Synology Media Centre Setup

Published on: December 11, 2023 | Reading Time: 9 min | Last Modified: December 11, 2023

Synology Media Configuration

This is my attempt at publishing a write up on a rough timeliens of my journey setting up an open source media centre on my Synology DSM713+. It includes a configuration guide and links to scripts that should help others work through their own setups.

Introduction
The Setup
UnRar-ing files after download
- Attempt 1 - Unrar script
Switching to qBittorrent
Final docker-compose
Further Resources

Introduction

So a while back, motivated by a desire to make more use out of my Synology DSM713+ NAS, I decided to explore ways to turn it into a self-managed but highly automated media centre. It must have been at most four years ago when I started this project because this Reddit post from December 2019 was my original starting point. It also explains why I started off using Transmission as a my client instead of qbittorrent.

So let’s dive in!

The Setup

Applications

Originally, the set up included the following applications:

Radarr
Sonarr
Transmission
- Importantly here, I am not using vanilla transmission image
- I was using a custom image with openvpn capabilities, found here

As of June 2023, I added Jackett for better management of indexers and swapped Transmission out for qbittorrent. This was prompted by rarbg finally deciding to hang its boots up.

December 2023 note: looks like rarbg is back?

System Details

Lastly, the hardware I’m running this on, as mentioned, is a Synology DSM713+

waleed@seventhirteen:/volume1/docker/mediacentre$ uname -a
Linux seventhirteen 3.10.108 #42962 SMP Fri Mar 24 00:28:47 CST 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux synology_cedarview_713+

My setup has always relied on docker for managing these applications and I don’t have an automated way of keeping the images updated just yet.

The trickiest part of this set up, and the one that I forget every time I go through an upgrade cycle is the requirements to get VPN working with transmission.

June 2023 NOTE:

Ever since I upgraded my synology DSM firmware to the latest version, the need to do all this tunneling below has gone away!

Thankfully, my VPN provider of choice has config files provided by huagene. What isn’t as clear is the role /dev/tun plays.

What is OpenVPN?

TODO

Ok, so now what is tun?

TODO

And here’s the bash script I use to check if /dev/tun exists, and if it doesn’t, to create it:

#!/bin/sh

# Create the necessary file structure for /dev/net/tun
if ( [ ! -c /dev/net/tun ] ); then
    if ( [ ! -d /dev/net ] ); then
            mkdir -m 755 /dev/net
        fi
        mknod /dev/net/tun c 10 200
fi

# Load the tun module if not already loaded
if ( !(lsmod | grep -q "^tun\s") ); then
    insmod /lib/modules/tun.ko
fi

Running a script to extract rar’d or zip’d files

As of June 2023, I also added an unrar script to the post download instructions to transmission

The first Unrar script

The only real mention of how to get an unrar script going when a torrent is completed can be found here.

The main things you need to do are:

In the environment options:
- enable the flag to run a script when a torrent is done
- point to where the script is

-e "TRANSMISSION_SCRIPT_TORRENT_DONE_ENABLED=true" \
-e "TRANSMISSION_SCRIPT_TORRENT_DONE_FILENAME=/data/extract_torrent.sh" \

Since I keep my scripts in $(PATH_TO_DOCKER_DIR)/mediacentre/transmission/scripts you also need to mount this:

-v /volume1/docker/mediacentre/transmission/scripts:/scripts

The contents of the script unrar-torrent.sh would make use of $TR_TORRENT_NAME and TR_TORRENT_DIR which I’m assuming as environment variables set by transmission containing the specific torrent downloaded and the name of the torrent file
In my setup, the directory with torrents in it is actually this: TRANSMISSION_DOWNLOAD_DIR=/data/downloads/torrents/downloads
- The var I don’t understand is $TR_TORRENT_NAME <- where does this get set???

#!/bin/bash CUR_DIR=pwd cd $TR_TORRENT_DIR test -d “$TR_TORRENT_NAME” && cd “$TR_TORRENT_NAME” unrar e -inul *.rar 7z e *.zip > /dev/null 2>&1 cd $CUR_DIR

THE SCRIPT DOESN’T WORK WITH THE CONFIGURATION

SO LET’S MOVE TO QBITTORRENT FINALLY

The challenge with qBittorrent is going to be VPN setup, as always. The way I overcame this with transmission was to use huagene’s docker container that had VPN configurations for various providers baked in and so I didn’t have to mess around with certs, wireguard and a bunch of stuff I don’t fully comprehend.

Time to switch to qBittorrent

The first thing I tried, obviously, is just a vanilla docker compose with VPN settings filled in:

environment:
      - PUID=1032
      - PGID=65537
      - TZ=America/Toronto
      - WEBUI_PORT=8080
      - WEBUI_USERNAME=
      - WEBUI_PASSWORD=
      - VPN_ENABLED=yes
      - VPN_PROV=custom
      - VPN_CLIENT=openvpn
      - VPN_USER=vpnusername
      - VPN_PASS=vpnpassword
      - VPN_OPTIONS=--inactive 3600 --ping 10 --ping-exit 60

This didn’t work out of the box with torguard. I’m not sure whether the base qBittorrent container knows how to parse random VPN providers and their certificates
So while this deployed and the client was running, the VPN connection wasn’t working

Some options

One alternative would be to, like with transmission, use a qBittorrent image configured for VPN and with capability to handle torguard
- Something like this, for example: https://hub.docker.com/r/dyonr/qbittorrentvpn/

Using something like gluetun, deploy it to a container and then use the network_mode: "service:gluetun" parameter in the containers that need it

