How do Sonarr / related services work?

Recently learned about this stuff on a Lemmy World post and I thought I’d move the conversation here since they’ve been fussy about DB0 in the past.

I’m really just a common seaman when it comes to the high seas. I just use Proton and qBit and whichever website is supposed to be safe and active nowdays (currently Torrent Galaxy?). I just download from the magnet link to qBit and save it on my drive. I don’t know much about torrent streaming or ports or networks or anything IT might ask me to check beyond “plug it in”.

But for some shows I’ve only been able to find single episodes, not full seasons, so when I heard about something that compiles stuff for me, it seemed convenient. I’d be curious to learn more. Unfortunately the websites for these services don’t really offer any explanation to new users and laymen, so I got a bit lost. Thought I’d ask here rather than venture into their forums where they already don’t seem to welcome idiots like me.

So… what the heck is Sonarr and how do I use it?

Apollo2323,

They should be grateful about db0 , he was one of the first ones that work on a solution about the CSAM that was posted here in Lemmy. He is such an active member in Lemmy that I am just grateful of him.

freeman,

The ARR tools are basically a search engine website you host. The interact with a few other tools you have to have access to/pay for. Namely an indexing service and a (for some) a download service. They can use torrents, so you dont HAVE to pay for downloading, but using something like newsgroups is really nice and add reliability and security.

THe “ARR’s” basically then are just a fancy UI and scheduler and just search the indexing service, download the files you want, re-assemble them and copy them to the location you want (often a file share that your media player like Plex or Jellyfin will use).

You can set them to continually look for something too. So for Sonarr, it will auto-download new episodes as soon as they appear in the index. Or if you see a commercial for something upcoming, you can add it and monitor it and as soon as it starts showing up in the indexes it will download.

YorddleZiggs,

Hey @TimewornTraveler, I was in your shoes a month ago. I am proud to announce I just completed my (first) setup of all *ARR tools on Synology Container Manager (Docker). I documented my progress. If you need help with setup, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

EDIT : If the community would help me sanitise my files and get a GitHub repo going, I would happily help build an all-in-one download-and-run install package. Please let me know.

Motzart,

Yes please

TimewornTraveler,

Thank you! Glad this community is positive and open. I know it can be frustrating for experienced users to be around a lot of users with varying levels of experience.

Cl1nk,

I’d totally love to see you your process, I’ve been reluctant to start using docker, but all the cool stuff is there

Codilingus,

Best way I can describe them is piracy automation, and man do I love them. Been using an arr suite for almost a year now. Prowlarr -> Sonarr/Radarr <-> Recyclarr <-> Jellyfin <-> Jellyseerr -> Kodi player in my living room.

Jellyseerr pulls info from a ton of databases to give you show/movie recommendations. They show ratings from 4+ sites, all the info, links to trailers, etc. Best part is the request button. Find what you want? Press request and I have options for 720/1080 or 4k, depending on what I want.

That passes along the request to Sonarr or Radarr, depending on if a tv series or movie, respectively. They have an insane set of presets to give me exactly what I want in the best quality. You set for file sizes, filtering bad release groups, 265 vs 264, HDR, Atmos, etc. It grabs the best it can find and sends it to it’s downloader.

For me, that’s Sabnzbd. But I started usenet, and wouldn’t recommend it to someone new. For you it would be qBit, which is an excellent choice. Once downloaded it renames it to show all relevant info, like a tag system, but in the file name.

Once done, Radarr or Sonarr tell my Kodi and Jellyfin immediately that it’s complete, and with the new file name, they scrape online to find the content, get posters and pictures, info, trailer, and display attributes like HDR or atmos.

My Kodi player is a SoC oDroid N2+ running CoreElec. Minimal Linux meant only to boot into Kodi. The hardware’s only limitation is Dolby Vision, which is proprietary and requires a license to use on hardware you build.

Jellyfin is for if I want to watch something outside of my house. Like a personal, private Netflix.

Recyclarr is a Sonarr/Radarr settings sync. There’s a guide for them called Trash Guides, and it’s his arr app to sync his settings on a cron schedule. I found his settings/preferences to be perfect for me, and I just tweak Recyclarr settings for 4k downloads to prefer HDR and Atmos.

