Media Server Services Setup Guide

Use the script Script: Set up services for a media server to install the following services in bulk on Docker, or use Portainer to create a Stack containing the services below.

The YML configuration of the Stack contains the entire media service.

Adjust configuration to recognize the hard drive

1. Find the mount path of your external hard drive.
2. Declare that path in the Docker container, for example, modify /mnt/sda1/..., so the container can see the hard drive storing the movies.

Details on working with external hard drives and file sharing: File sharing in LAN - Homemade NAS system.

Detailed configuration for each service

Prowlarr - Managing movie search sources

Prowlarr is where you manage torrent/indexer search sources. Instead of having to add each source into Radarr and Sonarr individually, I add the indexer once in Prowlarr and let Prowlarr sync it to the remaining apps.

In the Prowlarr interface, you will typically do the following:

1. Add indexers suitable for finding movies, series, or subtitles.
2. Check if the indexer is still active.
3. Connect Prowlarr with Radarr and Sonarr to automatically sync search sources.

Radarr - Managing and searching for movies

Radarr manages individual movies. You add the movie you want to download to Radarr, select the desired quality, choose the folder to save the movie, and then Radarr will find the appropriate release through the indexers synced by Prowlarr.

Main configuration steps:

1. Configure the Download Client as qBittorrent.
2. Configure the Root Folder as the movie storage folder.
3. Select an appropriate Quality Profile, for example, 1080p or 4K.
4. Connect Prowlarr so Radarr has search sources.

Sonarr - Managing and searching for series

Sonarr manages TV shows/series. The difference from Radarr is that Sonarr tracks by season and episode, so it is suitable for automatically downloading new episodes as the series is airing.

Main configuration steps:

1. Configure the Download Client as qBittorrent.
2. Configure the Root Folder as the series storage folder.
3. Choose a monitoring method: entire series, latest season, or only new episodes.
4. Connect Prowlarr so Sonarr has episode search sources.

Because Radarr and Sonarr have relatively similar configurations, you can do them in parallel: both using qBittorrent as the downloader and both receiving indexers from Prowlarr.

qBittorrent - Torrent downloader

qBittorrent is the torrent downloader. Radarr and Sonarr do not download files themselves; they only decide which release is suitable and then send the download job to qBittorrent.

You should configure qBittorrent with the following approach:

1. Create a separate temporary download folder, for example, /data/torrents.
2. Create separate categories for Radarr and Sonarr, for example, radarr and sonarr.
3. Ensure Radarr/Sonarr can see qBittorrent's download path if running in Docker.
4. Configure the appropriate torrent port to increase peer connectivity.
5. You can use a theme like VueTorrent if you want an easier-to-use Web UI.

The principle is that qBittorrent downloads files to the temporary folder, then Radarr/Sonarr import the files to the media folder for Plex to read.

Bazarr - Managing and searching for subtitles

Bazarr is a service dedicated to managing subtitles. It connects with Radarr and Sonarr to know which movies or episodes are missing subtitles, and then searches for subtitles from the providers you configured.

Main configuration steps:

1. Add Providers so Bazarr knows where to find subtitles.
2. Connect Bazarr with Radarr to get the list of movies that need subtitles.
3. Connect Bazarr with Sonarr to get the list of episodes that need subtitles.
4. Select the subtitle languages to download, for example, Vietnamese and English.

After configuring, Bazarr will automatically check newly imported movies from Radarr/Sonarr and find the corresponding subtitles.