A Guideline to usenet and how to setup Automation.

My goal is to show you how to setup automation of usenet. If i can i'll also get into some other side tricks and tips you can use.

Disclaimer: Using usenet actually costs money. The costs are fairly low though. If you use my guide there are multiple choices for payment for the indexer. The best is lifetime. 1 time payment of 30 USD. comes out to 2.50 a month and your provider is 4 bucks a month. To put it in line your first year you pay 6.50 a month then 4 bucks a month after. Or 78 bucks the first year 48 bucks every year after. This is the bare minimum i believe unless you use completely free indexers which is not advised. Your price can also go up if you pay for more indexers.

Disclaimer 2: Privacy and you using usenet. It has come to my attention that there is a debate on whether or not you should use a VPN while using usenet. I come bearing an explanation as to why you don't NEED to use a VPN but that it won’t hurt. If you hop on over to the /r/usenet wiki you will find a section on privacy. No worries i will post a screenshot to make it easier. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1v4zb4_emwI3IMRGFpbPAtrei0DCB60Uf

The TL;DR version is that while using SSL your ISP can see that you are downloading from a usenet provider. But can't actually see what it is. Think two people speaking another language in front of you. You know they are talking but have no idea what they are saying. Now there are 2 points where you could get caught and get in trouble. One is by getting ip logs from your indexer. And the second is getting ip logs from your usenet provider. This is why we need to do research on these two things to make sure it isn't happening. And guess what i'm so nice i've already done that part for you.

  1. NZBGeek no log policy: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GYe9Rye-FXEjN9Y-ZrSTp_Z9iVcp7LYJ 
  1. TL;DR they CLAIM no logging except in special occurrences. And even then those are cleared daily.
  1. Newgroupdirect no log policy: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pqKLXWSq21M0DKjMNY45728xKaElKQh1 
  1. TL;DR Again they CLAIM no logging period

So you may have noticed i used the word claimed twice above. Dont let that scare you. This is exactly the same amount of trust you put in your VPN. PIA claims no logging. And while it has been proven several times in court that they uphold that claim its only true until they don't. https://tinyurl.com/ycnnwvnr ipvanish got outed providing logs to aid in a legal case. It happens. A VPN can protect you in the chance that either your indexer or provider is logging IP addresses. Because then they log your VPN IP. But its still possible after that that authorities could contact your VPN and turns out your VPN is logging. The likelyhood of all this happening is super slim. But could happen. So should you use a VPN? Maybe. It’s your choice. It adds another level of security. Do you need a VPN? Probably not. If you already have one use it.

Before i get started i am not responsible for anything you do using this guide.

Prerequisites.

  1. A usenet provider. I will provide links later on to some cheap plans. What's important in considering a provider is:
  1. Unlimited traffic. Anything less than unlimited is a rip off by today's standards.
  2. SSL (encryption so you don't need a VPN),
  3. Retention (3000+ days is best)
  4. Number of connections (more connections=faster speeds, 30+ will suffice for most)
  5. Multiple server locations. Not a breaking point IMO but its nice.
  6. Some providers provide a VPN. Usually it's only by buying a year subscription. But some offer it with monthly subs. Again not a breaking point since using SSL AND a VPN is redundant.
  7. And method of payment. Most accept paypal/credit cards. Some take crypto if that's your thing.
  1. You need a downloader. The 2 most popular options are Sabnzbd and Nzbget. I will only be explaining Sabnzbd. I think it's better for newcomers. Nzbget is better if you would like to go in and tweak the hell out of it.
  1. Sabnzbd: https://sabnzbd.org/downloads
  2. Nzbget: https://nzbget.net/download
  1. A tv PVR. There are 2 major programs here. Sonarr and Sickrage. I use sonarr so that is the program i will be showing you today. Most of the stuff is relatively the same. I just won't be providing screenshots for Sickrage.
  1. Sonarr: https://sonarr.tv/#download
  2. Sickrage: https://github.com/SickRage/Sickrage/wiki/Sickrage-installation-packages
  1. A movie PVR. Again 2 major programs. Radarr, which you guessed it is a fork of sonarr, and couchpotato. Because Sonarr and Radarr are basically identical i use Radarr. You can easily just copy info to basically the same boxes.
  1. Radarr: https://radarr.video/#download
  2. Couchpotato: https://couchpota.to/
  1. 1 or more indexers. Now to get files from your usenet provider you need files that have the .nzb extension so sabnzbd/nzbget can download them, think of them like .torrent files. As a warning this is something you REALLY SHOULD PAY FOR. there are free indexers out there. But in this case you get what you pay for. As a starter indexer i recommend NZBGEEK. They offer a 2 week trial so you can try before you buy, great for you guys since you can get it all working and decide if you want to keep the setup or not. This way you are only out the 1 month for your provider. They do monthly, yearly, and lifetime(at the time of writing 8/7/18 this is subject to change. Indexers have removed lifetime before) If you have the money i highly recommend lifetime. Its 30 USD. think of it as 2.50 a month for the first year and then free after that. A shout out to dognzb. I don't use them currently but they are highly recommended by a lot. They dont offer a lifetime sub like nzbgeek does but they do 4 years for 50 bucks. And most indexers that only offer (multi)yearly plans are going to be in the 10-15 dollar range.
  1. Nzbgeek: https://nzbgeek.info/
  2. NZBdog: https://dognzb.cr/register 
  1. OPTIONAL: If you want the best automation you need a program called ombi. It allows you to automatically take request from people and talks to radarr/sonarr to automatically download stuff. Useful if you share plex with friends or family. Its not required if you are running solo or just prefer to orchestrate everything via your PVR clients
  1. Ombi: https://github.com/tidusjar/Ombi/releases
  1. OPTIONAL: A media organizer. Plex or Emby are your options. There might be others but these are the most popular. I use plex for its ease of use.
  1. Plex: https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/
  2. Emby: https://emby.media/download.html
  1. OPTIONAL: A seedbox. I have a seedbox that hosts all of this stuff in a more advanced configuration. I'm not sure if i plan on covering this part. The methods vary highly depending on your seedbox provider. It's still not a terrible idea to have a seedbox. Usenet is great! But it isn't perfect. Using usenet and torrents together will nab you ALMOST everything you want.

