I’ll start. Did you know you can run a headless version of JD2 on a raspberry pi? It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but sometimes its nice to throw a bunch of links in there and go to sleep.
𝗣𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗬 𝗜𝗦 𝗘𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟!
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don’t request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don’t request or link to specific pirated titles
4. Don’t be repetitious, spam, harass others, or submit low-quality posts
5. Don’t post questions already answered. READ THE WIKI
💰 Please help cover server costs.
I run everything with saltbox (cloudbox fork) it’s ansible, it’s automated, and I hardly have issues. I host from home but have a 10gb uplink.
Being consistent and seeding is what makes everything work. So my best advice is seed! (Private trackers are a no brainer). Using a few and backups. I have replaced all the streaming services with a self service portal and all I need to do is updates and every few year upgrade the hardware.
I have and do purchase lots of movies and entertainment. But I’m tired of services deleting shit.
Fuck outta here (as i cry in american)
Swizzin is definitely the most prominent solution for selfhosting a seedbox. I highly recommend it.
I am American!!! Swizzin is much easier then my ansible answer.
Fiber is getting bigger and I’m in a small city. Only had cable and dsl and I could see downtown San Francisco…
Oh man, now I’m even more jealous.
I really like ansible and have played around with using it to deploy a seedbox. I still want to get it working, but I’ve given up on doing it all purely through ansible. At this point, I’m thinking the best route is using ansible to deploy swizzin with an environment file and unattended install
Usenet is worth every penny
This comment 100% … You get popped uploading not downloading.
seedhost.eu
Is it? I never used it, i went down the torrent path. Usenet would have to be super easy to use for me to consider paying for it
It is. I torrented for years, Usenet is so much better once setup with radarr/sonarr. So much faster
Yes but have you combined private trackers with a seedbox? You can’t get much faster than like 100 MB/s download. You still have to xfer it to your computer but can do that at your leisure. I find my ISP throttles me if I download more than 1 TB in a month so I keep it at a few hundred GB usually.
Yeah but sonarr/radarr works for torrents too. I can see the speed argument tho.
I hear the big downside with Usenet is availability of old or obscure content. Not sure how true this is though as I’ve never used Usenet myself.
Plus the cost of the subscription. You should be using a VPN with torrents which has its own fees, but at least the VPN is useful for more than just that one thing.
I’ve used it for 15+ years and it’s a huge downside. Older content used to be widely available, but more often then not anything popular is removed within a few months of posting. It is actually pretty great for obscure content that won’t get taken down. It’s cheap but a whole new thing to learn. It is faster than torrenting directly to your own computer but a seedbox blows usenet out of the water as far as speed. 50-100 MB/s easily (at least using private trackers).
I wonder what the reason for that speed difference on a seedbox is. I’d like to set up a custom server for other things at home so I’d prefer to use that over a seedbox.
They’re running in a datacenter in the netherlands with a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. I did find out they’re classified as an “isp and web hosting company”.
I’d also guess that many of the seeds on any torrent (on a private tracker) are going to also be coming from seedboxes. That might explain why it’s so fast too, there is tons of bandwidth between the datacenters themselves. I’m definitely throttled at 100MB/s regardless of how many torrents I’ve got running (1 or 100), but if they’re running 50-100+ instances along with dedicated servers they must have tbps of bandwidth.
So long story medium, unless you can install your home server into a datacenter with a multi terrabit link to the backbone, it will be tough to replicate
I feel you on the difficulty. Mostly it took me just taking a leap into it and deciding that if I lost a little money on it no biggie as I’ve gotten so much for free over the years. Biggest thing that tipped me into finally trying was black Friday sales from Usenet providers. Getting a pretty dang cheap deal and then fiddling with sabnzb, getting my first download going was awesome. Especially the speeds. And 99% of the things I’m looking for being available. Even really old stuff that is pretty hard to find active torrents of. Would highly recommend.
Just jumped into Usenet a year ago, been torrenting for decades. I concur, worth every single cent spent, and I messed up and overspent when I was setting up…. Still worth it.
