I recently took the plunge and built my first unRAID server, it’s been running for a month now and i’ve been really happy with it. This tutorial will attempt to help you set up SABnzbd+ and Sickbeard on your unRAID server and get you one step closer to using unRAID to consolidate the machines you need running.

This wouldn’t have been possible without the great guys on the unRAID community forum, particularly Romir who created the AIO and Dependencies package.

I have included for download the All In One package as well, but for the purpose of this guide i am using the dependencies package as it should allow you to upgrade your SABnzbd installation.

This guide assumes you have a cache drive, however, both AIO or dependencies setup should work without a cache drive, just change the paths.

Using a cache drive or manually mounted disk is a good idea because sickbeard does a lot of debugging at the moment and will hit the flash a lot if stored on there, also you don’t want downloads downloading onto the flash.

Alternatively instead of a cache drive or manually mounting another drive you could put everything onto the array, somthing like replacing /mnt/cache/.custom with /mnt/disk1/custom would probably work or you could create a user share.

If you can’t get the files from their official sources you can get them here:
Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Change log

2010-06-03 – Published initial draft
2010-06-03 – Added loop in go script to allow /mnt/cache to mount
2010-06-03 – Added instructions for updating sickbeard
2010-06-03 – Added images/links to sickbeard, SABnzbd and unRAID
2010-06-03 – Added screenshots
2010-06-07 – Added automatic updater written by beckstown with modifications by mlrtime3 and me (Kode)
2010-06-07 – Changed paths to use wildcards for sickbeard
2010-06-07 – Added source for sickbeard-updater.sh for those who don’t want to download it just want to paste it into nano

Set up

Log into your unRAID server and type the following commands

cd /mnt/cache
mkdir .custom
cd .custom
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/sabnzbdplus/files/sabnzbdplus/sabnzbd-0.5.2/SABnzbd-0.5.2-src.tar.gz/download
wget http://github.com/midgetspy/Sick-Beard/tarball/master
ls

Your filenames might be different, just replace the filenames below with the filesnames you have

tar zxf SABnzbd-0.5.2-src.tar.gz
tar zxf midgetspy-Sick-Beard*.tar.gz
rm SABnzbd-0.5.2-src.tar.gz
rm midgetspy-Sick-Beard*.tar.gz
mv midgetspy-Sick-Beard-* sickbeard
mv SABnzbd-0.5.2 sabnzbd
cd /boot/custom
wget http://www.bibliognome.com/unraid/SABnzbdDependencies-1.3-i486-unRAID.tgz

edit your go script and add the following, replacing 192.168.1.6 with whatever ip it runs on

# determine if cache drive online, retry upto 7 times
for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
do
    if [ ! -d /mnt/cache ]
    then
      sleep 10
    fi
done

# If Cache drive is online, start SABNzbd
if [ -d /mnt/cache ]; then
  # Start SABnzbd and sickbeard
  installpkg /boot/custom/SABnzbdDependencies-1.3-i486-unRAID.tgz
  python /mnt/cache/.custom/sabnzbd/SABnzbd.py -d -s 192.168.1.6:88
  nohup python /mnt/cache/.custom/sickbeard/SickBeard.py &
fi

The for loop will pause installing SABnzbd and sickbeard for up to 70 seconds if the cache drive isn’t mounted yet, then, as suggested by Joe L. there is an if statement so if it goes over 70 seconds it wont try to install SABnzbd and sickbeard if the cache drive still isn’t mounted.

SABnzbd+ 0.5.2

You should be able to hit SABnzbd on http://tower:88/wizard if that doesnt work try typing python /mnt/cache/.custom/sabnzbd/SABnzbd.py -d -s 192.168.1.6:88 at the commandline

Complete the SABnzbd setup wizard

Go to Config/Folders

Change Completed Download Folder: to /mnt/cache this will mean that when the mover script runs it will move the completed download off the cache drive and into the appropriate locaton. This wont affect TV downloads though because we will set up sickbeard to post process them.
change Post-Processing Scripts Folder: to /mnt/cache/.custom/sickbeard/autoProcessTV then click save changes.

