NZBDrone

[smakovits]

I was looking at the contents of the main repository and saw NZBDrone, didn't know what it was, so I looked it up.  The application looks intriguing and prompted the question about using it over SAB/Sick.

 

I was searching the internet and there are a lot of older posts talking about it and some issues, but not a ton of recent stuff.  Therefore, i thought to just ask if anyone is using it here and if so what they think of it.  Better/worse, both have good and back characteristics I assume.

 

Also, just to be clear, I assume that nzbdrone is an all in one vs 2 individual parts correct?  Any thoughts and opinions are welcome.  I may just install it for fun to see in the event nobody wants to comment on it.

[boof]

It's not a replacement for SAB (or any other download agent). It's a replacement for / alternative to sickbeard.

 

I switched over a little while back from sickbeard to nzbdrone. Primary reasons were mostly it seems to be more actively developed than sickbeard (in the master branch anyway) and a lot of the improvements in the various forks of sickbeard are all in nzbdrone out of the box.

 

Function wise xem usage and general lack of reliance on thetvdb for primary data (xem and trakt taking their place) and the ability for it to set on disk file dates to match the original air date are big ones for me. Architecturally I like the attitude it takes to finding episodes as opposed to sickbeards heavyweight (but ultimately more encompassing) method.

 

I don't run it directly on unraid though I believe there is a package for it. You can also easily point it at your existing data non destructively (in the first instance anyway!) if you want to see how it works with your existing setup.

 

[smakovits]

Thanks boof.

 

I did end up installing it last night.  For me,  my Xen and vms are still separate from unraid,  so my install was onto arch vm.

 

As noted,  I still need sab,  not sure why I thought it was a full replacement,  maybe I misunderstood,  thought it was an all in one,  but it is not...

 

My first negative is the way it runs on arch,  it is a little convoluted,  so if only to half want to support linux.  I think full service support is the way it should be,  but then again I am still a Linux n00b.  It seems like a windows port as of integration on Windows would be better,  but I would need to try.

 

It also took me a few minutes (several)  to decrypt what folders and crap they were referring to where.  As well as the naming was a little confusing the way it worked,  but I think I got it.

 

Also,  I am not sure if the Plex integration works as I was getting errors,  but again,  those were very busy and not straight forward.

 

Now the things I liked.  The actual gui/interface of an episode is quite beautiful of I should say.  I really liked the fanart background compared to sickbeard. 

 

Second,  I liked the option to manually search and select nzbs when one failed.  I had 2 episodes in sick that have been falling for 2 months and the only fix would be to manually go in grab the nzb and upload it to SAB,  but with nzbdrone,  all I did was search and select.  Not to mention it on its own will try other nzbs of one fails.  Instead of trying the same broken one over and over like sick,  it realizes it is broken and moves on.  That is something I really liked.

 

But like anything,  I grew used to stick so I am still partial to it,  so it may take some time and playing to fully convince me that this is the route to go...

[spants]

I use the tretflix appliance which had both as options. As a long term sickbeard user I was worried about the change but quickly switched to nzbdrone....

[ijuarez]

I use the tretflix appliance which had both as options. As a long term sickbeard user I was worried about the change but quickly switched to nzbdrone....

 

+1

[smakovits]

I actually want to follow up my previous post with an update.  I was using the nzbdrone install from pacman, which is a good deal out of date...  Under system and updates on nzbdrone, I saw all the updates and fixes since the version I had gotten, so I thought to give it a try.  The update process is crap, but whatever, it is manageable. 

 

Download file, winscp it to the server and then untar.  Fine, it works, but still not the greatest method compared to other more popular applications with tighter integration.

 

One thing I did like about the updates page is you could see what was fixed or added, such as Plex.

 

With the updated version things did seem a bit smoother, so I will continue to play with it.  A feature I thought was really nice is the integration with SAB and being able to see the status of a download.  Instead of going to sick to see if the file was snatched, then going to SAB to see what it is doing, you can now go directly to nzbdrone and see, yes, snatched and oh, 30% done.  Thats a great feature in my book.  Plus with the update, I was able to better see and understand how it handles failed downloads with the SAB integration.  It obviously sees the failure and then knows to try another file. 