Ok now to get everything working. I'm assuming that whatever platform you decide to install this on, you have the knowledge to install the programs and access (root on unix systems). If you are on a seedbox hopefully you have one that has a universal installer for all these things. Otherwise put in a support ticket and see if they'll install it for you.

  1. Acquire your usenet provider. I recommend Newsgroupdirect: https://newsgroupdirect.com/member/billing/?planid=147. Its 4 USD a month. Optionally you can go with any provider linkd here: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals. Just make sure you follow the options in Prerequisite 1. After you have signed up you need to login and grab the server address for your provider. https://newsgroupdirect.com/server-addresses is the link if you go with newsgroupdirect. This varies depending on you provider. Also some providers have 1 address and its dynamic and will choose the closest one to your location. In this case you need to pick the closest one. Also we will be using the SSL Port so write that down. In this case 563
  2. Install Sabnzbd. You will be greeted with a setup wizard which is very helpful. Make sure you click the advanced setting cog wheel and set it up like this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1x1M8vEnuaayDM-d1HOiLhIDMuRrZu8ak . The username and password is the one for your usenet provider. Also for number of connections this depends on your provider. Make sure you use the max number. No more no less. Hit test and wait for connection successful to pop up. If it doesn't check your info. Most problems are server address and port. If using an SSL port, check the box for SSL. I highly recommend using the SSL port if you are doing this on your home network. It's basically a VPN. After that you'll get a screen to show you how to access the gui for Sabnzbd. copy the URL or IP address it shows we need this later. Since we are here let's grab some useful info for later. We need the API key for Sabnzbd to use in Sonarr/Radarr. Find the config cogwheel at the top right of your screen and then navigate to the General tab. You should see it here https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DIcjzKJZCNnzPTrQpnDTfYpHOo3c-EfQ  Copy it and save it for later later.
  3. Now we have sonarr and radarr. For the sake of simplicity the steps are almost identical for both sonarr and radarr. I also recommend you install as a service. This way it runs on your machine upon boot up. So after install we need to go to the settings.
  1. Media management tab: these settings don't matter to much. I stuck mostly with default settings. For TV/Anime i prefer to have my directory setup as Tv/TvShow/Season1/Episode.mkv. Basically you just check use season folders. I also prefer to untoggle “include quality”. This adds the quality to the filename. I think it looks ugly and its unnecessary. But you do you.
  2. Profiles: i wouldn't mess with these. Unless you know what you are doing. Or want to create specific profiles for media. Honestly the defaults are fine.
  3. Quality: This is where we need to make some decisions. The defaults here are maxed. If you do not fiddle with these you will be automatically downloading 4k bluray rips at 50+ gigs a piece.
  1. For radarr i have my 1080p versions set to no more than 10GB. I'm not a quality snob. Nor do i care about 4k. I recommend setting everything to roughly the same size.
  2. For sonarr i set everything to about 1.5GB. It's just a TV show to me. Plus once you start storing 1000’s of them it really starts to add up. Also default to 720p.
  3. It's worth noting for both Radarr and Sonarr whatever file size you choose its adaptive based on the length of the Video. So for example if you set the file max to be 5gb for a 90 min video and your movie is 3 hours long it will adjust to allow up to 10gb. Pretty handy for those longer movies or Tv shows that have weird times mainly cartoons with their random 7-12 min run time.
  1. Indexers: This is the part we add indexers. Click the box with the + sign and this should pop up. https://drive.google.com/open?id=11Z5XFwLsyFYOeSFWBNygXTnpujc_nHLZ as you can see you can add some torrent sites. I will not be going over how to add torrents since this isn't the purpose of the guide, and honestly i've never used it. Manually torrenting and adding it to your Media collection isn't that bad. Hell up until now it's what you've been doing. So you want to click on the presets tab that is highlighted. And you'll see this drop down. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iVWaL7i0hTeSFGKby9ajieHMr2x_7NyT this is nice because this can also serve as a reference for some other indexers. I've highlighted the ones i am going to show you how to add.