Go to config/categories

Select sabToSickBeard.py from the script dropdown in the TV row

Sickbeard

Sickbeard should be accessable from http://tower:8081
In the unRAID terminal type

mv /mnt/cache/.custom/sickbeard/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg.sample /mnt/cache/.custom/sickbeard/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg

If you don’t chang the port, username (blank) or password (blank) in config/General you don’t need to edit this file.
Go to Config/General

In the defaults section select your preffered quality and tick Use Season Folders, click save changes

Go to Config/Episode Downloads

In the NZB/Torrent section, select SABnzbd as the NZB Action
In the SABnzbd section enter your SABnzbd settings (the api key can be retrieved by going to SABnzbd and going to /config/general)
Save changes

Go to Config/Search Providers

Enter the details for your search provider

Updating sickbeard with a script

Install

cd /mnt/cache/.custom
wget http://www.lockstockmods.net/dloads/sickbeard-updater.sh
chmod +x sickbeard-updater.sh

Run

Any time you want to update sickbeard just run the following

sh /mnt/cache/.custom/sickbeard-updater.sh

your old sickbeard folder is backed up to sickbeard_backup. If the update fails, do NOT just rerun it as you may lose your settings.

Updating sickbeard Manually

As we are using a development snapshot version of sickbeard you are going to want to keep it up to date, this is easy to do, but its a manual process.

cd /mnt/cache/.custom
wget http://github.com/midgetspy/Sick-Beard/tarball/master
tar zxf midgetspy-Sick-Beard*.tar.gz
rm midgetspy-Sick-Beard*.tar.gz
mv sickbeard/sickbeard.db midgetspy-Sick-Beard-*/
mv sickbeard/config.ini midgetspy-Sick-Beard-*/
mv sickbeard/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg midgetspy-Sick-Beard-*/autoProcessTV/
rm -rf sickbeard
mv midgetspy-Sick-Beard-* sickbeard

Extras

sickbeard-updater.sh

Find below the source for the sickbeard-updater.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Required setting: Absolute path to parent directory of sickbeard folder.
path=/mnt/cache/.custom
sb="sickbeard"

# Optional setting to switch branch. DONT CHANGE IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!
branch=master

# Get webgui access settings from autoProcessTV (needs to be set up) and shutdown sickbeard.
host=`echo | grep 'host=' $path/${sb}/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg | cut -d '=' -f2 | tr -d '\r'`
port=`echo | grep 'port=' $path/${sb}/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg | cut -d '=' -f2 | tr -d '\r'`
user=`echo | grep 'username=' $path/${sb}/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg | cut -d '=' -f2 | tr -d '\r'`
pass=`echo | grep 'password=' $path/${sb}/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg | cut -d '=' -f2 | tr -d '\r'`
wget --user=$user --password=$pass http://$host:$port/home/shutdown
sleep 5s

# Get source and untar it.
cd $path
wget http://github.com/midgetspy/Sick-Beard/tarball/$branch
tar zxf midgetspy-Sick-Beard*
rm midgetspy-Sick-Beard*.tar.gz

# Make backup copy of old ${sb} & setup new ${sb} version
cp -R ${sb} ${sb}_backup
mv ${sb}/sickbeard.db midgetspy-Sick-Beard-*/
mv ${sb}/config.ini midgetspy-Sick-Beard-*/
mv ${sb}/autoProcessTV/autoProcessTV.cfg midgetspy-Sick-Beard-*/autoProcessTV/
rm -rf ${sb}
mv midgetspy-Sick-Beard-* ${sb}

# Start SickBeard as daemon
cd ${sb}
nohup python SickBeard.py &

This howto would not be possible without the guys from the XBMC forums.

In particular thanks need to go to
CharlesNasi for the original guide
Bob for the fantastic Boblight utility
The creators of CombustD
jaaps for some modifications to Boblight specific to amBX

If you cant get the files from their official sources you can get boblight and ruby usb here:
Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Changelog

2010-05-22 – Initial draft published
2010-06-07 – Updated step 4 and 10 to use combustd 0.2 rather than 0.1 and removed step 11 as depreciated.
2010-06-07 – Removed libc6-dev-i386 as it breaks installation but doesn’t seem to be needed.

Ok so lets start

Getting started

1. First open a terminal, either Ctrl + Alt + F1 in xbmc or ssh into the machine
2. Create a working directory and move into it

   mkdir ambx
   cd ambx

3. (If not installed) install Subversion

   sudo apt-get install subversion

4. get combustd from svn

   svn checkout http://combustd.googlecode.com/svn/branches/combustd-ruby-0.2

5. Download Boblight and extract it to something you want, there is an svn version on googlecode, but i couldnt get it to make

   wget http://www.xs4all.nl/~loosen/boblight/boblight-1.3.tar.gz
   tar zxvf boblight-1.3.tar.gz

6. Get dependencies to compile Boblight, if you have any issues try one package at a time to find the problem, also some of these packages were already installed, can’t remember which ones though.

