I’ll start. Did you know you can run a headless version of JD2 on a raspberry pi? It’s not the greatest thing in the world, but sometimes its nice to throw a bunch of links in there and go to sleep.
stop manually browsing torrent sites! You’re wasting your time.
Download qBittorrent. Download Jackett. Configure Jackett to work inside qBittorrent. You now have a way to search hundreds of trackers all at once within seconds and find literally anything you want.
Thanks to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/ober found that ipleak.net can be used to check if you VPN is leaking your IP before proceeding with torrenting.
And also using Qbittorrent to tie the client to the VPN by going to Tools > Preferences > Advanced and changing network interface to your VPN.
Somewhat related, you can use iknowwhatyoudownload.com to check and see if your IP address was part of a torrent download recently
This is great, thank you.
Nothing for me. Not sure how historical their data is but I’ve been using a VPN (exclusively) for about a year and a half and about 6 months ago switched to a seedbox.
That is pretty cool. I just checked it from my cellular connection. Obviously it’s not stuff that I downloaded, it’s still cool to see.
That is pretty cool. I just checked it from my cellular connection. Obviously it’s not stuff that I downloaded, it’s still cool to see.
That’s because you are not the only one who is using that ip address, generally you share it with other people. But if you download something, you’ll definitely see that downloaded thing among others.
I’m excited to check this out when I get home. I wonder what will show up. Hopefully nothing haha. But we often have guests that stay for a week at a time. My building may also put me behind a cgnat.
I used ipleak when setting up my seedbox, super cool resource
For some reason i don’t know ipleak.net won’t load for me. These work too though: https://ipleak.org/, https://browserleaks.com/ip.
huh, works for me, detects my vpn. Is it blocked in your country or something?
I can’t reach it on my Windows 11 computer when the vpn is turned on, but can reach it using Windows when the vpn is turned off (i tried servers in Europe, Americas, Asia).
But on my linux computer i can reach it with the vpn on or off (same vpn company, login, servers). So … weird.
What am I looking for on there to know if my VPN is working as intended or not?
I like to use this. It generates a custom torrent. Then shows the IPs connected to it. Whatever it shows should not be your public/home IP https://torguard.net/checkmytorrentipaddress.php
Thanks. What results am I looking for to make sure it works?
While connected to the VPN you shouldn’t be able to see your real IP address. There is a torrent magnet link near the bottom left of the page that you can download and run on your client (qbit, transmission, etc) which will check whether that’s leaking anything too.
I get a big red exclamation point and “The address 140...** is not in the database” Is this a sign that I have NordVPN set up correctly or not? Thanks for mentioning ipleak.net!
If you use over@lemmy.dbzer0.com to link a user, lemmy will instead create a link for the instance you are currently using.
I wish that sabnzbd had the same feature where you can force it to only function over the vpn interface. Such a nice feature to have.
Google searches show the DMCA takedown notices that list the sites that illegally stream content. It seems to me that if an interested party were to search for something on google and happened to see the DMCA take down notice, they might peruse that takedown request and see a number of sites that might illegally host such copyrighted content - so they know what sites to avoid of course.
😉
Unfortunately they’ve recently stopped doing this. It was a great way to stick it to the man though
Just checked, you’re right! When did they stop this and is there any report on why? I was seeing these up until just a few months ago.
Must depend on the search. I just checked, and the links were still there same as always.
OMG! What a great way to stay safe online. This is a great tip. Guys remember, you wouldn’t download a car!
Avoid TS, HDCAM, CAM movies
Docker, if you can run it on your hardware (either your normal system or on dedicated hardware) is a Swiss army knife that can help level up your acquisitions, and provides you with an isolated application environment if you don’t want to install the applications directly to your device. For media specifically, there is a suite of applications under the same *arr naming scheme that allows you to index, monitor for releases of, and acquire different television shows, movies, music, and books.
