops that show an error - and that gets overpowering when on a mobile device (I was on a tablet, I can’t imagine a phone). I don’t like to complain without offering a fix; perhaps the event timing can be increased when being remotely accessed? Or even disabled when using a UNC?
When adding a new show from scratch, if you do not have automatic folder generation on - this can wreak havok with the whole process as very little in the way of hinting is given that something is wrong and your shows will not download correctly. Consider a fresh install. I created a folder on my H: drive called NZBDrone and wanted my shows to appear in there (I’m running this kinda concurrent with my SickBeard while I’m trying to learn the ropes - so I’m isolating these trial shows from my main drive). I add new, The Americans. It asks me which folder, I chose H:\ZBDrone - expecting that when a show came down, the directory structure would be made (including the show root and the season folder). I manually downloaded a previous show - it went to SabzNZB ok, it downloaded - but it never appeared anywhere. I saw no error - nothing to indicate anything was wrong. I saw it download, but it just vanished. I even tried creating my own folder under NZBDrone and pointing it to that when readding the show. THAT didn’t seem to work either. I finally found the “make folders automatically” option, removed The Americans and started from scratch - this time, it made the folder correctly, the show downloaded correctly. Frustrating. How could this be solved? Perhaps a notice that if automatic folder creation is off, and you attempt to queue a show, the app tells you “yeah, that’s great you want that and all - but once downloaded it ain’t going anywhere”? Not sure - but I know it was a bummer.
I had some challenges dealing with SabzNZB category set up and copy back to the DroneFactory folder - since Sickbeard sorta had this all in the config I never really set up categories proper. That’s not really an issue with NZBDrone, but it was pain point as a Sickbeard refugee. Just create a new category called “tv” on SabzNZB, and point it to your DroneFactory folder, and you should be in business.
Also had some initial issues with getting Season folders to use leading zeros; if you don’t have “hidden” configuration features turned on, it isn’t plainly obvious how to get folders to read “Season 01” vice “Season 1”. I would think most people would prefer a leading zero by default, since at least Windows file system will not sort Season folders intelligently without it. All preference, of course - and since you can inevitably do it however you like, no big deal.
Overall, I’m incredibly pleased with this whole application. Elegant, beautiful and powerful. Thank you!
Let us know if you need anything else.