Any tips on jumping in? Recommended services, etc
If you are familiar with docker and compose, I would start there with a servarr stack. There is a docker-compose I use called -arr-compose. Has the complete arr stack, including sabnzbd for Usenet downloads. Usenet is a bit weird, you need a server like Newshosting to actually connect to Usenet, that is what you point sabnzbd to. Prowlarr from the servarr stack connects to your indexers. Then you just search and the stack takes care of the rest. Other useful links:
servarr wiki
trash-guides
This is super helpful, thanks so much
I use Usenetic as my client (I’m in a mac). Incredibly easy to set up. I use Newshosting as my provider. You paste a URL and your credentials into a field in the app and off you gib. I like that usenetic has a search built in rather than trawling binsearch for nzb files.
100% get 2 providers 2 indexers and setup the Arr stack and never touch it again
Make sure they’re not from the same company though.
One of the first things I made sure of
Usenet was great 10-15 years ago but nowadays it’s flooded with fake / private downloads and retention is shit simply because the few remaining backbone providers comply with takedown requests. Absolutely useless for older content by any major studio. It’s all new stuff which is mostly garbage anyway. We were able to get a ton of “this old house” recently though.
Its important to have a supplemental block account, that won’t generally accede to DMCA requests. The big guys will of course, but they don’t get rid of the whole file, so you can grab the remainder from the block account. I can’t even think of the last time I wasn’t able to download something between my main and block account.
appreciate the advice, would make it less aggravating. Which one do you recommend? I’m on newshosting and have no problems that aren’t just general usenet problems.
I’m just gonna to invite you to google this and see where it takes you. Might not be up your alley, might be a compete gamechanger: InviteHawk
I miss when Usenet subscriptions just came as part of your ISP package. What the hell ever happened with that?
Seems like it was a mix between usenet being a magnet for piracy, which all the ISPs were getting pressure to combat, and demand for usenet cratering - as newer users came on the internet they went to other places (myspace had started which appealed more to young users)
Dang, that’d be cool. Didn’t even know that was a thing. Probably before my time on the internet. Mostly got connected in the late 2000s and haven’t ever heard that was a thing.
I used to agree but retention is a killer for a lot of older content.
For new releases its pretty great though.
I have a tracker on standby for this reason. What indexers were you using? I haven’t had too hard of a time finding some older stuff so far.
I was on geek, dog, and a few others. Been considering going back because I’m sick of seeding a bunch of shit.
No matter how good your indexers are you still might not get retention no matter the provider.
Is there a very good guide somewhere for usenet?
Also curious
If you’re completely new, familiarizing yourself with any guide would be beneficial. A basic search resulted in this and this, which are better than nothing, I suppose. I’d appreciate someone skilled adding their two cents, however, especially concerning common pitfalls and anonymous payment for Usenet providers.
If you really want to build an awesome Plex/Jellyfin library, start using Usenet instead of torrents.
I’ve personally found that usenet isn’t that good unless you’re trying to grab things immediately. I find trying to grab older stuff really hit or miss, mostly miss.
Most indexers have a request form for content. Ive used the one on NZBGeek numeous times and gotten what I wanted within a day or two.
Use two providers on different networks. They can fill in the gaps for each other.
Right, get a block account with another provider on a different backbone and you should be good to go!
Please tell me what I can get on usenet that isn’t on PTP, BTN, or RED.
I would bet that 99/100 releases are uploaded to private trackers before usenet.
It isn’t availability that makes me prefer Usenet, but its speed and security features.
The download speed on any popular release will max out even the fastest connections. I assume the retention for less popular content is a lot better on trackers, but I don’t have enough experience with usenet to say that for sure.
What features?
Usenet connections can be encrypted. No need for a VPN or any other obfuscation.
Torrents can be encrypted as well, and there isn’t a need for a VPN unless you use public trackers, which I don’t recommend.
What is the monthly fee for Usenet? I’m more in favor of decentralized systems with the use of seedboxes to speed up distribution, but I’m not against usenet either.
About 5 bucks a month or a little less if you pay by the year.
