Set up a media server with Jellyfin, Sonarr and Radarr

Second part of my self hosted media server. This is a direct continuation of Set up qBitTorrent with Jackett for use with Starr apps, which will be mentioned as “first part” going forward. Sonarr, Radarr, Bazarr (Starr apps) and Jellyfin setups will be described in this part. Same introduction applies to this entry, regarding the use of documentation and configuration.

Everything here is performed in arch btw and all commands should be run as root unless stated otherwise.

Kindly note that I do not condone the use of BitTorrent for illegal activities. I take no responsibility for what you do when setting up anything shown here. It is for you to check your local laws before using automated downloaders such as Sonarr and Radarr.

Table of contents

Prerequisites

Same prerequisites as with the First part: Prerequisites plus:

The First part: Directory structure is the same here. The servarr user and group should be available, too.

It is assumed that the first part was followed.

Radarr

Radarr is a movie collection manager that can be used to download movies via torrents. This is actually a fork of Sonarr, so they’re pretty similar, I just wanted to set up movies first.

Install from the AUR with yay:

yay -S radarr

Add the radarr user to the servarr group:

gpasswd -a radarr servarr

The default port that Radarr uses is 7878 for http (the one you need for the reverse proxy).

Reverse proxy

Add the following location blocks into the isos.conf with whatever subdirectory name you want, I’ll leave it as radarr:

location /radarr/ {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:7878/radarr/; # change port if needed
    proxy_http_version 1.1;

    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection $http_connection;

    proxy_redirect off;
}
# Allow the API External Access via NGINX
location /radarr/api {
    auth_basic off;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:7878/radarr/api; # change port if needed
}

This is taken from Radarr Nginx reverse proxy configuration. Restart the nginx service for the changes to take effect:

systemctl restart nginx.service

Start using Radarr

You can now start/enable the radarr.service:

systemctl enable radarr.service
systemctl start radarr.service

This will start the service and create the default configs under /var/lib/radarr. You need to change the URLBase as the reverse proxy is under a subdirectory (/radarr). Edit /var/lib/radarr/config.xml:

...
<UrlBase>/radarr</UrlBase>
...

Then restart the radarr service:

systemctl restart radarr.service

Now https://isos.yourdomain.com/radarr is accessible. Secure the instance right away by adding authentication under Settings -> General -> Security. I added the “Forms” option, just fill in the username and password then click on save changes on the top left of the page. You can restart the service again and check that it asks for login credentials.

Note that if you want to have an anime movies library, it is recommended to run a second instance of Radarr for this as shown in Radarr: Linux multiple instances and follow TRaSH: How to setup quality profiles anime if an anime instance is what you want.

Configuration

Will be following the official Radarr: Quick start guide as well as the recommendations by TRaSH: Radarr.

Anything that is not mentioned in either guide or that is specific to how I’m setting up stuff will be stated below.

Media Management
Quality

This is personal preference and it dictates your preferred file sizes. You can follow TRaSH: Quality settings to maximize the quality of the downloaded content and restrict low quality stuff.

Personally, I think TRaSH’s quality settings are a bit elitist and first world-y. I’m fine with whatever and the tracker I’m using has the quality I want anyways. I did, however, set it to a minimum of 0 and maximum of 400 for the qualities shown in TRaSH’s guide. Configuring anything below 720p shouldn’t be necessary anyways.

Custom Formats

Again, this is also completely a personal preference selection and depends on the quality and filters you want. My custom format selections are mostly based on TRaSH: HD Bluray + WEB quality profile.

The only Unwanted format that I’m not going to use is the Low Quality (LQ) as it blocks one of the sources I’m using to download a bunch of movies. The reasoning behind the LQ custom format is that these release groups don’t care much about quality (they keep low file sizes) and name tagging, which I understand but I’m fine with this as I can upgrade movies individually whenever I want (I want a big catalog of content that I can quickly watch).

Profiles

As mentioned in Custom Formats and Quality this is completly a personal preference. I’m going to go for “Low Quality” downloads by still following some of the conventions from TRaSH. I’m using the TRaSH: HD Bluray + WEB quality profile with the exclusion of the LQ profile.