Prowlarr syncs with Sonarr and Radarr to tell them where they are going to search for releases. This is where you would put your Torrent Galaxy info.

That’s probably a lot for you to process and look up. Just comment if you have any questions. I’ve been running this setup overall issue free the entire time. All of them docker containers, and they check for updates nightly.

Amazed,

So where do you download stuff to? Would a WD Cloud storage drive work for this purpose?

Codilingus,

For me, all my programs are on an Unraid server which is where they download to.

An external drive would be fine, but I’m not too sure about a WD cloud one. You’d have to see if they monitor the traffic if accessed outside your home.

neosheo,
@neosheo@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

So there are multiple technologies at play. One is an indexer program (jackett/prowlarr/etc). These basically hook up to public trackers (1337x, TPB, etc).

Then you have Sonarr/Radarr which are connected to the indexer. Sonarr and radarr basically have an rss feed (which is basically a list of content, podcasts and youtube apps use this to show you new episodes/videos).

I think they use tmdb or something as there source of rss feeds. They also let you select which shows to monitor and it stores that inforamation in a database. So sonarr will reach out to tmdb and request the latest rss feed for a show every so often for the shows in the database. If an episode that sonarr is supposed to download is listed on the rss feed it will then send a request to its indexer and tell it what show, what episode, what season, etc.

The indexer then searches each tracker it is connected to for that show, season, episode combo and returns a list of links to sonarr/radarr.

Sonarr then has a set of rules in its database to filter these links (ie minimum quality, language, etc) to determine which link to pick). Finally in its settings sonarr/radarr has a location where it should save the files.

Now sonarr/radarr cant download themselves, instead they are also hooked to a torrent client. For example qbittorrent which has an api which allows you to programatically download torrents (ie it has a command to download a torrent and sonarr/radarr sends the command along with additional information like the link and where to save the files.

This is the basic setuo but there are other tools used sometimes like unpackarr which is for decompressing files that get downloaded. Unpackarr watches a folder for new files and if it finds a file in a compressed format (7z, rar, zip, etc) it will automatically decompress it so that a media program like jellyfin can play it without you having to do it manually.

Programs like jellyfin are media servers where you would specify folders for movies/tv shows/etc and any playable file in those folders can be streamed in their app/web interface. These kind of programs are really just graphical programs that are easy to set up and use that are built on top of more technical programs like ffmpeg which does the transcoding and streaming.

Then there are also programs like flaresolverr. You would integrate this into your indexer because some trackers might use cloudflare to prevent bots (they require you to click a checkbox and watch the movement of the cursor to see if it is robotic). Flaresolverr uses something called selenium webdriver which is a program that can automate a webbrowser. You can program it to open web pages, click things, etc. I assume the code uses randomization to make cloudflare think a person is moving the mouse to click the button so you can access those trackers

In simple terms that’s how it works. All these programs set up a web interface and api and send each other http requests to communicate

asbestos,
@asbestos@lemmy.world avatar

Magnificently explained

Aatube,
Aatube avatar

what I want to know is why they missed out on the song-arr pun opportunity and gave sonarr to TV instead

Ringmasterincestuous,

lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5911320

I’m the same as you (probably older and more adverse to learning new things). If I was any good at this thing I’d credit the authors.

I’m slowly working my way through this thing, not quite there yet with full setup but every weekend I get a little closer to getting something to work 😘

maxprime,

The *arr services are fantastic for helping you organize your content as you download them. They won’t find anything that you wouldn’t be able to find yourself, though. You feed it your indexers via Jackett or Prowlarr for torrents, or NewzNab (or equivalent) for Usenet. What shows up on my Sonarr searches is likely very different than somebody else’s since we likely have different indexers.

If you are looking for content that is hard to find I would recommend getting into Usenet or joining a private tracker.

If you want to get into building a large library and hosting your it on a Plex/Jellyfin/Emby server, I would recommend getting into Sonarr and Radarr, and then learning about the other *arrs.

TimewornTraveler,

Honestly before I do anything further I’m gonna need to figure out what 80% of those nouns mean

WhatAmLemmy,

First take the dinglebop, then smooth it out with a bunch of shleem. The shleem is then repurposed for later batches. Take the dinglebop and push it through the grumbo. Where the fleeb is then rubbed against it. Its important that the fleeb is rubbed, because the fleeb has all the fleeb juice. Cut the fleeb. There are several hizzards in the way. The blamfs run against the trumbles and the ploobis and grumbo are shaved away. That leaves you with a regular old plumbus.