If you have cabal and able to maintain ratio (yeah BTN is ratio less) you don’t need Usenet
But thats such a small proportion of people. Usenet is what I recommend to entry level people who want top tier access but aren’t will to spend time/effort/networking but will spend money m
I’d like to know this as well. Haven’t used Usenet for over 10 years. PTP, BTN, and Red are all I need. Seed box and Plex. I’m into indie/obscure films also, so what would Usenet offer that they don’t?
You should look into Karagarga
Idk man, Usenet was solid for me for years but now everything is DMCAd in a flash.
Huh, a couple years ago everything was being DMCAd haven’t come accross that issue in awhile, at least me personally.
what is usenet just a DDL site?
Usenet isn’t a site, it’s a network. Wiki it, you’ll need a provider for it but most of them are quite affordable.
Affordable? I’m not here to pay people for things, that’s for sure 😅
Do as though wilt! That said, a Usenet service is like $10 a month, and a lot of them will let you purchase a month at a time.
Interesting. I guess I’ve just been lucky enough to find all the content I look for.
stop manually browsing torrent sites! You’re wasting your time.
Download qBittorrent. Download Jackett. Configure Jackett to work inside qBittorrent. You now have a way to search hundreds of trackers all at once within seconds and find literally anything you want.
I was looking into this like last week but paused it because I’m an idiot who can’t figure out which package to grab off their git lol. I think it is amdx64 but I have intel everything, I know it isn’t arm though.
type
uname -m
in your terminalThanks!
It’s called amd64 because AMD invented the x86-64 processor instruction set, it works both on Intel and AMD
Thank you! I’m just not used to seeing things named like that, it’s usually just x86 in my experience for some reason so I wasn’t sure, and had nobody to ask haha. Thank you, setting that up immanently!
x86 are 32-bit applications.
amd64 are 64-bit applications.
Or sometimes also x86_64
Get Prowlarr instead of Jackett and then install sonarr/radarr too. No more manual searching at all!
Oh wow this sounds pretty often. From time to time I find it hard locate some file. Especially old audiobooks. Would this be a good way to do that? And do you know a mobile equivalent?
It turns out if you have a library card you can get tons of free audiobooks. I don’t think it counts as piracy but there are other ways to get free books.
Myanonamouse.net is an incredible private tracker for audiobooks that has semi-open sign ups. You just have to pass an interview.
I doubt you can find anything equivalent on mobile.
I don’t torrent audiobooks often, but on the rare occasion that I have I’ve used Jackett to find them. with the right trackers, you can find anything.
Can you use this with a seedbox? I don’t use qBittorrent, and haven’t looked into the *arr apps - I just use torrent files (or magnet links) with ruTorrent… I don’t mind adding the torrents/magnets manually (or uploading them to be scanned). I have more content than I can keep up with watching, so the *arr apps seem like overkill, but improving the torrent sites process would be nice…
(If anybody has a tutorial/recommendation for the *arr sites with a seedbox, I’m interested in reading that too, but it looks like more than I need. Maybe not though, IDK.)
It appears to be seedbox compatible. I don’t use a seedbox though so I can’t help you there :)
my seedbox provider (seedhost.eu) supports that stuff out of the box I think (you do have to turn it off on). I just use ruTorrent as well though.
Sometimes it’s cool to browse sites for FL alone.
When TorrentDB existed I liked zo browse the current hot section just to download stuff and 1. profit from it being FL and 2. increasing my ratio.
Other times I got a fee good recommendations because I was curious why so many downloaded something
Thank you for this. I set this up yesterday and started combing through my list of things that I’ve wanted to download but couldn’t find even on my private trackers. I wish I knew about this sooner!
Did this a few days ago, total game changer.
I’ve tried just about every type of automated system Sonarr, Radarr fully integrated with usenet and my libraries etc.
After a while I realised I quite enjoy doing things manually. I get to vet the content a little before I grab it, a bit like going to the video store.
I mean all of them have manual searches. I don’t use automatic grabbing either because I’m just too paranoid about it grabbing a shit release, but I still use them for organizing and it’s nice to just add a movie and get a list of releases to pick from.