I set the name to “HD Bluray + WEB”. I’m also not upgrading the torrents for now. Language set to “Original”.

Download clients

Pretty straight forward, just click on the giant “+” button and click on the qBitTorrent option. Then configure:

Everything else can be left as default, but maybe change Completed Download Handling if you’d like. Same goes for the general Failed Download Handling download clients’ option.

Indexers

Also easy to set up, also just click on the giant “+” button and click on the custom Torznab option (you can also use the preset -> Jackett Torznab option). Then configure:

Everything else on default. Download Client can also be set, which can be useful to keep different categories per indexer or something similar. Seed Ratio and Seed Time can also be set and are used to manage when to stop the torrent, this can also be set globally on the qBitTorrent Web UI, this is a personal setting.

Download content

You can now start to download content by going to Movies -> Add New. Basically just follow the Radarr: How to add a movie guide. The screenshots from the guide are a bit outdated but it contains everything you need to know.

I personally use:

Once you click on “Add Movie” it will add it to the Movies section and start searching and selecting the best torrent it finds, according to the “filters” (quality settings, profile and indexer(s)).

When it selects a torrent it sends it to qBitTorrent and you can even go ahead and monitor it over there. Else you can also monitor at Activity -> Queue.

After the movie is downloaded and processed by Radarr, it will create the appropriate hardlinks to the media/movies directory, as set in First part: Directory structure.

Optionally, you can add subtitles using Bazarr.

Sonarr

Sonarr is a TV series collection manager that can be used to download series via torrents. Most of the install process, configuration and whatnot is going to be basically the same as with Radarr.

Install from the AUR with yay:

yay -S sonarr

Add the sonarr user to the servarr group:

gpasswd -a sonarr servarr

The default port that Radarr uses is 8989 for http (the one you need for the reverse proxy).

Reverse proxy

Basically the same as with Radarr: Reverse proxy, except that the proxy_set_header changes from $proxy_host to $host.

Add the following location blocks into the isos.conf, I’ll leave it as sonarr:

location /sonarr/ {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8989/sonarr/; # change port if needed
    proxy_http_version 1.1;

    proxy_set_header Host $proxy_host; # this differs from the radarr reverse proxy
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection $http_connection;

    proxy_redirect off;
}
# Allow the API External Access via NGINX
location /sonarr/api {
    auth_basic off;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8989/sonarr/api; # change port if needed
}

This is taken from Sonarr: Nginx reverse proxy configuration. Restart the nginx service for the changes to take effect:

systemctl restart nginx.service

Start using Sonarr

You can now start/enable the sonarr.service:

systemctl enable sonarr.service
systemctl start sonarr.service

This will start the service and create the default configs under /var/lib/sonarr. You need to change the URLBase as the reverse proxy is under a subdirectory (/sonarr). Edit /var/lib/sonarr/config.xml:

...
<UrlBase>/sonarr</UrlBase>
...

Then restart the sonarr service:

systemctl restart sonarr.service

Now https://isos.yourdomain.com/sonarr is accessible. Secure the instance right away by adding authentication under Settings -> General -> Security. I added the “Forms” option, just fill in the username and password then click on save changes on the top left of the page. You can restart the service again and check that it asks for login credentials.

Similar to Radarr if you want to have an anime library, it is recommended to run a second instance of Sonarr for this as shown in Sonarr: Linux multiple instances and follow TRaSH: Release profile regex (anime) and the TRaSH: Anime recommended naming scheme if an anime instance is what you want.

Configuration

Will be following the official Sonarr: Quick start guide as well as the recommendations by TRaSH: Sonarr.

Anything that is not mentioned in either guide or that is specific to how I’m setting up stuff will be stated below.

Media Management
Quality

Similar to Radarr: Quality this is personal preference and it dictates your preferred file sizes. You can follow TRaSH: Quality settings to maximize the quality of the downloaded content and restrict low quality stuff.

Will basically do the same as in Radarr: Quality: set minimum of 0 and maximum of 400 for everything 720p and above.

