Create a Media Server with Your FxBlox — Part 4 — Install Prowlarr

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash

You can’t just manually search the dark web for your favorite movies, you have to “know a guy”. I don’t “know a guy”, but thankfully I know a tiger. Prowlarr is an indexer manager that will search known sites for you. Why is this important? Because without a way to search the web for the files that you want, then we wouldn’t know where to look for them. Now, because Prowlarr and qBittorrent will be working in conjunction to find files on the dark side of the moon, you will want to keep your VPN on at all times when using this software.

Remember we want to regain control of our data and services that we use. So, to not potentially be blocked by our ISP, we must use a VPN to secure our connections.

DISCLAIMER: With that said, Fierro Labs does not condone the downloading, sharing, or distribution of illegal and copyrighted material without proper authorization. Users are urged to adhere to all applicable laws and regulations governing intellectual property rights. While we advocate for responsible and legal use of file-sharing software like qBittorrent, Prowlarr, Radarr & Sonarr, users are advised to only download and share content for which they have the legal right or proper authorization. Always respect the rights of content creators and copyright holders. We do not accept any liability for damage arising from the use of our services or information contained herein in any manner whatsoever, except where explicitly required by law.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to:

• Install Prowlarr with Docker
• Add Indexers
• Add Download Client (qBitTorrent)
• Connect *arr apps

Install Prowlarr with Docker

We are installing with Docker because it allows us to choose where we want to install Prowlarr. Our FxBlox doesn’t have a ton of onboard storage, so we want to move as much data onto non-onboard storage as possible. All you need to install Prowlarr is a docker-compose file. Here is the one we made to work well with the rest of the suite:

---
version: '2.1'
services:
  prowlarr:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/prowlarr:latest
    container_name: prowlarr
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Americas/Los_Angeles #Change this to your timezone
      - AUTO_UPDATE=true
    volumes:
      - /media/pi/nvme0n1p1/media-stack/AppData/Config/prowlarr:/config
      - /media/pi/nvme0n1p1/media-stack/data:/data
    ports:
      - 9696:9696
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: media-stack

You can find your TZ code here: List of tz database time zones — Wikipedia

Here are the same instructions as before to copy/paste this into the location of your choosing. We recommend making a simple folder in the ../media-stack directory:

mkdir /media/pi/nvme0n1p1/media-stack/prowlarr
cd /media/pi/nvme0n1p1/media-stack/prowlarr
vim docker-compose.yml

1. Press ‘i’ key
2. Right click paste
3. Press ‘Esc’ key
4. Finally press :wq
5. Run Prowlarr with docker compose up -d

Now, we can access the Prowlarr app by going to localhost:9696 or <ip-of-machine>:9696. The first time you access the app, it’ll ask you to create a login. You can make it whatever you would like or none at all.

Add Indexers

It is recommended to pick more than just one indexer incase Prowlarr doesn’t find the content you are requesting on the first site. In our example, we’ll only add the Internet Archive. So, on the left-hand vertical menu, we’ll go to:

1. Indexers and click “Add New Indexer”
2. Search for “Internet Archive” at the top of the pop up
3. Click on the Internet Archive
4. Select Base Url, then https://archive.org
5. Scroll down to find “Tags” and type what you want to use it for. Ie. movies, tv, music
6. Click test, you should get a green checkmark, then save.

You can repeat the steps to add other public indexers.

As mentioned, having more than one indexer will make sure that your system continues working if Prowlarr can’t find what you’re requesting on the first site. Or maybe a site goes down, so you’ll have backups.

Add Download Client

Prowlarr does the searching, but qBitTorrent does the downloading. Each piece of the stack has its own purpose and now we need to connect these two together.

To do this, on the left-hand vertical menu, go to:

1. Settings -> Download Clients
2. Click on the plus (+) sign.
3. Scroll down to find qBitTorrent
4. Change “Host” to be ‘qbittorrent’ (no quotes; the name as specified in the docker file)
5. Enter your username and password for qBT
6. Click on plus (+) sign for Mapped Categories
7. Add categories you added in qBT here.
8. “Download Client Category” = movies
9. Open drop-down menu and click every movie option you see (make sure to scroll down)
10. Click save
11. Repeat for tv. (And music if you’re setting that up)

Connect *Arr apps

Okay we can’t exactly connect any of the *arr apps right now, because we haven’t installed any. We’ll show how to properly install them in the next guide. But to prepare for setting up Radarr next, we head to:

1. Settings -> Apps
2. Click plus (+) sign
3. Click Radarr
4. Under Tags, type: “movies”
5. Make sure “Radarr Server” says http://localhost:7878
6. Leave the API KEY section blank for now
7. Under Sync Categories, make sure all movies options are set EXCEPT movies/x265. (these movie types aren’t exactly compatible with the Blox)

When we set up Radarr, we will copy/paste the api key Radarr generates for us, into this box. After which, the two apps will be joined at the hip.

Conclusion

Normally, this is where setting it up on your own could get confusing, because you can set things up in any order you want. We just chose to start from the least confusing apps. Now I hope you can see what is meant when we call Prowlarr an Indexer manager. All you can do in it, is set up pages to search and send qBitTorrent to download what is found.

And that leaves the final pieces of the puzzles, Radarr and Sonarr. We will start with Radarr first, then Sonarr, and we’ll leave Lidarr as an exercise for you, the reader. After we install Radarr, we will finally be able to search for our desired content.

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