What particular component is doing your organizing for you? I do struggle with this at times. THAT is a massive amount of manual labour when I let it get out of control.
Automatically? Creating folders, moving files into said folder and renaming files in similar pattern after download is completed. It also provides a nice overview of all media with ability to filter and sort like by size on disk etc.
As long as you have your quality profiles set up correctly they very rarely grab a bad release, I’ve maybe had to throw out 3 movies and one season of anime it grabbed during the past year I’ve been using a full *arr setup combined with jellyfin and jellyseerr.
And generally it grabbing a bad release is due to it being uploaded on a tracker with little moderation. I tend to blacklist a site once this happens more than once or twice.
As I said it’s mostly paranoia. I know it works fine with movies and shows, but anime is definitely one thing I actually do not trust it to grab and import automatically. Mostly due to shit anime release naming conventions. Some trackers insist on only using romanized names making it impossible to find automatically and in my experience sonarr can’t import anime seasons due to not having
S01E01
in filenames. Even single episode search doesn’t work for this reason.Anime is my biggest use case, and it’s worked great for me.
If you set the series to “Anime” it should use both episode number and absolute numbering when searching for anime. It’s certainly not perfect but it gets the job done most of the time.
I do. As far as I can tell it does literally nothing.
Have you set it up like trash-guides does? Works well for almost any anime I watch. The only issues I have is not finding something because of localized/JP name release that are with embedded subs.
This is why I don’t use any of the *arrs. 90 percent of what I pirate is anime or music which they don’t work well with at all.
I only auto-dl with sonarr for anime and groups I know like SubsPlease, EraiRaws etc.
Movies are capped to FHD-BD and remuxes are only downloaded manually.
Also because I use a seedbox my storage quota is usually 99% in use and filling it 100% up causes me issues so I am usually paranoid about 1. the quality and 2. what size is being downloaded
Jackett isn’t automated, it’s just a search tool. You can open any search result in-browser if you wish to double check it. I do it all the time
What about private trackers? I very rarely touch public trackers
Yeah, pretty much all trackers worth using are supported. I like to use it for manual searches, real useful when you are member of multiple trackers
Jackett supports private trackers.
It doesn’t automatically search every tracker ever. You have to manually add trackers to use(jackett provides a list of them so adding one is easy). Even public ones. For private trackers you have to provide username/password or some authorization token if the tracker uses something like that.
You should check out Prowlarr, its like jackett, but integrates better into sonarr/radarr
Prowlarr has a prettier UI but the torrent sites they support are maintained by Jackett. It noone gives credit, at some point Jackett won’t be maintained and Prowlar neither.
Disclaimer: I’m qBittorrent, Jackett, Flaresolverr and Bazarr developer.
Damn, I’m huge fan of yours. Using qBbittorent, Jacket, Flarsolverr and Bazarr in docker. Thanks for your work.
But I never managed to get Jackett plugin to work x)
https://github.com/qbittorrent/search-plugins/wiki/How-to-configure-Jackett-plugin
It has limitations, but qBittorrent is used by 40M users aprox and we are only 3-5 active developers. Managing the open issues don’t let us time to work on new features…
Thanks for the link. I’ve been following these instructions from start. Looks like it’s searching for a while, but ends up saying “Jackett: connection error getting indexer list!”
Who needs new features when the most important ones are working perfectly anyway :)
You’re doing gods work. Amazing how many people benefit from your efforts. Thank you.
Hey thanks for your work. QBT and Jackett are super stable and well done.
I dont need a fancy UI for jackett since it’s only needed for the API.
Prowlarr does have the ability to do a search of all indexers including usenet, combined into one results list, which is very nice for finding rare or niche things outside of Sonarr/Radarr.
So I have both installed and configured, but only ever use prowlarr for manual searches cause jackett is working and i’m too lazy to change all my settings in my 6 separate ARR instances.
Made the reverse. Switched to prowlarr and keeping jackett if something does not work on prowlarr.
Thank you for your work on those beloved softwares.