Profiles

This is a bit different than with Radarr, the way it is configured is by setting “Release profiles”. I took the profiles from TRaSH: WEB-DL Release profile regex. The only possible change I’ll do is disable the Low Quality Groups and/or the “Golden rule” filter (for x265 encoded video).

For me it ended up looking like this:

Sonarr: Release profiles
Sonarr: Release profiles

But yours can differ as its mostly personal preference. For the “Quality profile” I’ll be using the default “HD-1080p” most of the time, but I also created a “HD + WEB (720/1080)” which works best for some.

Download clients

Exactly the same as with Radarr: Download clients only change is the category from movies to tv (or whatever you want), click on the giant “+” button and click on the qBitTorrent option. Then configure:

Everything else can be left as default, but maybe change Completed Download Handling if you’d like. Same goes for the general Failed Download Handling download clients’ option.

Indexers

Also exactly the same as with Radarr: Indexers, click on the giant “+” button and click on the custom Torznab option (this doesn’t have the Jackett preset). Then configure:

Everything else on default. Download Client can also be set, which can be useful to keep different categories per indexer or something similar. Seed Ratio and Seed Time can also be set and are used to manage when to stop the torrent, this can also be set globally on the qBitTorrent Web UI, this is a personal setting.

Download content

Almost the same as with Radarr: Download content, but I’ve been personally selecting the torrents I want to download for each season/episode so far, as the indexers I’m using are all over the place and I like consistencies. Will update if I find a (near) 100% automation process, but I’m fine with this anyways as I always monitor that everything is going fine.

Add by going to Series -> Add New. Basically just follow the Sonarr: Library add new guide. Adding series needs a bit more options that movies in Radarr, but it’s straight forward.

I personally use:

Once you click on “Add X” it will add it to the Series section and will start as monitored. So far I haven’t noticed that it immediately starts downloading (because of the “Start search for missing episodes” setting) but I always click on unmonitor the series, so I can manually check (again, due to the low quality of my indexers).

When it automatically starts to download an episode/season it will send it to qBitTorrent and you can monitor it over there. Else you can also monitor at Activity -> Queue. Same thing goes if you download manually each episode/season via the interactive search.

To interactively search episodes/seasons go to Series and then click on any series, then click either on the interactive search button for the episode or the season, it is an icon of a person as shown below:

Sonarr: Interactive search button
Sonarr: Interactive search button

Then it will bring a window with the search results, where it shows the indexer it got the result from, the size of the torrent, peers, language, quality, the score it received from the configured release profiles an alert in case that the torrent is “bad” and the download button to manually download the torrent you want. An example shown below:

Sonarr: Interactive search results
Sonarr: Interactive search results

After the movie is downloaded and processed by Sonarr, it will create the appropriate hardlinks to the media/tv directory, as set in Directory structure.

Optionally, you can add subtitles using Bazarr.

Jellyfin

Jellyfin is a media server “manager”, usually used to manage and organize video content (movies, TV series, etc.) which could be compared with Plex or Emby for example (take them as possible alternatives).

Install from the AUR with yay:

yay -S jellyfin-bin

I’m installing the pre-built binary instead of building it as I was getting a lot of errors and the server was even crashing. You can try installing jellyfin instead.

Add the jellyfin user to the servarr group:

gpasswd -a jellyfin servarr

You can already start/enable the jellyfin.service which will start at http://127.0.0.1:8096/ by default where you need to complete the initial set up. But let’s create the reverse proxy first then start everything and finish the set up.

