Can someone tell me how to make my set-up better/more efficient.

I have an UNRAID home brew server running unRAID v. 6.1.9 on an Intel S1200RP_SE MB, with Pentium G3450 CPU and  (1) 5TB Parity, (1) 500GB Cache, and 15 Data drives ranging in size from 1.5TB-5 TB (37.2 TB total). The path for my TV shows is /mnt/user/tv-series, and for movies is /mnt/user/dvd.  The path for my cache drive is /mnt/user/appdata.  I primarily run SABnzbd (on port :480800), Sonarr (:48989), CouchPotato (:45050), and Plex (:32400) in dockers. (I also have ownCloud, and Guacamole installed, but have yet to actually use them)

I’ve never gotten the hang of the automation stuff, so my process is to set up Sonarr/CP to find stuff, and send it to SAB to download.  I then connect to unRAID with a windows machine and use Putty to launch Midnight Commander, and move the files from where SAB put them (on the cache drive), to a /[New] directory in either TV (/mnt/user/tv-series/[New]), or Movies (/mnt/user/dvd/[New]).  Then I run the Renamer in Windows, and using a windows file manager window, drag the directories containing the .MKV files into the Renamer window, which renames and moves them to the TV or Movies directory with the appropriate name (and Season sub-folder for TV).

I know there’s supposed to be a much easier way to do this, but I’ve never figured out how.

Not sure if this makes a difference but I also have noticed under the unRAID shares tab that I have 19 shares, and 5 of them have the orange triangle by them saying: “some or all files unprotected.”  Those shares are: AppData, appdata, dvd, sabnzbd, and tv-series.  Of those AppData, appdata, and sabnzbd are all set to “use cache disk” as “ONLY.” (I’d like to get rid of one of the appdata’s, if I can to clean things up)

More importantly I have had LOTS of problems with SAB and Sonnar lately (but not CP).  I access both from a Chrome browser, usually on my Win10  laptop connected to the home network wirelessly (192.168.1.112:48080 for SAB; 192.168.1.112:48989 for Sonarr)

The problem is Sonarr will NOT backup (says “backup failed” when I launch it manually), and will crash/freeze randomly (~3-10 times per month), and when I re-start it, I have no config data, and have to reconfig the whole thing, including adding back all my monitored TV series.  I CAN get it to do a back-up BEFORE I add my existing TV series into the configuration, but once I get more than a couple dozen shows in, the back-up fails, and the prior ones disappear.

SAB is doing something similar, and giving me a ton of “Cannot create backup file for /config/sabnzbd.ini.bak” errors in the log.  SAB will also hang/freeze (though not quite as often as Sonarr, and usually when I attempt to restart, or reload from the browser address line), and when I reload it dumps me back into the wizard, making me re-config everything, including new API keys to Sonarr and CP, and re-setting up all my news servers.

While I’m getting pretty proficient with re-creating my config files, I know this is not how this should work, and it’s clearly an unnecessary hassle.  I expect there may be something from a former configuration (I’ve used both needo and binhex docker versions of all of my apps, and have upgraded from unRAID 4, using Plugins (of which I also used more than one version of all my current apps too) that is creating the problem.  I also suspect that I’m either missing something in my configuration, or have something there that shouldn’t be, which is why I have to move everything with MC, rather than letting “the Mover” take care of it in unRAID.

So, can anyone give me some tips?

TIA

There seem to be a few topics in here.

Lets tackle the shares first.

Having appdata and Appdata is because you must have the two different folders on your disks.

First I would suggest to stick to cache only for appdata, so use /mnt/cache/appdata for all your docker containers.

Since Appdata and appdata are set to cache-only they shoud only exist on the cache disk. Check if any of the dockers are installed in Appdata and change them over. (stop the docker, move the folder from Appdata to /mnt/cache/appdata, edit the docker to reflect the change, start)

If you have Appdata or appdata on any of your data drives make sure they are empty and remove them ie: /mnt/disk1/Appdata 

For the other issues I suggest you post a screenshot of the docker overview with advanced settings so we can see all the mappings.

There might be some mismatch there. Maybe you are filling up the docker.img with the backups?

I’ve never gotten the hang of the automation stuff, so my process is to set up Sonarr/CP to find stuff, and send it to SAB to download.  I then connect to unRAID with a windows machine and use Putty to launch Midnight Commander, and move the files from where SAB put them (on the cache drive), to a /[New] directory in either TV (/mnt/user/tv-series/[New]), or Movies (/mnt/user/dvd/[New]).  Then I run the Renamer in Windows, and using a windows file manager window, drag the directories containing the .MKV files into the Renamer window, which renames and moves them to the TV or Movies directory with the appropriate name (and Season sub-folder for TV).

 

I know there’s supposed to be a much easier way to do this, but I’ve never figured out how.

Just to address this one topic at a time... Personally, I am satisfied with the renaming jobs that Sickbeard/SickRage/Sonarr do.  So I have them pick up the downloads from Sab and move them to the array - it all happens automatically.  Have you tried that, or is there a reason you prefer Renamer in Windows?

I’ve never gotten the hang of the automation stuff, so my process is to set up Sonarr/CP to find stuff, and send it to SAB to download.  I then connect to unRAID with a windows machine and use Putty to launch Midnight Commander, and move the files from where SAB put them (on the cache drive), to a /[New] directory in either TV (/mnt/user/tv-series/[New]), or Movies (/mnt/user/dvd/[New]).  Then I run the Renamer in Windows, and using a windows file manager window, drag the directories containing the .MKV files into the Renamer window, which renames and moves them to the TV or Movies directory with the appropriate name (and Season sub-folder for TV).

 

I know there’s supposed to be a much easier way to do this, but I’ve never figured out how.

Just to address this one topic at a time... Personally, I am satisfied with the renaming jobs that Sickbeard/SickRage/Sonarr do.  So I have them pick up the downloads from Sab and move them to the array - it all happens automatically.  Have you tried that, or is there a reason you prefer Renamer in Windows?

I second tdallen's reply. It is all completely automatic on my end. Finding, downloading, Renaming, moving, and library updates. Only manually thing I do is add which TV shows or movies I want.

Personal experience on this is I have used sickbeard and couche potatoe and while it does a OK job however and this is the unfortunate part that there is a much better program that does a far better job called Media Center Master but is a windows based only as the dev doesnt know linux and while he would be happy for someone to port it over to linux it would involve a NDA being signed. So if your not completely happy with your setup you "could" try a Windows VM and run a program like this. Unfortunately its what I have had to do to be completely happy.

Media Center Master... I used it originally to initially perform the scraping of my media files. Thiswas before Kodi, Sickbeard or CP.

What issues are you having w/ Sickbeard and CP? They are rock solid for me using NZBs.

Media Center Master... I used it originally to initially perform the scraping of my media files. Thiswas before Kodi, Sickbeard or CP.

 

What issues are you having w/ Sickbeard and CP? They are rock solid for me using NZBs.

The biggest disadvantage it has over MCM is firstly to get the best out of NZB's and newsgroups is the retention which if you want a usenet that has high retention you need to pay for it. But the single biggest plus MCM has is the integration of trakt.tv that allows me to add Movies and TV Shows straight from the trakt.tv website. MCM sees that a movie or tv show has been added and automatically downloads it.

To add some context for users in a rush, trakt.tv has data mining policy that basically says they can do what they want with your usage data in any way they feel will make them money. Please take a moment to consider this before signing up.