zufallsheld, thanks for the wonderful guide! I was able to get everything up and going thanks to you. Being that this guide is slightly outdated (but still one of the first search results when googling for "sickbeard couchpotato freenas"), I thought I'd post a few addendums for those just finding this guide for the first time. I would recommend reading through this if you have any issues getting things working (instead of bashing your head against your keyboard for hours on end like me).
These tips were written with the complete beginner in mind, as I was when I started out.
Updates
- I installed this using FreeNAS 9.3 with Windows 8.1 using the most recent versions of the plugins as of this date.
- Development on Sickbeard has ceased, and a new and much improved fork called Sickrage is available. This plugin can be downloaded and installed directly from the FreeNAS UI.
- During Transmission setup, zufallsheld mentioned the following step:
- "In the file, scroll down to the end where you can see the configuration-point called “umask”. Replace the “18” with a “0”. Save the file by pressing “escape”, then “leave the editor” and then “save changes" - this is currently the default value in Transmission, so this value no longer needs to be modified.
Simplifing and Clarifying the Process
After attemping to set this up four times, my final succesful attempt allowed me to get everything running smoothly. Take the following into consideration:
- When you create your dataset, make sure you set the Share Type to Unix even if you are running Windows.
- Check all 9 permission boxes
- Change the user/group to nobody/nogroup
- Keep the persmission type set to Unix, even if you are using Windows
(I know this exactly what zufallsheld wrote, but I made the incorrect assumption that running Windows meant changing these settngs to reflect that. I just wanted to stress the importance of setting this up correctly the first time to save you a world of permissions headaches later. Also note that if you are running Windows you will want to set up a CIFS share, as NFS is for Unix and is not supported without a whole lot of tweaking.)
- There isn't any need to create four separate datasets (called "storages" by zufallsheld) unless you have a certain reason for doing so. Make one and simply your setup.
- Create one dataset named "Media", create your Downloads/Torrents/Movies/TV subfolders using Windows Explorer, and then add the "Media" dataset as a storage to each jail. Now you only have to configure one storage per jail, and it doesn't matter where storage destination is set.
- Note that if you use multiple datasets, you cannot create hard links between them (in the event you are unable to create symlinks)
- If you are still running into permissions errors and have created your dataset as described above, run "chmod -R 777 /media/". See below if you don't know how.
- SSH into Freenas, or open the terminal window, and navigate to your /media/ dataset
- Some simple commands for navigating (remove the quotations):
- "ls -l" - Lists the contents of the current directory
- "cd .." - Goes up one directory (note the space between cd and ..)
- "cd media" - will enter a directory, in this case, the directory called "media"
- Enter "chmod -R 777 /media/"
- If your dataset is named something other than /media/, change it to that name
- this command will recursively (signified with the -R) give full permissions to /media/, its subfolders, and all of the files.
- In Transmission, make sure you set up an incomplete downloads folder location. Transmission will download to this folder, and when it completes, the file will be moved to the download folder specified in Transmission. I ran into issues of torrents being processed by Sickrage before they were completed.
Bonus
CouchPotato and Sickrage can both directly interface with Transmission, meaning you can tell both programs what folder Transmission should download to (as opposed to using the Black Hole option and letting Transmission determine where the download is placed). Allowing CouchPotato and Sickrage to control where the download is placed has the advantage of keeping your Downloads folder much more organized (and preventing CB/SR from potentially scraping each others' data)
So instead of having:
/Downloads/Pirates of the Carribean/Pirates of the carribean.mkv
/Downloads/Game of Thrones.S01E01.mkv
/Downloads/Game of Thrones.S01E02.mkv
/Downloads/Avatar (2009)/Avatar.mkv
You can have this:
/Downloads/Movies/Pirates of the Carribean/Pirates of the carribean.mkv
/Downloads/Movies/Avatar (2009)/Avatar.mkv
/Downloads/TV/Game of Thrones.S01E01.mkv
/Downloads/TV/Game of Thrones.S01E02.mkv
If you directly move your files after they finish downloading this won't matter, but for those of you who will copy or link the files for seeding purposes, this keeps things a bit tidier.
You can do this by performing the following.
1. In your /Downloads/ directory, create two more directories: /TV/ and /Movies/
2. Set up Transmission in Couchpotato
as described by zufallshed, but point the path to /Media/Downloads/Movies/
3. In CouchPotato change the From folder in "Rename Downloaded Movies" to the same folder described in step 2.
4. Open Sickrage and do the same thing as you did for Couchpotato:
Configure your torrent client to be Transmission, set the Transmission Directory to /Media/Downloads/TV, and set this directory in the
Post Processing options as well
Hope this helps!
(editing for clarity and formatting)