Create a Media Server with Your FxBlox — Part 6 — Install Sonarr

AI Generated image: A movie scene of the captain looking down at the sonar instrument

OK! We finally made it to the end of this series! Installing Sonarr on our Docker ship will be as easy as installing the Radarr. Ok, we admit it isn’t for the faint of heart. It is, however, one of the best ways to regain control of your data and get direct entertainment from your FxBlox.

Fun fact, Sonarr actually came before Radarr. They are actually sister projects, which is why they will look and operate identically. But instead of movies, Sonarr is made to search for tv shows.

This time we’ll be showing you how to get the ol’ hit tv show, “The Andy Griffith Show”.

DISCLAIMER: 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, Sonarr & 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 how to:

• Install Sonarr with Docker
• Connect Prowlarr
• Manually add an Indexer
• Add Download Client (qBitTorrent)
• Configure Sonarr
• Search for Content

Install Sonarr with Docker

Like the apps before this, we are installing Sonarr with Docker so that we control where the app downloads to. We can do this with a Sonarr specific docker compose file:

---
version: '2.1'
services:
  sonarr:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:latest
    container_name: sonarr
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Americas/Los_Angeles #Change to your timezone
    volumes:
      - /media/pi/nvme0n1p1/media-stack/AppData/Config/sonarr:/config
      - /media/pi/nvme0n1p1/media-stack/data:/data
    ports:
      - 7878:7878
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: media-stack

You can find your timezone 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/sonarr
cd /media/pi/nvme0n1p1/media-stack/sonarr
vim docker-compose.yml

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

Now, we can access the Sonarr app by going to localhost:8989 or <ip-of-machine>:8989. 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.

Adding Multiple Indexers

Unfortunately, with old shows it’s hard to find someone who is seeding the content you want. That means you have to go to add multiple Indexers to find different variations of the same torrent and hopefully there will be someone seeding that file. They can vary due to encoding, metadata, naming, and a whole bunch of other reasons. So to increase our chances of finding the series, we need to go back to Prowlarr.

So on the left hand vertical menu in Prowlarr, we’ll go to:

1. Indexers and click “Add New Indexer”
2. Search for “LimeTorrents” at the top of the pop up
3. Click on the LimeTorrents
4. Select Base Url, then the first option
5. Scroll down to find “Tags” and type what you want to use it for (movies, tv, music) or you can just leave blank
6. Click test, you should get a green checkmark, then save.

You can repeat the steps to add other public indexers like The Pirate Bay, 1337x, or Isohunt.

Connect Prowlarr

This should feel familiar because we’re following the same instructions as Radarr. Literally exactly the same steps. So, to get our API Key in Sonarr, go to:

1. Settings -> General
2. Scroll down to find “API Key”
3. Copy to clipboard

Head back to the Prowlarr app: (localhost:9696)

1. Settings -> Apps
2. Click plus (+) sign
3. Click Sonarr, click Show Advanced Options at the bottom of the popup & use these settings:

• Prowlar server: http://prowlarr:9696
• Sonarr Server: http://sonarr:7878
• Paste API Key copied from Sonarr in the “API Key” box
• Sync Categories: Exclude whatever you don’t want AND tv/x265.

4. Test and save.

If you get a red x, look at the error text that displays at the top of that page. Generally double check server addresses and the API Key. You could also get away with http://localhost:port# or http://<ip-of-machine>:port#

After this is done, assuming you have some indexers already selected in Prowlarr, they will just show up in the “Indexers” tab in Sonarr.

If any of the Indexers aren’t automatically syncing to Sonarr. Then we should try a couple things.

1. In Prowlarr: under the “Indexers” tab, click the “Sync App Indexers” button
2. Restart both containers with: docker restart prowlarr radarr
3. Make sure the top box is checked in the tv category when you connected Prowlarr & Sonarr

Manually Add an Indexer (Optional)

If still nothing, then we can add it in manually in Sonarr. Go to:

1. Settings -> Indexers
2. Click on the plus (+) sign
3. Click on “Torznab”, and use these settings:

• Name: Internet Archive (Torznab)
• URL: http://prowlarr:9696/<id#> (You can find the id number in Prowlarr, it may not be the same as shown below)
• API Key: You’ll need an API Key from Prowlarr: Settings -> General -> API Key
• Categories: click on all the “tv” options, same as above

4. Click the check mark, if green then you’re good to go, else follow the errors the app gives you.

Add Download Client

It’s unfortunate that Prowlarr only syncs Indexers and not download clients, it would make the process that much easier/beginner friendly. So, until they do, in Sonarr, 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. Scroll down to Tags, and type ‘movies’ (no quotes)
7. Test, and if there is a green check mark, you can save and exit.

If you get a red x, make sure you have your username/password correct for qbittorrent, the hostname is correct, or if you changed the default port, double check it is the right one. (default is 8080)

Configure Sonarr

We are almost there! In this step, we just want to make sure we don’t automatically download any files that aren’t compatible with our FxBlox. We are just going to configure a couple things.

In the left hand vertical menu, we’ll go to:

1. Settings -> Media Management
2. At the top of the page, click “Show Advanced”
3. Under “Season Folder Format” I recommend “{Series Title} — S{season:00}E{episode:00} — {Episode Title} {Quality Full}” or you can select the “?” mark to select the title form you would like.
4. Scroll down to find if “Use Hardlinks instead of Copy” box is checked ON, else turn it on
5. Scroll all the way down to “Root Folders”
6. Click “Add Root Folder”
7. And select /data -> media -> tv and click ok
8. Double check path is now “/data/media/tv”

Click Save at the top of the page. Next, we’ll go to:

1. Settings -> Profiles
2. Scroll down to Release Profiles
3. Click plus (+) sign
4. Under “Name”, type “exclude_265” (no quotes)
5. Under “Must Not Contain”, type “x265, h265, x.265, h.265, 265, hevc, HEVC” (no quotes, optional commas or Enter to separate”

Again, the FxBlox, currently as of Jellyfin 10.8.13, doesn’t support hardware acceleration. So because our media player can’t play these movies, we shouldn’t download them. It is best we hold off on HEVC (h.265) shows. That said, the RK3588 CPU on the Blox can only decode AV1 and encode H264 & HEVC (but it is about to be added in 10.9)!

Search for Content

The Andy Griffith Show (1960–1968)

Now, we can finally search for “The Andy Griffith Show”. To do this, within Sonarr, in the left hand vertical menu:

1. Movies -> Add New
2. In the Search Bar type: The Andy Griffith Show
3. It should be the first one, and click on it.
4. When the popup shows, make sure to have:

• Monitor: All Episodes
• Quality Profile: Any
• Series Type: standard
• Uncheck the “Start search for missing episodes” box. There are a ton of episodes and we don’t want to automatically start downloading them all

5. Now, click on Search icon (magnifying glass)

6. Then, you can see its progress in the Sonarr queue and qBitTorrent. If you do not want to Seed the content you just Leeched, remember to double click on the line item within qBitTorrent.

Conclusion

Congrats! This marks the completion of the how to “Create a Media Server with Your FxBlox” series. I hope it was easy enough to follow along with, I admit it isn’t for the faint of heart. It is, however, one of the best ways to regain control of your data and entertainment as well as an amazing opportunity to show how capable the FxBlox device is. All that’s left to do is open up Jellyfin, navigate to your tv shows, and enjoy.

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