Reverse proxy

I’m going to have my jellyfin instance under a subdomain with an nginx reverse proxy as shown in the Arch wiki. For that, create a jellyfin.conf at the usual sites-<available/enabled> path for nginx:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name jellyfin.yourdomain.com; # change accordingly to your wanted subdomain and domain name
    set $jellyfin 127.0.0.1; # jellyfin is running at localhost (127.0.0.1)

    # Security / XSS Mitigation Headers
    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";

    # Content Security Policy
    # See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP
    # Enforces https content and restricts JS/CSS to origin
    # External Javascript (such as cast_sender.js for Chromecast) must be whitelisted.
    add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src https: data: blob: http://image.tmdb.org; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://www.gstatic.com/cv/js/sender/v1/cast_sender.js https://www.youtube.com blob:; worker-src 'self' blob:; connect-src 'self'; object-src 'none'; frame-ancestors 'self'";

        location = / {
        return 302 https://$host/web/;
    }

    location / {
        # Proxy main Jellyfin traffic
        proxy_pass http://$jellyfin:8096;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Protocol $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;

        # Disable buffering when the nginx proxy gets very resource heavy upon streaming
        proxy_buffering off;
    }

    # location block for /web - This is purely for aesthetics so /web/#!/ works instead of having to go to /web/index.html/#!/
    location = /web/ {
        # Proxy main Jellyfin traffic
        proxy_pass http://$jellyfin:8096/web/index.html;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Protocol $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
    }

    location /socket {
        # Proxy Jellyfin Websockets traffic
        proxy_pass http://$jellyfin:8096;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Protocol $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
    }
}

SSL certificate

Create/extend the certificate by running:

certbot --nginx

Similarly to the isos subdomain, that will autodetect the new subdomain and extend the existing certificate(s). Restart the nginx service for changes to take effect:

systemctl restart nginx.service

Start using Jellyfin

You can now start/enable the jellyfin.service if you haven’t already:

systemctl enable jellyfin.service
systemctl start jellyfin.service

Then navigate to https://jellyfin.yourdomain.com and either continue with the set up wizard if you didn’t already or continue with the next steps to configure your libraries.

The initial setup wizard makes you create an user (will be the admin for now) and at least one library, though these can be done later. For more check Jellyfin: Quick start.

Remember to use the configured directory as mentioned in Directory structure. Any other configuration (like adding users or libraries) can be done at the dashboard: click on the 3 horizontal lines on the top left of the Web UI then navigate to Administration -> Dashboard. I didn’t configure much other than adding a couple of users for me and friends, I wouldn’t recommend using the admin account to watch (personal preference).

Once there is at least one library it will show at Home along with the latest movies (if any) similar to the following (don’t judge, these are just the latest I added due to friend’s requests):

Jellyfin: Home libraries
Jellyfin: Home libraries

And inside the “Movies” library you can see the whole catalog where you can filter or just scroll as well as seeing Suggestions (I think this starts getting populated after a while) and Genres:

Jellyfin: Library catalog options
Jellyfin: Library catalog options

Plugins

You can also install/activate plugins to get extra features. Most of the plugins you might want to use are already available in the official repositories and can be found in the “Catalog”. There are a lot of plugins that are focused around anime and TV metadata, as well as an Open Subtitles plugin to automatically download missing subtitles (though this is managed with Bazarr).

To activate plugins click on the 3 horizontal lines on the top left of the Web UI then navigate to Administration -> Dashboard -> Advanced -> Plugins and click on the Catalog tab (top of the Web UI). Here you can select the plugins you want to install. By default only the official ones are shown, for more you can add more repositories.

The only plugin I’m using is the “Playback Reporting”, to get a summary of what is being used in the instance. But I might experiment with some anime-focused plugins when the time comes.

Transcoding

Although not recommended and explicitly set to not download any x265/HEVC content (by using the Golden rule) there might be cases where the only option you have is to download such content. If that is the case and you happen to have a way to do Hardware Acceleration, for example by having an NVIDIA graphics card (in my case) then you should enable it to avoid using lots of resources on your system.

Using hardware acceleration will leverage your GPU to do the transcoding and save resources on your CPU. I tried streaming x265 content and it basically used 70-80% on all cores of my CPU, while on the other hand using my GPU it used the normal amount on the CPU (70-80% on a single core).

This will be the steps to install on an NVIDIA graphics card, specifically a GTX 1660 Ti. But more info and guides can be found at Jellyfin: Hardware Acceleration for other acceleration methods.

NVIDIA drivers

Ensure you have the NVIDIA drivers and utils installed. I’ve you’ve done this in the past then you can skip this part, else you might be using the default nouveau drivers. Follow the next steps to set up the NVIDIA drivers, which basically is a summary of NVIDIA: Installation for my setup, so double check the wiki in case you have an older NVIDIA graphics card.