Some container maintainers build in different capabilities into their torrent client containers, such as Binhex’s qBittorrent and Deluge applications, that have VPN connectivity built in, so any network traffic running through that container will automatically use your VPN provider’s WireGuard or OpenVPN capabilities, depending on who you use. Once you have that running and your tags tuned in the *arr apps, you have a headless, mostly independent machine constantly working on acquiring and upgrading your media.
Sidenote: the *arr apps can be controlled by mobile apps like LunaSea on iOS, and nzb360 on Android. The latter can also integrate with your torrent clients.
And if you get it working you can put Docker Experience on your resume
Yup! Something I’m absolutely going to leverage whenever I move onto my next job.
Don’t forget to include your seed ratios! Employers don’t want to hire leechers
Haha true! They totally won’t ignore my application for pirating.
Is that something with value? I learned how to work with docker, containers, etc while on my last student job position
Docker experience is very valuable in devops and sysadmin roles
Yes this has been a game changer and would’ve been my advice too (but you posted before me).
Using a deluge container with vpn baked in is amazing. And also it makes setup so much easier. Instead of messing with tags and complicated configs I simply run a deluge docker container for each other app. My movies docker compose file starts up radarr and it’s own deluge and jacket etc. My television docker compose file starts up medusa, it’s own deluge, etc.
Provides for maximum flexibility. And put traefik in front of it all… so I go to “movies.mydomain.net” and can use radarr… or “television.mydomain.net” and it goes to medusa. Much more family friendly.
I’m still rolling Binhex’s (now deprecated) rTorrent/ruTorrent container, and I’m glad I got it before it stopped being maintained. Tbh the scheduling capability built into that far exceeds anything else I’ve used (three tiers of scheduling on top of “off” and “unlimited”).
I make use of reverse proxying through Nginx Proxy Manager to hit nzb360 from outside my home, though if I can get it working properly I might be dropping that and going through Tailscale with local routing. I just haven’t had a chance to futz with that yet.
thats fuckin sick, i didnt even think of doing that. i tired using one of those apps like overseer or whatever and i never got used to it.
Nothing wrong with Overseer once you have the *arrs up and running, tbh. Though if it’s just you, there isn’t much point since everything can be done directly through the *arr web interfaces. If you’re hosting your media server to other friends, then a request system like Overseerr or Ombi makes way more sense.
To be fair, i havent checked it out in a while, it could very well be better these days. I like the idea of each arr having its own domain tho
They each have their benefits. I use both. I only expose Overseer externally. It’s nice and easy to pop it open and add a new movie/show while I’m away from a computer. Then I’ll use one of the *arrs when I need to do something more advanced or I’m using a desktop locally.
That make sense. if you put your *aars on docker containers, its fairly easy to expose it safely, tho. Most of the time its just people asking me to download the stuff anyway
My choice is haugene/transmission which doesn’t open unless it has a connection to the VPN. Great for PIA, but I’m thinking about switching to proton unltd so will have to do some testing in another container before I take the plunge.
why is this the first time hearing about haugene. I use pia too, what are you running it on?
There’s a nice Docker container for it. https://hub.docker.com/r/haugene/transmission-openvpn
awesome, thank you
You can configure openvpn in regular qbittorrent, probably transmission too. What they are talking about is a docker container, particularly useful when combined with sonarr and radarr containers.
Binhex does the same thing. There are checks performed before it allows connections to make sure it can resolve DNS across the VPN interface and that it can obtain an IP address from PIA (I also use them, grandfathered $6.95/mo baybee).
Nice, im grandfathered into a cheap yearly rate, i thinks its like 60 a year
Are you using port forwarding? Back when I had PIA (before they sold), they would randomly assign you a port when you connected which caused major issues with QBit as you have to set a fixed port number. Not sure if that’s your issue but it might be worth looking into.