 

The real decision comes down to how it works going forward as I will certainly give it a chance for the time being.  The interfaces are so completely different, I don't know what is better, simple and basic or super GUI with pictures colors.  \

 

Time will surely tell.

[boof]

With the updated version things did seem a bit smoother, so I will continue to play with it.  A feature I thought was really nice is the integration with SAB and being able to see the status of a download.  Instead of going to sick to see if the file was snatched, then going to SAB to see what it is doing, you can now go directly to nzbdrone and see, yes, snatched and oh, 30% done.  Thats a great feature in my book.  Plus with the update, I was able to better see and understand how it handles failed downloads with the SAB integration.  It obviously sees the failure and then knows to try another file. 

 

It blacklists failures as well - so you don't end up in the sickbeard cycle of grabbing the same thing over and over.

 

The real decision comes down to how it works going forward as I will certainly give it a chance for the time being.

Time will surely tell.

 

This doesn't help you any really as it's a process you need to go through to satisfy yourself. But I had the same misgivings and it hasn't missed a beat so far. The only thing I would say is be wary of your quality profiles, you can end up replacing an awful lot of things which much larger files. Behaviour as intended / as you've told nzbdrone but keep it in mind.

[smakovits]

With the updated version things did seem a bit smoother, so I will continue to play with it.  A feature I thought was really nice is the integration with SAB and being able to see the status of a download.  Instead of going to sick to see if the file was snatched, then going to SAB to see what it is doing, you can now go directly to nzbdrone and see, yes, snatched and oh, 30% done.  Thats a great feature in my book.  Plus with the update, I was able to better see and understand how it handles failed downloads with the SAB integration.  It obviously sees the failure and then knows to try another file. 

 

It blacklists failures as well - so you don't end up in the sickbeard cycle of grabbing the same thing over and over.

 

The real decision comes down to how it works going forward as I will certainly give it a chance for the time being.

Time will surely tell.

 

This doesn't help you any really as it's a process you need to go through to satisfy yourself. But I had the same misgivings and it hasn't missed a beat so far. The only thing I would say is be wary of your quality profiles, you can end up replacing an awful lot of things which much larger files. Behaviour as intended / as you've told nzbdrone but keep it in mind.

I would be curious if you had an example on quality settings.

 

I do hd all as that is essentially how I have sickbeard configured.  Are you talking about the advanced settings that let you set file size, if so, I looked at that like 5 minutes and had no clue what I was doing so I exited.

 

Beyond that, my one gripe now is not being able to get the same file naming scheme as I had.  Not that I can't change but when you have something that works it is tough to do things different.  I don't want 2 naming schemes so it will be all in and rename or the alternative. Issue being I don't know the alternative.  Other than to say it won't be to have 2 naming standards.

 

One of my favorite things about it so far and the thing I have used it for most is cleaning up shows that like you said, have sickbeard in an endless loop with missing files. 

 

I think if I can get the naming down and configure it as a service I will make the full switch.  Or I just move it to Windows to satisfy the service issue.

[boof]

I would be curious if you had an example on quality settings.

 

I do hd all as that is essentially how I have sickbeard configured.  Are you talking about the advanced settings that let you set file size, if so, I looked at that like 5 minutes and had no clue what I was doing so I exited.

 

hd all here as well - but you'll find that scoops up much, much more than sickbeards HD settings did. And when you find that your previous 720p files have all been replaced with high bitrate 1080p blu-ray when you weren't looking - bye bye disk space!

 

[smakovits]

Are you referring to the 10gb bluray downloads?

 

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

 

[boof]

Anything that matches the hdall profile setting. Sky's the limit!

[Dabront]

I've read comments elsewhere by someone who won't use NZBDrone due to the overhead caused by mono. Does anyone have an opinion on how draining this plugin is on system resources?