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install gcc libusb-dev ruby ruby-dev libportaudio-dev libavdevice-dev libswscale-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libxrender-dev libsdl1.2-dev libx11-dev

7. Build the package ‘Boblight’:

   cd boblight-1.3
   sudo ./configure
   sudo make
   sudo make install
   cd ..
   

8. Configure Boblight
   Open a text-editor, i use nano, but its up to you and edit the file ‘boblight.conf (It probably wont already exist, thats fine).

   sudo nano /etc/boblight.conf

   Add the following code into the file, this is courtesy of jaaps and allows use of all 5 lights, Z3rO also added some lines to allow adding things like proportional, satuation, black threshold in the config rather than on the commandline.

   [global]
   interface 127.0.0.1
   port 19333
   
   [device]
   name AmbX_Combust
   output "ruby /usr/local/combustd/applications/boblight/boblight.rb"
   channels 15
   type popen
   interval 20000
   
   [color]
   name red
   rgb FF0000
   
   [color]
   name green
   rgb 00FF00
   
   [color]
   name blue
   rgb 0000FF
   
   [light]
   name left
   color red AmbX_Combust 1
   color green AmbX_Combust 2
   color blue AmbX_Combust 3
   hscan 0 33.33
   vscan 0 66.66
   saturation 3.0
   proportional 20.0
   value 3
   threshold 20
   interpolation on
   
   [light]
   name right
   color red AmbX_Combust 4
   color green AmbX_Combust 5
   color blue AmbX_Combust 6
   hscan 66.66 100
   vscan 0 66.66
   saturation 3.0
   proportional 20.0
   value 3
   threshold 20
   interpolation on
   
   [light]
   name wwleft
   color red AmbX_Combust 7
   color green AmbX_Combust 8
   color blue AmbX_Combust 9
   hscan 0 40
   vscan 0 33.33
   saturation 3.0
   proportional 20.0
   value 3
   threshold 20
   interpolation on
   
   [light]
   name wwright
   color red AmbX_Combust 10
   color green AmbX_Combust 11
   color blue AmbX_Combust 12
   hscan 60 100
   vscan 0 33.33
   saturation 3.0
   proportional 20.0
   value 3
   threshold 20
   interpolation on
   
   [light]
   name wwcenter
   color red AmbX_Combust 13
   color green AmbX_Combust 14
   color blue AmbX_Combust 15
   hscan 33 66
   vscan 0 33.33
   saturation 3.0
   proportional 20.0
   value 3
   threshold 20
   interpolation on

   Save the file and exit. (Ctrl + O then Ctrl + X)

   If you are hiding the left and right lights behind the TV, use value 15 on the appropriate lines of the config as above, if you aren’t then use value 3, value sets how bright the lights are.

   Boblight is now configured.

9. Download, Install and compile Ruby-usb

   wget http://www.a-k-r.org/ruby-usb/ruby-usb-0.2.tar.gz
   tar -zxvf ruby-usb-0.2.tar.gz
   cd ruby-usb-0.2
   sudo ruby extconf.rb
   sudo make && sudo make install
   cd ..
   

10. CombustD

    sudo mv combustd-ruby-0.2 /usr/local/combustd

Running boblight

That should be everything configured, now start the daemon.

sudo boblightd

Test if its working

boblight-constant ff00ff; sleep 5; killall boblight-constant

All the lights should come on for 5 seconds (they will be a pinky color) then go off.

Time to start the magic

boblight-X11 -s 5 -t 0.1 -a 20 -v 3
boblight-X11 -t 0.1

This starts the binary, sets the saturation to 5, the interval between refreshes to 0.1 seconds, brightness to 3 and the speed to 20 and sets the interval between refreshes to 0.1 seconds (the other options aren’t needed as they are now set in the config). If you get an error about ERROR: Can’t open display (null) the DISPLAY environment variable isn’t set, just type:

export DISPLAY=:0.0

You will need to redo this when you reboot.

Boblight Configuration Options

You can change the way boblight works by supplying options, the list of options is:

boblight-X11 1.3

Usage: boblight-x11 [OPTION]
Start the X11 grabber for boblight

  -s	set the saturation
  -v	set the value
  -i	set the interpolation, use "-i on" or "-i off"
  -a	set the proportional
  -p	set the priority, default is 128
  -t	set the timer interval, default is 0.5 second,
  -u	set the lights to use, comma separated list
  -e	set the server address[:port]
  -g	grab n pixels on n lines
    	default is 100 for XShmGetImage and 16 for XGetImage
  -m	grab method, use "-m average" or "-m median"
  -x	use XGetImage instead of XShmGetImage (slow!)
  -b	set the black threshold

Todo.