I do, and qbit (through Binhex’s container image) matches that port in qbit whenever it gets assigned. I think. Personally I’ve almost never had an issue reaching peers
I’m just now dipping my toes into docker. I started off self hosting a bitwarden server, and im working on moving my *arrs over to containers on my nas. I need a bit more experience before i move my seedbox over fully, dont need any more isp letters.
I had no idea about those apps, thats sick dude
I used to run the applications on bare metal when I ran a Windows server (because that’s all I knew at the time). Eventually graduated to a QNAP NAS, that wasn’t enough, and moved on again to Unraid, where many of these apps are available through templates in their Community Apps section. It really lowers the barrier of entry for using Docker and makes it stupid easy to assign your container an IP address on your host network, so it can be its own “device” on your LAN (which helps for me since I’ve got that all segmented off in its own VLAN).
It’s not too deep a rabbit hole to jump down, but it’ll take time to get things just right to limit the amount you need to interact with the apps and manually select what you want to grab.
Yeah im just about there. Eventually i want to build my own nas, but i got a pretty solid synology for cheap and it is good enough for plex and all the docker containers so far.
you are spot on about lowering the barrier of entry tho. I remember trying to set up programs to auto run on boot on a raspberry pi lol, now all i do is double click an icon and supply my ports. crazy easy
Nothing wrong with using what you’ve got and upgrading. And the beautiful thing about Docker is you can just spin up the container elsewhere, point the mount points to their new locations, make sure your perms are good, and continue like nothing changed.
It really is so much easier now. And with UnRAID acting as my container host, it saves everything I spin up (permanent or not) in its last state as a template, so if I need to destroy my docker image disk (which I recently ran into) all I need to do is find the template I was using from the dropdown they give you and click Create. Not a backup solution (which you should also have), but it’s such a time saver if and when something goes horribly wrong, or if you want to spin a container you used to use but since destroyed back up.
when something goes horribly wrong,
I like how thats not IF, lol. I swear dude, i have so many sd card images ready for when i inevitably mess something up.
Do you use a server rack for your nas? or just an old pc case?
100% when. I’ve learned that the hard way too many times to count at this point…
My NAS is built into an (I think) Thermaltake mid-sized tower running consumer hardware (ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4, Ryzen 5 series G proc, G.Skill non-ecc RAM) with the exception of one hard drive. Both that and my proxmox host are repurposed or custom built towers.
I do still use the QNAP NAS too, though only as SMB for my desktop/NFS for my server.
Yeah, im debating on just diving in and getting a rack, or continue duck taping together rpi’s and old computer parts.
Make sure you have backups of your vault. Reliable backups.
Especially if you are just starting off with docker, you don’t want to loose access to all your accounts because you f up some configuration (e.g. redeploy an updated image)
Oh hell yeah, lol. i found a guide to set up a schedule.
Is there something to allow you to browse and filter movies an be tv shows? I’ve just gotten into sonarr and it’s great for managing shows but I still fall back to browsing sites for inspiration
I use Overseerr for that purpose personally. It gives me enough suggestions of “this show is on xyz service” and a good number of genres to poke through.
Will have to have a look at that. And the ui is handy enough to use?
It’s very easy to navigate in my opinion. As long as it’s tying into the *arrs and the underlying indexer (be it Prowlarr, Jackett, or something else that integrates with those), it shouldn’t have trouble finding the show(s) you select there.
Unreal. Many thanks!
Pick one: Ombi / Overseerr / Jellyserr
edit: fixed Ombi misspelling
I have emby for watching and trawling the stuff I have. I meant for searching for other stuff to get
I mixed up ombi and emby, sorry.
Thanks man. I was a bit confused there. Will definitely look into that one
They probably meant ombi
Ombi*
Whoops, I always mix up emby and ombi since I don’t use either of them. My bad!
RARBG used to fill this need for me (inspiration) since they’d highlight popular stuff, but now it’s mostly word of mouth or I’ll occasionally check places like IMDB (or just straight googling) for what’s currently popular/highly rated and what’s coming out in the near future that might interest me or my users.
