Everyone here is talking about how to get the latest and best stuff, but no one is talking about how they actually manage it 😜
So, how do YOU manage your Movies / Shows / Music / eBooks / Games?
I begin:
- Jellyfin: Media Center to stream movies, TV shows and music
- sonarr, radar, lidarr: manage collections and download, TV shows, movies and music, respectively
- transmission: torrent client, through VPN connection (NordVPN)
- Jackett: tracker manager
- stash: like Jellyfin, but for linux-iso files /s
All of that runs in docker containers on my NAS, using docker-compose to deploy the stack.
I dump everything into a single folder. Like a junk drawer. Because I really only save junk anyway 🤷🏻♂️
I use Prowlarr + Radarr + Sonarr + Jellyfin.
I have / directory organised like this:
/data
├── media
│ ├── books
│ ├── movies
│ ├── music
│ └── tv
└── torrents
├── books
├── movies
├── music
└── tv
Files added from Sonarr goes to torrents/tv and that for Radarr torrents/movies. Once the torrent client has downloaded the files, Sonarr and Radarr hardlinks the needed files to media’s respective folders. I have set media/tv for shows and media/movies for movies on Jellyfin. Everything is automated, I love it.
I have a similar setup but without the hardlinks. Can you explain the benefits/reason for using the them? I think I understand what a hardlink is, but don’t quite get why you’d use it in this context.
The torrent client can get confused about the authenticity of the files if you make any changes to the files that were downloaded. It can also have trouble finding all the files required for seeding, so moving the needed files to media is a no.
Once the torrent client finishes downloading the files, instead of copying the needed files among them to media’s respective folder, we simply make a hardlink to it to save space and to ensure the authenticity of the files in torrents folder such that the torrent client has no trouble seeding the files.
The seeded folder which contains the needed files can also contain media that can potentially confuse Jellyfin such that it shows it; furthermore, less useless files also decreases the scanning time taken by Jellyfin. So instead of directly linking the respective folders in torrents we have a separate and more clean directory for Jellyfin media.
TL;DR: to save space and to ensure your torrent client can keep seeding the files.
Pretty much my method. On an unRaid server so that I can have a flat user space interface and expand as needed.
My collecting isn’t as automated and only my video media is aggregated into a viewing platform (Plex), but it’s pretty easy to find anything on a moments notice.
Would you happen to have any recommendations for any compete noob UNRAID resources? I have a GSA and I’m very interested in using UNRAID on that, but I haven’t played around with non-Windows or OSX OSes in over 15 years.
The unRaid forums are the place to go. TBH, it’s so bullet proof I only ever do anything with it when I rebuild my server. The last time was ~3 years ago.
The management is a nice gui, the docker setup is mostly automatic, but doing anything beyond basics is command line. I almost never use *ix but it’s really not that bad.
Plex for my Movies, TV shows, and music (plexamp for music).
Kavita for books. Also nextcloud to a degree.
Games, honestly I have not pirated in a long time, so no need to manage. Gabe Newell was right in that piracy is mainly a service problem, and to be honest Steam and GoG are convenient enough for me that I don’t feel the need to pirate anymore.
- Sonarr and Radarr for getting torrents
- Prowlarr for setting up torrent indexers
- Bazarr for getting subtitles
- Jellyfin for playback
- Tachiyomi (Android app) for Manga