 

I've stayed away from this and VM's because my set up is only a HP N40L with the standard 2GB ram and  a very small SSD as a cache drive. The same person also uses NZBGet over SAB for similar reasons, but I don't have issues running SAB, it will slow the system slightly during unbar but I guess that is unavoidable without upgrading hardware.

 

Anyone running this on a similar set up?

[ijuarez]

mono 2.XX did cause some issues but since its being built its been better.

[boof]

I've read comments elsewhere by someone who won't use NZBDrone due to the overhead caused by mono. Does anyone have an opinion on how draining this plugin is on system resources?

 

I've stayed away from this and VM's because my set up is only a HP N40L with the standard 2GB ram and  a very small SSD as a cache drive. The same person also uses NZBGet over SAB for similar reasons, but I don't have issues running SAB, it will slow the system slightly during unbar but I guess that is unavoidable without upgrading hardware.

 

Anyone running this on a similar set up?

 

I find it uses a fair chunk of memory. I don't know if that's down to mono, nzbdrones code or the size of the database being handled by nzbdrone.

[ijuarez]

I've read comments elsewhere by someone who won't use NZBDrone due to the overhead caused by mono. Does anyone have an opinion on how draining this plugin is on system resources?

 

I've stayed away from this and VM's because my set up is only a HP N40L with the standard 2GB ram and  a very small SSD as a cache drive. The same person also uses NZBGet over SAB for similar reasons, but I don't have issues running SAB, it will slow the system slightly during unbar but I guess that is unavoidable without upgrading hardware.

 

Anyone running this on a similar set up?

 

I find it uses a fair chunk of memory. I don't know if that's down to mono, nzbdrones code or the size of the database being handled by nzbdrone.

 

I got treflix running Sab, SB, headphones, drone, and transmission, on 2gb and its running fine

 

[boof]

What percentage of that memory is mono chewing? Mine chews 10% of my 6G.  I'm running mono 3.2 - no idea what treflix ships with.

[ijuarez]

ships with 3.2, it using about 5.7% its a little high, but not crippling the system

 

[smakovits]

does anyone know how to auto start nzbdrone via systemd?  been messing with it on and off, but cannot seem to get it to work.  This is essentially the last thing keeping me from switching over full time to nzbdrone.

 

When I have both nzbdrone and sickbeard running, I have gotten some duplicate files, so it is time to go all in.  Biggest reason, the handling of failed downloads is a great feature, but having to manually run it all the time is a royal pain.

 

 

[smakovits]

Finally got this,  hope others find it useful as I can say I really like nzbdrone.

 

GNU nano 2.2.6             File: nzbdrone.service

[unit]
Description=nzbdrone

[service]
Type=forking
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/screen -d -m -S nzbdrone mono /usr/lib/NzbDrone/NzbDrone.exe
ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall -w -s 2 nzbdrone
WorkingDirectory=/home

[install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

 

[smakovits]

I don't know if running this with tmux over screen would make a difference.

 

Second,  my vm,  on arch,  runs sabnzbd,  nzbdrone, rutorrent and Plex.  All with 1gb memory,  so far all is well,  so not sure it memory is still an issue or not with mono as mentioned earlier.  It has been running fine for a few days now.

[smakovits]

Just wanted to report back after a few weeks with NZBdrone.  So far, so good, there is one minor issue with naming of shows with a period in them where it double periods the file (Chicago P.D..S01), but other than that, it works and I am happy.  Overall the same as SAB, but the handling of failed downloads is way better.

[ironicbadger]

Nice thread.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

[ironicbadger]

I've updated NZBdrone in my repo. All you need do if something's out of date is just put a post in the repo thread and I'll update it ASAP. 

[smakovits]

went through the appropriate channels and posted on the nzbdrone forums about the above double period issue.  They acknowledged it and fixed it, so I can now say nzbdrone matches SAB as far as my use and I am happy.

[doorunrun]

I've tried using NZBDrone a time or two, but I can't get past the fact I can't seem to add a show from scratch. It's easy enough in SB. Am I missing something? I've done some Googling without a good answer. I didn't want to join their forum just to pose that question. I would love to move away from SB. Thanks!