  1. Nzbgeek: I'm assuming you’ve signed up for an account with them. If you haven't do this now. First 2 weeks are free and you don't need to give payment details for the trial. Once you've signed up navigate to your profile https://nzbgeek.info/geekseek.php?profile And find your API Key. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KPIg6Qeqb2_nEgOFgK00WnbbEws5R_DW. Click on the NZBgeek preset and fill out the boxes. Should look similar to this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mAFeE4Kh6xCOsxwJV4BGFyql9cOx_uLD.If anime is not a concern feel free to leave the box blank. It comes blank by default you have to add the numbers. Test the connection and you should see connection successful. If not check that there are no spaces from copy pasting anything.
  2. Animetosho: Again if anime is not a concern skip this step. This is probably the easiest step. Just click the animetosho preset, press test, you should see success and then click add. No need for an API key
  3. For any other indexers you find you just need the API key and the API address. Most indexers store that information in the same area.
  1. Download Client: Again we press the plus sign and click on your installed downloader. I'm going to go by Sabnzbd since that's the one we installed earlier. You should see this screen https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZuHtt9BPswVNMOggJnarLYO366pK0orU
  1. You have to name the connection. It doesn't matter what you name it but you have to.
  2. Make sure enable is toggled
  3. Host is the ip address of Sabnzbd. If you are running all these programs on a local machine you can just use “localhost” instead of an IP address.
  4. Port default is 8085
  5. Don't touch anything else. Test and and Save if successful
  6. So sab did have an issue for me. I had to set an ip address in sab to get it to talk to everything. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1P3kwzVftFgTS95Eg2kNn6pmi7GQEtQq8 Only do this if its all on one machine locally. Set the host to 127.0.0.1 and port to 8085. Then put those into sonarr/radarr and it should work.
  1. Lastly we have the connect screen. This is where we can hook into plex or emby. I'm assuming you have these installed already. You can also skip this step if you are not running either of these programs. Fill out all the necessary info to your plex instance and test and save the connection. The username and password is for your plex/emby account and again if plex is on the same machine as sonarr/radarr you can just use localhost.
  2. Once we have all this setup i would recommend importing your collections. If sonarr/radarr has issues finding stuff make sure stuff is named correctly.
  1. Navigate to the Series/Move button and click the add series/movie button and click the import existing series or the import bulk movies button. Navigate to the base folder where your specific media is stored. So C://Media/Movies/ or C://Media/TV. Make sure in this instance you point it at the Movies or TV folder. NOT the media folder. If you do this Sonarr will attempt to manage movies and Radarr will attempt to manage TV. This will end badly i promise. Also once you select a folder to import from this will become your default download directory that the program will put new media. Also for sonarr if you have your anime in a separate directory from TV, And for organization sakes i hope you do, Import that folder as well. This way when you add anime in sonarr to DL you'll have the option to choose between the anime directory and tv directory. Which i will show a screenshot for now. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cG7nfUDAt1SDyQXFLU3FnLJhtwecq5q3 
  1. Path. Choose download path from imported media earlier. I don't think you can set a default. The “default” is whatever you imported first i believe.
  2. Monitor. There are several options
  1. All: will find all episodes
  2. Future: Regardless of collection completion will only download new episodes
  3. Missing. Will download any missing episodes.
  1. Profile: choose the quality
  2. Series type: This option will scour your indexers based off categories. You saw these numbers earlier. If its a tv show make sure you choose standard. For anime it depends. Sometimes choosing standar wont find anything. So you can edit the series and change it to Anime and see what it finds.
  3. And season folders should be enabled. Its a preference but my OCD will kill you if you turn it off.
  4. Now if you click the plus sign it will just add the series. But if you click the magnify glass it will add and search for everything.