Look into starting boblight on startup
Look into creating a boblight script for xbmc allowing users to change settings and start/stop through GUI
Add some pictures and a youtube video

Automatically starting amBX

By utilising udev we can set amBX to turn on when we press the power button on the amBX system, if you never turn the system off by the power button on the amBX unit, then the lights will automatically come on when xbmc boots.

Create a new udev rule:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-ambx.rules

Copy the code below into it and save:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0471", ATTRS{idProduct}=="083f", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/bin/startambx"

Create the startambx script:

sudo nano /usr/bin/startambx

Copy the code below into it and save:

#!/bin/sh
boblightd
sudo su - xbmc -c "DISPLAY=:0.0 boblight-X11 -t 0.1"

If you are using a username other than xbmc replace the instance above with the appropriate username.

Step 1: Getting started

What you will need:

• Remote server running SSH (Debian server is used in this guide)
• Putty
• Squid

Install squid:

apt-get install squid

Step 2: Configure putty

• Start putty
• From left hand tree menu select Click SSH (under the Connection menu item) to expand the tree items, then click on Tunnels
• In Source port enter 3128 (default Squid port), select Dynamic and click on the Add button
  
  

  An entry should show up in the forwarded ports section

• In the left hand menu go to Session
• Put the hostname of your server, select SSH (if not already selected), then under Saved Sessions type tunnel (or any name you want to call the saved session) and click save.  This will enable you, in the future to click on “tunnel”, click Load, then Open.
  
• Click Open.  You cannot SSH tunnel without an open connection, it will ask you for your username and password.

Step 3: Configure Firefox

• Click Tools, then select Options…
• Select the Advanced option then then Network tab.
  
• Click on Settings
• Select Manual proxy configuration, then under SOCKS Host type localhost and in Port enter 3128 (In Vista SP1 you might have to use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost for the SOCKS Host)
  

Congratulations, you should now have a fully functioning SSH Tunnel, you can test this by going to Whats My IP

Introduction

PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) is not something new, but not often used by home users, as installing an operating system by CD/DVD or USB storage is generally easier, if however you have none of those, your only real option is to network boot (Assuming you have a network port and access to the internet).

The Problem

I bought my sister a cheap laptop from ebay for her birthday, shes not a power user so i picked up a Dell L400 for £100, its only got a 700MHz processor in it and 256MB of RAM, but for general web browsing it will suit her, however, its a sub notebook, and so doesnt come with a cd drive, nor can it boot from a usb cd drive (took me about half an hour to find that out), so in the end my only real option was to netboot it.

Step 1: Prerequisites

1. Get a copy of the free TFTP server by Philippe Jounin.
2. Get the ubuntu installer files. Download the folder netboot (ignore any symlinks, they may give you errors during the download).

That’s all we need to boot our Ubuntu installer over the network. Let’s setup the TFTP server.

Step 2: Setting up a TFTP Server.

1. Create a directory, preferably on your C Drive. We’ll name it tftp for now.
2. copy the tftpd32.exe to c:tftp
3. Start the server by clicking on the exe
4. switch to the tab “DHCP Server” and fill in your network setup. Note that the PC you want to boot must be in the same Subnet. Enter pxelinux.0 as the boot file. The Screenshot below shows my setup.

Now we need to copy the Ubuntu netboot installer over to our tftp root directory:

1. copy the folder ubuntu-installer to c:tftp
2. copy the folder pxelinux.cfg from ubuntu-installer/i386/ to c:tftp
3. copy the file pxelinux.0 from ubuntu-installer/i386/ to c:tftp

Step 3: Booting Ubuntu

To boot from tftp you may need to activate booting from the network interface in the BIOS. This may be done in the boot sequence settings or directly in the onboard ethernet device settings. After that, restart, lean back and watch the activities in the log viewer tab of the tftpd.
Note: Ubuntu will let you choose a mirror and download all the files you need. The whole procedure will work with any other debian flavour almost identically. There is a nice how to on doing a PXE install via Linux instead of windows at the CCC Wiki.

Note: this is a slightly modified version of the post from Retro at http://hugi.to/blog/archive/2006/12/23/ubuntu-pxe-install-via-windows

Type:
ifconfig -a

you should see something like:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:09:5B:04:5E:78
inet addr:82.36.57.31 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.248.0
inet6 addr: fe80::209:5bff:fe04:5e78/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:5561334 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:214278 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:462931787 (441.4 Mb) TX bytes:28300458 (26.9 Mb)
Interrupt:12 Base address:0xa000

If it doesnt say MULTICAST you should reconfigure your kernal and add multicast support.

