New setup and replicating music from FreeNAS to local macbook

[windyboi]

Hi all

I'm a newbie but have spent a couple of weeks researching before installation to make sure I am doing things right. I would like some clarification on my use cases for FreeNAS and how best to implement some of them please.

I am installing FreeNAS on my HP Microserver with 16gb ECC RAM and 4x1TB WD Blue drives
I will be setting up as a RAIDZ1 - making sure to scrub fortnightly, and setting up smartmontools for monitoring drive health.

I plan to utilise the built in plugins:
- Crashplan
- Transmission
- Plex
- Possibly Couchpotato for my movies
- Bacula (is this what I should use for time machine backups and Windows backups?)

I will follow some forum guides for how to install and configure these plugins, as well as how to use OpenVPN for routing Transmission traffic through.

What I would like to do is download .torrent files of films or music on my macbook, and then somehow get these to start downloading in Transmission on my server, in /downloading. What is the best way to do this? A lot of the time, I don't want to download all files in the torrent, so I will need to access the transmission GUI I suppose to tick which files I want.

Then, this is what I would like, if it is possible:

After download is complete:
IF Movie:
- Move to /films for seeding, and accessible by Plex for watching

IF MP3:
- Move to /music for seeding, and also I want to get these songs on a local iTunes on my macbook. Best way probably to do this is to have some sort of share folder called /new which Transmission writes to as well as writing to /music. I can then access this from my mac and drag and drop into iTunes then delete from /new.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[windyboi]

Anyone? :-(

 

[Mirfster]

What I would like to do is download .torrent files of films or music on my macbook

Methinks this is why no one is replying...

 

[SweetAndLow]

You can use the transmission GUI on your laptop off you set it up to connect to the remote transmission server. No guides on this but I'm sure there internet will have something.

 

[windyboi]

You can use the transmission GUI on your laptop off you set it up to connect to the remote transmission server. No guides on this but I'm sure there internet will have something.

Great, thanks! That's what I'm after I think.

Do you know how I'd go about automatically moving a local copy from FreeNAS to my macbook?

Thanks

 

[SweetAndLow]

Your original question doesn't make sense. Transmission will be on your freenas server correct? So when you add the torrent to transmission it will be downloaded on your freenas box. Why do you want to move anything from Mac to server?

You mention using iTunes, can't you just add your freenas share to your library?

 

[windyboi]

Yes, Transmission will be on the FreeNAS server. So, I want to add the torrent to Transmission from my Mac (Step 1: Mac - > server). Then, when the music finishes downloading, I want a local copy on my Mac (Server -> Mac)

 

[Free@last]

If you have transmission on your FreeNAS server the answer is as stated above is Transmission GUI. Moving the files can be done with scripting,. Making the files accessible to Plex is just a matter of file permissions.

Moving them to your mac is another matter, that would probably be done with a network share accessible to the mac. Why you would want a local copy as well as a network copy doesn't make as much sense to me.

 

[windyboi]

If you have transmission on your FreeNAS server the answer is as stated above is Transmission GUI. Moving the files can be done with scripting,. Making the files accessible to Plex is just a matter of file permissions.

Moving them to your mac is another matter, that would probably be done with a network share accessible to the mac. Why you would want a local copy as well as a network copy doesn't make as much sense to me.

Thanks for your reply. How would I go about setting up the scripts? I've learnt to script before but never applied it in real life scenarios like this.

Network share sounds good, presumably my script can also make a copy of the files to be available in this share. I want a local copy on my macbook incase I am not connected to the network and want to listen to music from my iTunes collection :)

 

[Free@last]

I have yet to attempt writing any scripts for this, I am definitely not the guy you want to help on that. I have seen some examples scouring the forum and of course there are lots of examples in the world of Google. This is very much a learning environment, but people seem to be willing to help if you put forth the effort to research what you are trying first. Do some searching, modify some examples scripts and if you have questions, then ask people. Sorry I can't be much more help than that.

You said you were planning on using Plex on the server, I suggest you start looking into the capabilities it already has. With it you would have the ability to play video and audio to your laptop or whatever media setup you have, or stream it on the go with the plex app. If you must have a local copy of the music then you have a number of choices to consider. Rsync is something that might do the job you want to keep your collections synchronized. I personally would be more likely to store the music on FreeNAS and connect itunes with the library on the server if I wanted to modify music on a phone/ipod/etc.

 

[windyboi]

I have yet to attempt writing any scripts for this, I am definitely not the guy you want to help on that. I have seen some examples scouring the forum and of course there are lots of examples in the world of Google. This is very much a learning environment, but people seem to be willing to help if you put forth the effort to research what you are trying first. Do some searching, modify some examples scripts and if you have questions, then ask people. Sorry I can't be much more help than that.

You said you were planning on using Plex on the server, I suggest you start looking into the capabilities it already has. With it you would have the ability to play video and audio to your laptop or whatever media setup you have, or stream it on the go with the plex app. If you must have a local copy of the music then you have a number of choices to consider. Rsync is something that might do the job you want to keep your collections synchronized. I personally would be more likely to store the music on FreeNAS and connect itunes with the library on the server if I wanted to modify music on a phone/ipod/etc.

OK thanks, that sounds good to me :)

Yeah I'm a DJ so I need local copies of mp3's..

I'll look into Rsync.

Thanks again. Trying to setup Crashplan at the moment but don't see any up to date guidance for it, guess I'll just experiment with that.