If this all you want you can stop here. There is no need to go further if you are flying solo or don't mind manually managing sonarr and radarr. For those that share with friends with either plex or emby and are tired of getting texts saying hey can you add X to plex lets install ombi.

Fair warning. Opening a port opens your computer to the internet. Always use a secure password for your admin accounts. I choose not to have authentication for my users. I would recommend you not follow in my footsteps. The worst thing that can happen is someone queues a massive amount of downloads. Provided Ombi does not develop a massive bug.

  1. Install ombi and port forward it. The default port is 5000. I will not give any help on this. Every router is different and i cant/wont help you with this. Google is your friend. Ombi has an official app for both android and iphone. I cant get it to work for the life of me. So i just distribute my ipv4 address. You can also reverse proxy it if you would like but this is outside of my ability and don't care enough since everyone i share this with is basically an idiot with computers. And then you can have people save the ip address as a bookmark on their phones home screen. It ends up looking like an App this way anyways but its all done through the web browser. Also the app is paid. And getting friends and family to pay for the app is super hard.
  2. Once we have Ombi installed navigate to localhost:5000 in your web browser. If you have it installed on a remote computer you'll need to navigate to that machines address and port. First thing you'll want to do is navigate to the user management tab. And either edit the current account of make a new admin account. Feel free to make it super secure or not. Remember the only people that are likely to access this page are the ones who have the address. And keep in mind the password you use will ALWAYS be needed since its an Admin account. Even if you turn authentication off. Which i will go over later on.
  3. Now i recommend adding users manually especially if you only have a few. There is an option to bulk import the users you share your plex library with but it can get wonky real fast. You'll have to appoint them a username, i usually just go with their first name. Same for the pass, but i have authentication turned off. Mainly because i only have a few users and if person A decides to login as person B it doesn't matter since all the accounts are the same. And an email address. It isnt required(i think) but it allows them to receive newsletters and updates when their requests are filled. If you really wanted to create 1 non-admin account and just give everyone that username it would be perfectly fine. I just personally like to see what individual people are requesting. If i see someone has requested a movie and there are other big name movies from the same franchise *cough disney cough* Ill aquire on my own the ENTIRE collection.
  1. Roles:
  1. Admin: self explanatory
  2. Newsletter: we can configure a newsletter to automatically deploy on a set schedule to inform your users on newly added content. It's pretty awesome.
  3. Auto approve movie/tv: so if you check this box when a user makes a request it will be automatically accepted and you have 0 need to intervene. I have no storage space issues so i just allow people to get what they want. Use as you see fit.
  4. Power User: Basically a stripped down admin. More like a Moderator. If you have Auto approve unchecked any user with power user has the ability to Accept or Deny a request. I don't use this role though.
  5. Request TV/Movie: self explanatory. Along with disabled.
  6. The request limit is pretty self explanatory as well. I think its on a 24 hour limit. I don't restrict so i don't know.
  1. Navigate to settings and go to the ombi tab.
  1. The only 2 things on this page we need to fiddle with, maybe, are the first two check boxes. Do not send notification for auto approve and hide requests from other users. I have both these boxes ticked because otherwise my email would get so many notifications and just clogs up my phones dashboard.
  1. Configuration:Customization
  1. You need to put a name. I just used Ombi. Doesn't matter what the name is.
  2. And an application URL. This is the URL of where ombi is running. You can NOT just put localhost:5000. You have to put your ipv4 address and the port. The reason for this is when you send someone an invitation to ombi inside the email it will contain the url for them to access ombi. If they open localhost on their cell phone or home computer it isn't going to do anything. So that's why we put the ipv4 address. No idea if it works with ipv6 or not. To get your ipv4 address just google whatismyip. Or you can do it with command prompt/terminal.
  3. No need to mess with anything else. Everything i do not cover is all about aesthetics. I just need something that works. And base ombi is pretty enough
  1. Configuration:Landing page
  1. No need for this but i use it to remind people how to log-in. If you do use it make sure you check ENABLE
  1. Configuration:Issues
  1. This is great. Unfortunately usenet/radarr/sonarr is not perfect. On occasion it will grab something in german/spanish/french. Or if its in another language it won't have subs. Sometimes it grabs the wrong movie because of similar titles. Hell sometimes it doesn't download the complete movie. I've had it download a 2 hour movie at it only contained 45 mins. Sometimes you'll download BS not actually a movie but 24 hours of black screens,this usually only happens if you have a public crappy indexer.
  2. Create some common issue topics and that way if someone goes to watch something and its messed up they can go into ombi and report it. Which will send you an email and you can fix it manually at your next earliest convenience.
  1. Configuration:User importer. I don't use this. It's just easier to manually add users. Feel free to play around with it but i am unable to help with this.
  2. Configuration: Authentication
  1. If you don't want your user to need a password which i recommend if it's for a small group of friends and family then check the box
  2. Plex oauth honestly no idea. Mine isn't checked so i would recommend you do the same. Feel free to inform me if you know any better

