Newbie help needed to integrate system with Sonarr

Help & Support
#1

Sonarr version (exact version): 2.0.0.5301
Mono version (if Sonarr is not running on Windows):5.18.0.240
OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
Debug logs:
Description of issue: My hardware configuration is divided up into 3 systems:

  1. Raspberry Pi: This acts as the central control of my media center environment. It is my file server (external 5 disk HD array for storage), and process server (Sonarr, Plex, etc.)
  2. Seedbox: I run a virtual server in the cloud for remote file sharing processes (openvpn, transmission, aMule, etc.)
  3. Asus: My router is an RT-AC68U with an external HD attached, acting as the central file storage for all active media for house/cloud distribution (organized by Plex on the RPi).

The RPi controls access to all three of these distributed parts for media and controls the flow.

  1. Seedbox: /home/user/zDL/transmission/ is the native storage location.
  2. Asus: /Media is the active partition on the external hard drive. /Media/My Video/TV/ are how the media files are organized for Plex.
  3. Raspberry Pi: There are multiple mount points for the above and local:
    /mnt/Seedbox is the local mount point for seedbox:/home/user/
    /mnt/Media is the local mount point for Asus:/Media
    (/mnt/Orico[1-5] is the mount point for the 5 bay HD, for all non-active archival stored media.)

I have Sonarr configured in a very functional way, but I think I might be missing an opportunity to use more of it’s automation. Currently, Sonarr has all my TV shows configured and uses RSS feeds to send new torrent information to Seedbox. It does NOT do any of my management after that.

Transmission stops itself after it hits the configured ratio. The Raspberry Pi uses an hourly cron job to run a script that (1) rsync pulls down/removes all Seedbox data (2) flattens the directory structure temporarily to organize the files (3) moves the appropriate media files to their respective Asus TV directory. Plex then automatically does the rest.

I dismissed using Sonarr for this part, because when I first started using this in November, I assumed the transmission data had to be on the same system running Sonarr. Now that I have more experience with Linux, my mount points look like that can SIMULATE one system with my Raspberry Pi touching all 3 locations. I’m wondering how I can maybe make changes that Sonarr itself continues from where it stops on my world and move the files from Seedbox to Asus/Orico# in some way.

I see the “Path” and “Root Folder” on the series editor and wondered if the file management does that? My initial assumption is that I put in the destination. I’ve put in /mnt/Media/My Video/TV/Arrow as a test. I’ve also put in 'mnt/Orico3/Media/TV/Flash as another. In general, I’ve ignored the whole “Root Folder” thing due to a lack of understanding and/or a work-around.

Anyone have any suggestions as to how I can maybe configure Sonarr (and my other environments) so that it can do more of the work unilaterally? I can control anything on the Seedbox, Asus, or Raspberry Pi (directory structure, mount points, configuration, etc.) easily enough. I just don’t seem to grasp how to help me make Sonarr replace my custom RPi shell script.

Any advice, greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance! :smiley:

#2

Oh yeah, forgot one important part of what I’ve tried with Sonarr. On the Settings >> Download Client >> Remote Path Mappings, I have one entry:
Seedbox, /home/user/zDL/transmission, /mnt/Seedbox/zDL/transmission
Completed Download Handling is Enabled.

I already commented on the series Root Folders I set as various valid Asus/Orico destination points. Nothing so far.

That’s what I’ve done to try to make this work on my own. Thanks! :smiley:

#3

In most cases that’s not a problem, but you’d either want to move to sshfs (or similar) to mount the drive or have a script tell Sonarr to import via the API so Sonarr doesn’t attempt to import a partial file.

Ideally use NFS over SMB shares as mono has some issues with transferring files over SMB shares in some cases.

Regardless of Sonarr managing your files you should have it pointed at your series folders so it knows what exists on disk and what doesn’t. Path is the path for that series on disk, the root folder is just the parent (root for all/some series folders).

“Seedbox” needs to match the Host field for the download client configured in Sonarr

#4

Thank you for the help, Markus! Using your information and fixing a couple of my misconceptions, I have the entire thing working exactly as I hoped! Maybe even better than I could have envisioned! :smiley:
Sonarr finds the shows, sends it to Transmission on my Seedbox, downloads the files to my Asus shared HD, Plex loads it perfectly, and a script on my RPi generates/maintains TVDB poster files for new TV directories downloaded for my Pivos Aios media player.
I had more right than I thought I did but the two major stumbling blocks were:

  1. COMPLETE misunderstanding of “hard links”. I’m a Windows guy. I’m now a Linux guy who understands that hard links are BAD when dealing with different remotely mounted systems. Simply didn’t work and didn’t give me error messages to know why it wasn’t working. Once that went away, things started fixing themselves very fast.
  2. Read, but not write, permission on my Asus HD, in certain cases. Now I have all the information I need about Samba and NFS to make every type of mount work. Local HD’s, networked HD’s, remote cloud file systems, etc. :smiley: Learned it for my Linux RPi and for my Asus Merlin specific firmware.
    Lots of learning, but that’s one of the best parts of this project. Really was/is fun! :smiley:
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#5

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