I have a NAS set up in my house with Open Media Vault installed. Is there a guide to getting set up torrenting? I just don’t want to get into any trouble. I’ve never torrented before. Anybody have a guide or advice on how to start?

  • DessalinesM
    10•1 year ago

    I’m sure someone has some links to a guide, but the basic steps for a server-based setup are:

    • Get a VPN. Lots of opinions as to what the best ones are, I personally use Mullvad with wireguard, but there are plenty of good ones out there, all for less than a few dollars a month. Its a small price to pay to replace every paid streaming service, and keep data out of their control and in the commons.
    • Install a torrent client, qbittorrent is the best one. I prefer using linuxserver’s qbittorrent docker image, which comes with a web-ui. There are also images like this one that work directly with your VPN.
      • Download different types of data into different folders, so the services below can use them correctly.
    • Install jellyfin, a streaming media server, also ideally the docker image. Point it at your torrent download folders, and you’ve got your own netflix.
    • Also optionally install navidrome, point it at your music downloads folder. Get an android app like dsub or ultrasonic, and you’ve got your own streaming music server.
    • Other docker services that are great are calibre, a self-hosted ebook platform, and audiobookshelf, a self-hosted audiobook solution.
    • Torrent search engines go up and down somewhat frequently, so use a search engine to find what the current best ones are for the current year. My favorites are the one that I wrote: https://torrents-csv.ml , as well as https://1337x.to , and https://solidtorrents.to .
    • There are also a lot of qbittorrent client apps, so you can add and search for torrents from your phone. You can also torrent directly to your phone, with apps like libretorrent.
    • seahorse [Ohio]OP
      5•1 year ago

      Thanks! Do you use Sonarr or Radarr? I’ve heard of those for organizing/scheduling torrents.

      • krolden
        4•1 year ago

        The whole *arr suite is good stuff I highly recommend

      • DessalinesM
        3•1 year ago

        No probs. I personally don’t. Its mainly for shows and movies that aren’t released yet, and it can schedule automatic downloads for them. I usually just download whole seasons, or movies as they get released.

        If its something new that I really want to watch, I might put a reminder for when it gets released to streaming / dvd, and its usually up on torrents that day.

      • DessalinesM
        3•1 year ago

        Jellyfin has a user system, you can even make multiple accounts for different viewers.

    • Sam
      1•1 year ago

      I’ve been using JellyFin for sometime but I don’t have a docker image installed. What purpose does it serve?

      • DessalinesM
        3•1 year ago

        All the benefits of docker: no weird system issues, easy upgrades, portable, etc.

        • Sam
          1•1 year ago

          Portable as in accessible outside the home network? That’s one nut I could never crack with port forwarding etc.

          • DessalinesM
            3•1 year ago

            Portable as in all the files are self-contained, and if you need to upgrade your system, move it to a new machine, or make backups its really easy because docker is a self-contained system. Making docker services available outside the network is a separate thing, I’m sure you can find some guides for that.