Now if we move to the media server tab you need to choose the media server you are using. I use plex so that's the extent of my knowledge but i am Assuming that it's pretty much the same for both plex and emby.

  1. To make this simple for plex on the right side you should see Username and password. If you put in your plex account credentials and hit load servers you should see a blue drop down button that says Servers. Click on that and select the plex server you want to use. If you have multiple plex servers make sure you choose the correct one. Once you click on the server all of the info fields to the left should populate with the correct info. Next click the load libraries button and it should show all the libraries you have. Make sure they are all checked. We have to make sure plex and ombi can talk so hit the test connectivity button. You should get a popup saying success. If not check your IP address and port. If ombi is on the same machine as plex localhost for ip and port 32400 should work. SSL should be off if it's all on the same machine since its not needed since you're not transmitting anything over the internet.
  2. Make sure the server is enabled by checking the box and we can move onto TV

Again radarr and sonarr are similar in the following instructions and to simplify things this should be same with the exception of one thing which i will address separately.

  1. Just like with plex we need the IP of sonarr/radarr. Again if everything is on the same computer localhost should work for the ip and the default ports are
  1. Sonarr: 8989
  2. Radarr: 7878
  1. Again no need to tick SSL
  2. You also need the API key from both sonarr and radarr and put them into ombi in the correct fields
  1. Sonarr and Radarr’s Api key is found under Settings->General->Security
  1. Quality profiles: First you need to grab the quality profiles, you do so by clicking the button. For sonarr you have 2 Quality Profiles one for TV and one for Anime. For Radarr you'll have one and that's for Movies(duh). These quality profiles are the ones you have setup in Sonarr/Radarr. And when you use ombi to request something it will default the addition in Sonarr/Radarr to that profile. For TV i chose 720p and Anime i have Any because older anime can sometimes only found in 480p and it's better than nothing. And for Radarr i use my 1080p profile.
  2. And then we need to grab the root folders. Again push the button and you should see the directories from when you import your existing media in sonarr/radarr. For sonarr you need to set both the anime and tv directory and for radarr just the one.
  3. For sonarr check “use season folders” if you want. I'll be sad if you don't but it's ok.
  4. For radarr you need to Set a default minimum Availability. In ombi i chose Physical/web because i don't want shitty cam rips clogging up my pretty media server. The only downfall to this approach is if something gets leaked ahead of time. For example our favorite god of thunder’s 3rd movie got leaked in 1080p 2 months ahead of time. Radarr wouldnt download it so i had to manually address this.

Ok we are in the home stretch now guys. Last step. For this next part you need a gmail account. Preferably a throwaway one. I wouldn't recommend using a main account.

  1. Navigate to Notifications and then Email. Ill include a screenshot explaining the fields and to make it easier. Mind you this is for gmail. You can google other email providers but im so integrated into gmail its easier. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cG5UuN3DgNRY1fSL5s_i4Fv7qz4nJg9P I tried to make it as clear as possible. You can always check out the ombi wiki for help on this. It took me a solid hour to figure out where to put what info. Just hit test and your MAIN email should get a test email and when you do hit Submit.
  2. There is also a mass email option to send out server downtimes or something like that. You don't need to set anything up for this. Just type what you need to say select who should receive it, or select all if applicable. and hit send. I don't use it much since i pride myself in reliability but sometimes it can't be helped.
  3. You can also hook into a slew of other programs like discord or slack or pushbullet. Most of my users are family that dont use discord. So i don't use any of these services. But if you share with a bunch of buddies on a Discord server or something i could see it being useful. I actually just discovered telegram. So i might look into setting that up since text messages are so much better than email.