Install the nvidia and nvidia-utils packages:

pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils

Modify /etc/mkinitcpio.conf to remove kms from the HOOKS array. It should look like this (commented line is how it was for me before the change):

...
# HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block filesystems fsck)
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf keyboard keymap consolefont block filesystems fsck)
...

Regenerate the initramfs by executing:

mkinitcpio -P

Finally, reboot the system. After the reboot you should be able to check your GPU info and processes being run with the GPU by executing nvidia-smi.

Enable hardware acceleration

Install from the AUR with yay:

yay -S jellyfin-ffmpeg6-bin

This provides the jellyfin-ffmpeg executable, which is necessary for Jellyfin to do hardware acceleration, it needs to be this specific one.

Then in the Jellyfin go to the transcoding settings by clicking on the 3 horizontal lines on the top left of the Web UI and navigating to Administration -> Dashboard -> Playback -> Transcoding and:

Don’t forget to click “Save” at the bottom of the Web UI, it will ask if you want to enable hardware acceleration.

Bazarr

Bazarr is a companion for Sonarr and Radarr that manages and downloads subtitles.

Install from the AUR with yay:

yay -S bazarr

Add the bazarr user to the servarr group:

gpasswd -a bazarr servarr

The default port that Bazarr uses is 6767 for http (the one you need for the reverse proxy), and it has pre-configured the default ports for Radarr and Sonarr.

Reverse proxy

Basically the same as with Radarr: Reverse proxy and Sonarr: Reverse proxy.

Add the following setting in the server block of the isos.conf:

server {
    # server_name and other directives
    ...

    # Increase http2 max sizes
    large_client_header_buffers 4 16k;

    # some other blocks like location blocks
    ...
}

Then add the following location blocks in the isos.conf, where I’ll keep it as /bazarr/:

location /bazarr/ {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6767/bazarr/; # change port if needed
    proxy_http_version 1.1;

    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";

    proxy_redirect off;
}
# Allow the Bazarr API through if you enable Auth on the block above
location /bazarr/api {
    auth_request off;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6767/bazarr/api;
}

This is taken from Bazarr: Reverse proxy help. Restart the nginx service for the changes to take effect:

systemctl restart nginx.service

Start using Bazarr

You can now start/enable the bazarr.service if you haven’t already:

systemctl start bazarr.service
systemctl enable bazarr.service

This will start the service and create the default configs under /var/lib/bazarr. You need to change the base_url for the necessary services as they’re running under a reverse proxy and under subdirectories. Edit /var/lib/bazarr/config/config.ini:

[general]
port = 6767
base_url = /bazarr

[sonarr]
port = 8989
base_url = /sonarr

[radarr]
port = 7878
base_url = /radarr

Then restart the bazarr service:

systemctl restart bazarr.service

Now https://isos.yourdomain.com/bazarr is accessible. Secure the instance right away by adding authentication under Settings -> General -> Security. I added the “Forms” option, just fill in the username and password then click on save changes on the top left of the page. You can restart the service again and check that it asks for login credentials. I also disabled Settings -> General -> Updates -> Automatic.

Configuration

Will be following the official Bazarr: Setup guide as well as the recommendations by TRaSH: Bazarr.

Anything that is not mentioned in either guide or that is specific to how I’m setting up stuff will be stated below.

Providers

This doesn’t require much thinking and its up to personal preference, but I’ll list the ones I added:

I’ve tested this setup for the following languages (with all default settings as stated in the guides):

I tried with “Latin American Spanish” but they’re hard to find, those two work pretty good.

None of these require an Anti-Captcha account (which is a paid service), but I created one anyways in case I need it. Though you need to add credits to it (pretty cheap though) if you ever use it.

Index Previous

By David Luévano

Created: Mon, Jul 24, 2023 @ 04:30 UTC

Modified: Mon, Jul 24, 2023 @ 04:32 UTC

Tags: code, english, server, tools, tutorial