Currently the latest version is 2.0 (suggested for most users) but 3.0 is in beta testing. You can get them from ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/dhcp/

After you download unpack it, then cd into the distribution directory:
./configure
make
make install

Server Configuration:

Next step is to add route for 255.255.255.255. Quoted from DHCPd README:

“In order for dhcpd to work correctly with picky DHCP clients (e.g., Windows 95), it must be able to send packets with an IP destination address of 255.255.255.255. Unfortunately, Linux insists on changing 255.255.255.255 into the local subnet broadcast address (here, that’s 192.5.5.223). This results in a DHCP protocol violation, and while many DHCP clients don’t notice the problem, some (e.g., all Microsoft DHCP clients) do. Clients that have this problem will appear not to see DHCPOFFER messages from the server.”

Type: route add -host 255.255.255.255 dev eth0
(or eth1 depending on the interface you are configuring)

DHCPd.conf Configuration

create or edit /etc/dhcpd.conf

The following is a sample which randomly assigns IP addresses.

#sample /etc/dhcpd.conf
ddns-update-style ad-hoc;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.000;
option routers 192.168.60.1;
option domain-name-servers 62.31.144.39, 195.188.53.175, 195.188.53.175;
default-lease-time 3600;
max-lease-time 7200;

subnet 192.168.60.0 netmask 255.255.255.000
{ range 192.168.60.2 192.168.60.244;
}

This will give a client an IP address in the range 192.168.60.2-192.168.60.244. It will lease an IP address for 3600 seconds if the client doesn’t ask for specific time frame. Otherwise the maximum (allowed) lease will be 7200 seconds. It sets the default DNS servers as 62.31.144.39, 195.188.53.175 and 195.188.53.175.

You can also assign specific IP addresses based on clients ethernet address e.g.

host myPC {
hardware ethernet 00:25:83:17:a3:6e;
fixed-address 192.168.60.246;
}

This will assign IP address 192.168.60.246 to a client with ethernet address 00:25:83:17:a3:6e

You can mix and match, giving certain clients “static” IP addresses such as servers and others being given dynamic IPs such as mobile users with laptops.

Starting the server

Generally DHCP installation doesn’t create a dhcpd.leases files, this file is needed by DHCPd to store information about current leases. To create dhcpd.leases type:
touch /var/state/dhcp/dhcpd.leases

If you get a message saying that file exists simply ignore it and carry on.

You can now invoke the DHCP server. Simply type (or include in the bootup scripts)

/usr/sbin/dhcpd

This will start dhcpd on eth0 device. To start it on another device just supply the device on the command line i.e.

/usr/sbin/dhcpd eth1

If you want dhcpd to start at boot-up include dhcpd in e.g.

/etc/rc.d/rc.local

start a new screen session: screen
attach to a running session: screen -r
attach multiple terminals to an attached, running session: screen -rx
the “ultimate attach”: screen -dRR (Attaches to a screen session. If the session is attached elsewhere, detaches that other display. If no session exists, creates one. If multiple sessions exist, uses the first one.)

Escape key

All screen commands are prefixed by an escape key, by default Ctrl+a (sometimes written ^A). To send a literal Ctrl+a to the programs in screen, use Ctrl+a a.

Getting out

detach: Ctrl+a d
exit screen: exit all of the programs in screen.
force-exit screen: Ctrl+a C-\ (not recommended)

Help

See help: Ctrl+a ? (lists keybindings)

Window Management

create new window: Ctrl+a c
change to last active window: Ctrl+a Ctrl+a
change to window by number: Ctrl+a <number> (only for windows 0 to 9)
change to window by number or name: Ctrl+a ' <number or title>
change to next window in list: Ctrl+a n or Ctrl+a <space>
change to previous window in list: Ctrl+a p
see window list: Ctrl+a “
close current window: Close all applications in the current window (including shell)
kill current window: Ctrl+a k (not recommended)

Split screen

split display: Ctrl+a S
jump to next display region: Ctrl+a tab
remove current region: Ctrl+a X
remove all regions but the current one: Ctrl+a Q

Misc

redraw window: Ctrl+a C-l
enter copy mode: Ctrl+a [ (also used for viewing scrollback buffer)
paste: Ctrl+a ]
monitor window for activity: Ctrl+a M
monitor window for silence: Ctrl+a _
enter digraph: Ctrl+a Ctrl+v
lock (password protect) display: Ctrl+a x
enter screen command: Ctrl+a :