TimewornTraveler,

takes notes vigorously Cut the fleeb with what??

Naate,

Sonarr (and the other 'arrs) is just a management tool. From the servarr wiki:

Sonarr is a PVR for Usenet and BitTorrent users. It can monitor multiple RSS feeds for new episodes of your favorite shows and will grab, sort and rename them. It can also be configured to automatically upgrade the quality of files already downloaded when a better quality format becomes available.

At a high level, you tell it where your current tv show episodes are saved, and add new shows as you want. It then automates the process of searching and downloading. But you still need to have an indexer and download client. If you’re not able to find shows searching your current tracker/indexer, Sonarr won’t have any better luck.

Finding a good source of the media you want is the most important part. If you’re not comfortable with installing and managing your own server applications, the *arr stack could be overwhelming at first. The wiki I linked has a lot of good information to get you started.

TimewornTraveler,

What’s a PVR? Mixed search results.

Naate,

Honestly, I had to google it, too :D

As far as I know, they mean “Personal Video Recorder” in a fashion similar to “DVR”/“Digital Video Recorder” like the one your cable company provides. It’s a little misleading, imo, because it doesn’t do any recording, but I didn’t come up with the name, so who knows.

TimewornTraveler,

Okay, so I guess the name isn’t that important. It’s hard to keep track of all the different names and figuring out which names mean the same thing (and which ones dont, eg qBit vs Bit). honestly it’s baffling that I’ve spent 30 years on the internet and can understand so little of it

Naate,

honestly it’s baffling that I’ve spent 30 years on the internet and can understand so little of it

100% agree.

deegeese,

Personal video recorder, like a TiVo, but for torrents instead of live TV.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

(…) That’s where a PVR comes in. A personal video recorder (PVR) (…)

520,

PVR - personal video recorder

Nouveau_Burnswick,

You tell Sonarr what shows (seasons, episodes, or complete) you want to watch. For episodes that aren’t out yet (ie something that airs tomorrow, or in a week, or next season) so long as Sonarr is watching it, it will download once available.

One an episode is released/availible, Sonarr talks to indexers (Usenet or torrent; through jackett, prowlarr, or other) to find those shows in the quality profile and language you asked for.

Sonarr then takes that torrent/Usenet and gives it to a downloader.

Once the download is finished, Sonarr moves a copy to the media folder you designate.

TimewornTraveler,

So the Indexer would be the website where I download my torrent magnet? Like old school pirate bay or currently in my case, TGx?

And the downloader would be qBitTorrent?

I guess I would also need to have my VPN running before I start the application too.

Nouveau_Burnswick,

Almost, but the indexer looks at all the torrent sites you tell it to.

So you could have it search torrentbay, 1337x, demonoid, and more (public, semi-private, and private). It will then pick the best torrent from all of them.

This is also helpful if one site it temporarily down, it still searches the others.

You can also set up some fancy rules if you want (for example download my movies from this one private tracker only, TV shows from these trackers, and music from any tracker) there’s also priority sorting, if your interested in that too.

maxprime,

Yes.

This works best when your services are all running through a browser. You can set up most torrent clients to only work through a vpn. The rest of your traffic should be fine unless you don’t want your ISP to know that you’ve visited torrent sites.

PrincessLeiasCat,

What torrent site(s) does it use?

(Sorry if this is a stupid question)

maxprime,

Whichever sites you add to your indexers.

PrincessLeiasCat,

Thanks! Sorry, I’m just getting back into this after awhile of not doing it. I’ve done some reading up on this part of it already, but I hadn’t got there yet. :)

maxprime,

NP! Honestly there is a lot of services that all intertwine and it’s a little confusing at first. But once it’s set up it’s pretty easy to let it be.

Penguincoder, (edited )

The *arrs don’t actually find content for you, they give you an interface to track and view content. You would still need some type of finding service to plug into Sonnar be it Usenet or torrents. What ever providers you use for finding content, would stay the same if you just add Sonarr etc. Maybe this will help explain things.

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