Since gluetun has support for torguard, this would surely be an easy solution
It wasn’t. I kept getting this error when it was trying to authenticate the VPN connection to torguard’s IPs:

gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [vpn] stopping
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [vpn] starting
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [firewall] allowing VPN connection...
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [openvpn] OpenVPN 2.5.8 x86_64-alpine-linux-musl [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [LZ4] [EPOLL] [MH/PKTINFO] [AEAD] built on Nov  2 2022
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [openvpn] library versions: OpenSSL 3.1.2 1 Aug 2023, LZO 2.10
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [openvpn] TCP/UDP: Preserving recently used remote address: [AF_INET]146.70.137.74:1912
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [openvpn] UDP link local: (not bound)
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:38:58Z INFO [openvpn] UDP link remote: [AF_INET]146.70.137.74:1912
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:39:58Z WARN [openvpn] TLS Error: TLS key negotiation failed to occur within 60 seconds (check your network connectivity)
gluetun    | 🚒🚒🚒🚒🚒🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚒🚒🚒🚒🚒
gluetun    | That error usually happens because either:
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 1. The VPN server IP address you are trying to connect to is no longer valid 🔌
gluetun    |    Check out https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main/setup/servers.md#update-the-vpn-servers-list
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 2. The VPN server crashed 💥, try changing your VPN servers filtering options such as SERVER_REGIONS
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 3. Your Internet connection is not working 🤯, ensure it works
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 4. Something else ➡️ https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun/issues/new/choose
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:39:58Z INFO [openvpn] TLS Error: TLS handshake failed
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:39:58Z INFO [openvpn] SIGTERM received, sending exit notification to peer
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:39:58Z INFO [openvpn] SIGTERM[soft,tls-error] received, process exiting
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:39:58Z INFO [vpn] retrying in 15s
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:39:59Z INFO [healthcheck] program has been unhealthy for 1m1s: restarting VPN (see https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main/faq/healthcheck.md)
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:40:13Z INFO [firewall] allowing VPN connection...
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:40:14Z INFO [openvpn] OpenVPN 2.5.8 x86_64-alpine-linux-musl [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [LZ4] [EPOLL] [MH/PKTINFO] [AEAD] built on Nov  2 2022
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:40:14Z INFO [openvpn] library versions: OpenSSL 3.1.2 1 Aug 2023, LZO 2.10
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:40:14Z INFO [openvpn] TCP/UDP: Preserving recently used remote address: [AF_INET]146.70.34.186:1912
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:40:14Z INFO [openvpn] UDP link local: (not bound)
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:40:14Z INFO [openvpn] UDP link remote: [AF_INET]146.70.34.186:1912
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:41:15Z WARN [openvpn] TLS Error: TLS key negotiation failed to occur within 60 seconds (check your network connectivity)
gluetun    | 🚒🚒🚒🚒🚒🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚒🚒🚒🚒🚒
gluetun    | That error usually happens because either:
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 1. The VPN server IP address you are trying to connect to is no longer valid 🔌
gluetun    |    Check out https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main/setup/servers.md#update-the-vpn-servers-list
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 2. The VPN server crashed 💥, try changing your VPN servers filtering options such as SERVER_REGIONS
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 3. Your Internet connection is not working 🤯, ensure it works
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 4. Something else ➡️ https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun/issues/new/choose
gluetun    | 
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:41:15Z INFO [openvpn] TLS Error: TLS handshake failed
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:41:15Z INFO [openvpn] SIGTERM received, sending exit notification to peer
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:41:15Z INFO [openvpn] SIGTERM[soft,tls-error] received, process exiting
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:41:15Z INFO [vpn] retrying in 15s
gluetun    | 2023-09-01T12:41:19Z INFO [healthcheck] program has been unhealthy for 1m6s: restarting VPN (see https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main

As it turns out, torguard has a SOCKS5 proxy you can use: https://torguard.net/article/241/how-to-setup-a-socks-proxy-in-qbittorrent-on-windows.html

Using SOCKS5 Proxy - Torguard and qBittorrent

Follow the guide above
Then use their helpful “Check my Torrent IP” tool. Since the VPN connection isn’t set at the container level, you can’t just docker exec into the container and check its IP
When you run it, it shows up like this in the download client:

And it displays the IP your torrent appears to be downloading to like this:

This isn’t my IP! So it works!!!

Remote Path Mapping between Sonarr and qBittorrent

One very important thing to be aware of is the remote path mapping:

The way this reads:
- When qBittorrent reports a file has been downloaded to /downloads (which is where you map the volume in the docker compose), it tells sonarr to look for that in its own local directory structure at /data/downloads/torrents/downloads
If you don’t do this, sonarr won’t know where to find the files and it will just report an error: "No files found are eligible for import at /downloads/<FILE>"

The second, failed unrar script

Last but not least, the whole reason we switched to qBittorrent: running a post-processing script to unrar files
Here’s the script:

#!/bin/bash
cd "$1"

for f in "$1"/*.rar
do
  [ -e "$f" ] && unrar x "$f"
done

I saved it in the top level config dir in the volume mapping here: - /volume1/docker/mediacentre/qbittorrent:/config
And then in qbittorrent, I set the following under settings:

That didn’t actually work!

Ok so after monitoring a few torrent downloads, it turns out the script the way I’ve included it doesn’t actually run or unrar anything
So what I’ve done instead is just invoking unrar directly from the “run external program after torrent is finished” box, like this:

Let’s break down what this is doing:

unrar x "%F/*.r*" "%F/"

The unrar x part is obvious. It just means “extract contents of an archive”
The "%F/*.r*" breaks down into %F/ which refers to the current directory in qbittorrent land and the *.r* just references any file with a r* extension.
Lastly, the final parameter is where to unrar the files, which in this case is just the current directory again
After monitoring this for a few torrents, it looks like it finally works!!!

Final docker-compose.yml

TODO: Add link to a gist

Final thoughts & resources

Resources
TODO:

Waleed Ayoub