Qbit desktop thin client when? Lol
It’s not in the roadmap. You can run qBittorrent-nox (headless) with the web UI. It works really well with thousands of torrents.
Yeah, just wish there was one. The web UI is very clunky so I use Flood but that has its own quirks. Would be cool though, would bring me back to when I used Deluge!
I have all of these programs running on raspberry pi, including Flood (mobile friendly UI for qBittorrent, also supports Deluge), and plex media server. It can’t be easier to watch movies and tv shows that way.
Make an image of your SD card if you haven’t already. Better yet run the OS over USB. sd cards to die.
I have made an image. One sd card already died, but it worked for a long time. It was at least readonly, and I get most of the files off (I had backup, but I wanted to get the most latest files). Movies and series are on 5TB hard drive, so I don’t have to worry about that. But are usb sticks really more reliable? My friend is using home assistant and he moved data partition to usb stick, just becaues he heard usb sticks are more reliable than sd cards, but not long after that, usb stick stopped working.
Are they all running on the Pi, or just the torrenting tools?
My 5¢, got a similar stack running fine on a Pi 4B 8GB (with Jellyfin instead of Plex). Just gotta make sure to direct play, it does not like transcoding too much, even with hw acceleration
Transcoding is also turned off in my case. But I couldn’t get used to Jellyfin. I tried, but I just couldn’t.
That’s fair, never used Plex but I suppose it’s more polished being a product and all. In my case, I read Plex requires an internet connection to work and I needed my media server to be available offline, so it was a deal-breaker
Jellyfin is actually very polished in my opinion. Using it very often
Works flakey at best. I could transcode but only 1080p anime caused by SSA subs. And it would buffer. A lot.
Today Jellyfin is really good with not causing uneccessary transcoding
Everything is running on Pi. But I have Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of ram. Actually I have Raspberry Pi 400, which is basically 4GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4, with slightly overclocked CPU and passive cooling, inside small keyboard, but I only got that because Raspberry Pi 4 was out of stock.
qBitTorrent has an inbuilt search feature that is kind of hidden. It supports plugins to search your favourite sites.
Here’s a complete article on how to enable it and get the plugins.
This would be such a minor time saver if there’s a plug-in for libreoffice. I cannot wait to try it out for other sites, too. Such a good tip.
yt-dlp works great with Tubi. Some great shows on there like How It’s Made can be archived and viewed ad-free. The movies however are encrypted streams.
Avoid TS, HDCAM, CAM movies
Thats the first thing you learn unless you enjoy trash quality movies
and DOLBY Vision or DV movies if your hardware doesn’t support it.
Another option is to add tdarr to your *arr stack and have it automatically convert any problematic audio/video streams into ones your devices can handle.
I have it set to encode truehd(?) audio since none of my devices support it and it also ensures there’s a video stream that my roku device can play since it’s a bit pickier than my smart tv
I’d avoid this as you’d like be converting from lossless to lossless compression (like taking a photocopy of a photocopy). I think (not by my server ATM) that you can set exclusion words in both sonarr and radarr, do you could add “Dolby vision, DV, etc” to this list and they shouldn’t grab them.
But sometimes the only option is the one that I’ll need to encode so it plays everywhere.
I’ve tried to balance it out so I get pretty good quality most of the time. But it skews towards whatever “just works” the most. I want to minimize having to find stuff manually myself or investigating why plex refuses to play something.
And I’m not a quality absolutist as long is it’s good enough.
Mmmm, that green and purple filter that you realize wasnt an artistic choice until 15 minutes in. Are there any workflows to play them on windows yet?
I can’t verify atm, but IIRC newer versions of mpv can play these with correct coloring. You might need to to add a command line argument for it. And make sure it’s built with the latest ffmpeg as well.
They seem to play just fine with no cli arguments or anything else on Windows
MPV
Debrid services > torrents.
What are debris services?
They mean debrid. It’s basically just paid DDL
I can’t type today, lol. https://real-debrid.com https://alldebrid.com
SlavArt Revolt bots are THE WAY to go for high quality music from almost any service
https://slavart.gamesdrive.net/
How do they work, do you know?
