I'm a freaking hoarder when it comes to media now, so I go with HDDs. HDD vs SSDĬan also be written as Space vs. With this enabled, a reference to the data will exist in your media directory and in your torrent directory so Transmission can continue seeding everything you download. This means you can configure Sonarr and Radarr to create hardlinks when a torrent finishes. The best way I've found to do this is to mount your drives directly to the machine that handles your downloads. If you aren't familiar with this term, it basically means you should be uploading as much, if not more than you download. I use private trackers to get my torrents, and this means I need to maintain a ratio.
Here are some tips for how to manage your hard drives and data. Ombi is a super simple web UI for sending requests to Radarr and Sonarr Tips for managing your hard drives
It also checks RSS feeds to automatically download new shows as soon as they're uploaded! Radarr Is a fork of Sonarr that does all the same stuff but for Movies It automates the process of searching for torrents, downloading them then "moving" them to your library. Sonarr is a tool for automating and managing your TV library. Jackett is a tool that Sonarr and Radarr use to search indexers and trackers for torrents Transmission also lets you easily run bash scripts whenever a torrent finishes which is huge. I used to use Deluge but honestly found it pretty buggy and unreliable. There are a few alternatives, but I chose Plex here because they have a client available on nearly every platform. Plex is a "client-server media player system". Everything for each of these services will live in the container except the configuration files which will live on our host. There will be a section describing the installation and configuration for each one of these :)ĭocker lets us run and isolate each of our services into a container. You can follow along, but when I start talking about mounting hard drives and writing bash scripts you may have to figure stuff out on your own! Table of Contents I.
While all of the services we install will be running in Docker, this setup expects you are using Ubuntu 18.04.
My goal here is to document as much of it as possible, and be as available as I can in the comments here so I can help out anyone else starting their home server adventure!īy the end of this guide, you will have a server that lets you access your media wherever you want, automatically grabs movies and tv shows when they are requested via a web UI and is optimized for seeding. A couple of weeks later I realized this wasn't just a project, it was a full-blown hobby.Īfter a ton of trial and error and a couple of hard drive wipes later, I've finally achieved a setup that I am truly happy with. Plex provides a polished, user-friendly way of accessing your home media content over the network or internet, engineered specifically for the big screen.A few months ago my dad gave me a spare computer and after a bit of research I set out on creating a home media server.
If you want access from the wider internet you’ll need to sign up for a MyPlex account, where you can upgrade to a PlexPass to gain additional features such as direct access to media stored in your cloud storage folders as well as offline playback on iOS and Android devices.
Presentation is simply fabulous, with lots of detail about the media you’re browsing to help you find what you’re looking for, but you’ll need to spend a little time familiarising yourself with the interface (press the left cursor key on the main screen to access the all-important settings, for example).Īccessing media over your home network is simple – Plex immediately spots any servers and gives you complete access to your media library as well as any online channels (such as YouTube) that you’ve added to the server.
So long as Plex Media Server is running somewhere (even on the same machine), you’ll have instant access to your movie library. The initial setup wizard – remember, use your keyboard folks – lets you configure the type of audio and video inputs and outputs you have, then dumps you at the main screen.
Plex works on Mac and Windows, and is designed to look good on your big-screen TV, which means it runs full screen, relies on a keyboard or compatible remote, and can be fiddly to set up. This is the media center portion of Plex, recently renamed from Plex Media Player and is the only free client available. If you’ve built yourself a handy media library – photos, video, recorded TV, music and more – using the powerful Plex Media Server tool for Windows, Mac or Linux, you’ll need a suitable client to access it all across your network.