How many indexers is enough?

Help & Support
1

I’m still fairly new to all of this, and haven’t cut my $90/month cord yet because there are still issues.

When I notice that there are lots of missing episodes, I go into each series and manually search, and 99% of the time the episode starts downloading.

I have 5 indexers set up and all of them test successfully. I’ve read the FAQ and it says the problem I have is usually an RSS failure and that more indexers will reduce or eliminate this problem.

5 isn’t enough?

2

1 or 2 could be enough,
It also depends on how reliable are the indexers you’re using.

3

Is there a setting that I’m missing? I thought it was supposed to reach out and search for episodes at a certain interval, but every time I see that I have missing episodes (like just now) when I click on the episodes they start downloading.

4

RSS is enabled for those indexers, right?

5

Yes, just confirmed.

6

You say you press on the episode,
Do you mean you press on the search or do you press on a episode in the list of found episodes with different qualities ?
Does the episode have a question mark beside it.
The show we’re talking about are they old episodes or just aired ?

7

If I go into a series and click on the magnifying glass icon (automatic search) for an episode that is recent (less than a week) but missing, it will immediately find it and start downloading with SABnzb. But it won’t download on its own. I have to go into each series and do this for every recent episode.

Edit: D’oh. Typed this last night and didn’t hit Submit.

8

I run Sonarr & Radarr on a dedicated nix box with 2 indexers, NZBGeek (annual subscription) and my local Jackett server (see below) to search and have no issues finding what I am looking for… I have RSS feeds enabled too. All run through a VPN to 3 newsgroup services with NZBget & Deluge for the downloads. After adding a tv series or movie they search and update as the profiles are configured for HD720p - HD1080p automagically.

Jacket indexersi
Jacket indexersi896×658 347 KB

9

I don’t have an issue finding things. It’s just that nothing happens automatically, I have to force every search.

10

I’m sorry, but You asked “how many indexers is enough?”

If it’s not getting any updates, Do you have your desired profiles and restrictions setup? and assigned to any & all shows?

When you auto search, does it find the desired format or any & all formats?
When you manual search, does it find the desired format or any & all formats?

OS?
Fulltime connection?

11

thats how sonarr works. it doesnt backfill, you need to do that yourself.

episodes have to turn up in the RSS feeds to be downloaded automatically, and those really only contain the current stuff. older stuff may appear every now and then in the RSS feed and that will allow it to be downloaded automatically but you cant rely on someone re-uploading an old episode so it gets into an RSS feed.

you could always submit a feature request for sonarr to have a scheduled task that runs once a month that does automatic searches on all missing episodes (make it optional), if you want something like that. or on the wanted page there is a ‘search all missing’ button, you could just click on that every now and then?

12

What is the function behind “search all missing”? Can it be scripted? I’m thinking of setting up a cron job to automate this?

13

But why though? That’s a huge hit on api calls and a waste of resources on both ends (you and the indexer).

You want old episodes now, there’s a ton of options:

  • Use “add & search” when adding a series. This will kick off a search right after adding the series.
  • Use the automatic search on series/season/episode level
  • Use the manual search on a particular episode
  • (“Search all missing” should be a last resort. Usually this makes a huge number of api calls, burning through your limits or getting you (temporarily) banned, depending on how many missing episodes we’re talking about.)

Let’s say you add a new series and want a particular episode now:

  • You add the series.
  • You make a call using the methods above to your indexer(s) to see if it’s available.
  • For the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s not available.
  • Since adding the series, sonarr keeps an eye on your indexer(s) rss to see if the episode pops up (uploaded by someone).
  • Some time passes (day/week/month) and the episode doesn’t become available on RSS.
  • Now you trigger a search again (methods above), and you expect a different result? You’re basically asking the same question to your indexers again “do you have this episode” while you already know they don’t have it, because they didn’t have it last week when you did an explicit search for historical results, and sonarr has been monitoring since then so it didn’t become available for automatic grabbing either…

If you must, do the “search all missing” once, then leave it alone :wink:

Just my 2 cents, ymmv, not an opinion of the sonarr development team, …

Now. If you added a series, and an episode passed by on RSS since adding it, and it matched whatever profile/restrictions/… you have in place, so sonarr should have grabbed it automatically, something is not working right.

To test:
Remember when you added the series.
Do a manual search on an episode.
Are there results without red exclamation marks and which are newer than the date when you added the series?
This means they became available on your indexer(s) rss, so sonarr should have seen those and grabbed them.

14

Yes! This! I’m not talking about old stuff.
Example: A show is on Wednesday at 8pm. It usually shows up on Usenet sometime during the night. Thursday afternoon, the episode isn’t downloaded. I go into the series, there are no error messages or exclamation marks or anything, I click on the magnifying glass for that episode and it starts downloading.

So, getting shows is a manual task for me. I have to click on the calendar (which is pretty awesome, btw) and see what shows I’ve missed, visit each series individually and click on the recent episodes to get them to download.

Edit: I need to add that this isn’t 100%. A fraction of the shows are downloading automatically. I just checked, and a show that aired last night during primetime has downloaded. Two more shows that were on right before it didn’t. I just clicked on them and they started downloading.

15

@Thirrian I had to ask… My system is working fine… I only ask to get more insight for others who need an explanation since this is not really covered in any details, thank you!

16

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