There is a bit of a learning curve. Please read thoroughly. https://rentry.co/slavart
I love you. I was finally able to get a flac file for one of my favorite pieces of music of all time.
Glad i could help, happy sailing o7
Also look into Soulseek if you’re looking for FLAC files.
This is awesome. Any site to direct download entire playlists?
Depending on the size of the playlist i guess ? I’ve been able to get the bots to download them from Spotify if they are under 100 songs or so
OSMC (a Kodi OS) on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Seren Addon + a Real-Debrid or Premiumize.me account is the absolut shit.
Idk why you got downvoted. I wouldn’t call that advanced. But, we could all be happy with that setup too :)
If you are looking for German (or German + English dual language) content it can be very hard to find stuff on public torrent trackers and it’s pretty hard to get onto private German trackers - but don’t worry, there is a solution:
Usenet and the indexer sceneNZBs.com that specialises in German releases have got you covered!
If you want to automate the search for German Dual Language content using Radarr/Sonarr I made a guide (that also works for torrents too): https://github.com/PCJones/radarr-sonarr-german-dual-language
As a German, I can confirm: Usenet is the way to go. For me it’s fileleechers (invite only afaik) for German content, and nzbgeek for the rest. All combined with Sabnzbd and Plex. Will have a look at your guide tho!
fileleechers is a board and not an indexer though right? So you can’t add it to Sonarr and Radarr
Feel free to correct me, I don’t know a lot about them since they are invite only
Oh yeah that’s true, just a board. But it’s ok for the occasional German content I need. No premium membership needed at least.
Wireguard creates a new network interface that accepts, encrypts, wraps, and ships packets out your typical network interface.
If you were to create a kernel network namespace and move the wireguard interface into that new namespace, the connection to your existing nic is not broken.
You can then use some custom systemd units to start your *rr software of choice in said namespace, rendering you immune to dns leaks, and any other such vpn failures.
If you throw bridge interfaces into the mix, you can create gateways to tor / i2p / ipfs / Yggdrasil / etc as desired. You’ll need a bridge anyway to get your requester software interface exposed to your reverse proxy.
Wireguard also allows multiple peers, so you could multi-nic a portable personal device, and access all your admin interfaces while traveling, with the same vpn-failure-free peace of mind.
Have a good guide on this? I am very interested…
Yeah, or just do it properly on your router and be done with it network-wide.
I know some of these words
I counted a whole 3 that I knew!
Maybe if they drew a picture
me too, but not many
Google searches show the DMCA takedown notices that list the sites that illegally stream content. It seems to me that if an interested party were to search for something on google and happened to see the DMCA take down notice, they might peruse that takedown request and see a number of sites that might illegally host such copyrighted content - so they know what sites to avoid of course.
😉
Unfortunately they’ve recently stopped doing this. It was a great way to stick it to the man though
Just checked, you’re right! When did they stop this and is there any report on why? I was seeing these up until just a few months ago.
Must depend on the search. I just checked, and the links were still there same as always.
OMG! What a great way to stay safe online. This is a great tip. Guys remember, you wouldn’t download a car!
Everyone can.
I got in via an interview for what.cd, way back in the day. The interview process is still a viable way in for those willing to put a bit of time in.
i thought they were dead? whats the irc channel?
Easiest way to get started at the moment (imo) is to go through the interview to get into MAM, get VIP status, then use the invite threads in the forum to access other trackers.
Now maintaining your ratio however… I’m having a hard time at Orpheus, with a seedbox.
Orpheus is tough in the beginning. It’s important to essentially only use freeleech tokens since a download rarely manage to get above a ratio of one.
If you have a large steam library, the rin forum has some tools to help backup a good chunk of those games. Usually you can’t run a steam game without the steam client, but steamless and goldberg can make them run without needing the client.
Won’t you lose out on achievements and stuff if you run it without the client? 🤔
Yes, but there are work arounds if you really want achievements
With just goldberg yeah. There’s another program, i don’t recall it’s name at the moment, that keeps track of acheivements.