I just can never wrap my head around getting Qbittorrent (Binhex) to work with VPN. I’m with Proton VPN and when I attempt to add it, it just won’t actually download anything… Works without it which ain’t helpful!
If anyone has the skills/expertise, please help aha.
If you have qbitorrent installed and also your VPN is installed:
Open qbit Click Tools> Options> Advanced Change “Network Interface” drop down and click your VPN there.
Hope that helps
The free version of Proton VPN blocks torrents, fyi.
You’re using the correct OpenVPN creds from your Proton dashboard, and the applicable nameserver/sIP addresses for the VPN endpoint and DNS lookup for Proton? If DNS lookup is failing, try setting it to 9.9.9.9 or 1.1.1.1 and see if you get resolution.
Usenet is worth every penny
Is there a very good guide somewhere for usenet?
If you’re completely new, familiarizing yourself with any guide would be beneficial. A basic search resulted in this and this, which are better than nothing, I suppose. I’d appreciate someone skilled adding their two cents, however, especially concerning common pitfalls and anonymous payment for Usenet providers.
Also curious
Is it? I never used it, i went down the torrent path. Usenet would have to be super easy to use for me to consider paying for it
It is. I torrented for years, Usenet is so much better once setup with radarr/sonarr. So much faster
Yeah but sonarr/radarr works for torrents too. I can see the speed argument tho.
I hear the big downside with Usenet is availability of old or obscure content. Not sure how true this is though as I’ve never used Usenet myself.
I’ve used it for 15+ years and it’s a huge downside. Older content used to be widely available, but more often then not anything popular is removed within a few months of posting. It is actually pretty great for obscure content that won’t get taken down. It’s cheap but a whole new thing to learn. It is faster than torrenting directly to your own computer but a seedbox blows usenet out of the water as far as speed. 50-100 MB/s easily (at least using private trackers).
I wonder what the reason for that speed difference on a seedbox is. I’d like to set up a custom server for other things at home so I’d prefer to use that over a seedbox.
They’re running in a datacenter in the netherlands with a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. I did find out they’re classified as an “isp and web hosting company”.
All our Dedicated Servers have 1Gbit connections with a dedicated 1GigE uplink.
I’d also guess that many of the seeds on any torrent (on a private tracker) are going to also be coming from seedboxes. That might explain why it’s so fast too, there is tons of bandwidth between the datacenters themselves. I’m definitely throttled at 100MB/s regardless of how many torrents I’ve got running (1 or 100), but if they’re running 50-100+ instances along with dedicated servers they must have tbps of bandwidth.
So long story medium, unless you can install your home server into a datacenter with a multi terrabit link to the backbone, it will be tough to replicate
Plus the cost of the subscription. You should be using a VPN with torrents which has its own fees, but at least the VPN is useful for more than just that one thing.
Yes but have you combined private trackers with a seedbox? You can’t get much faster than like 100 MB/s download. You still have to xfer it to your computer but can do that at your leisure. I find my ISP throttles me if I download more than 1 TB in a month so I keep it at a few hundred GB usually.
Just jumped into Usenet a year ago, been torrenting for decades. I concur, worth every single cent spent, and I messed up and overspent when I was setting up…. Still worth it.
Any tips on jumping in? Recommended services, etc
If you are familiar with docker and compose, I would start there with a servarr stack. There is a docker-compose I use called -arr-compose. Has the complete arr stack, including sabnzbd for Usenet downloads. Usenet is a bit weird, you need a server like Newshosting to actually connect to Usenet, that is what you point sabnzbd to. Prowlarr from the servarr stack connects to your indexers. Then you just search and the stack takes care of the rest. Other useful links:
This is super helpful, thanks so much
I use Usenetic as my client (I’m in a mac). Incredibly easy to set up. I use Newshosting as my provider. You paste a URL and your credentials into a field in the app and off you gib. I like that usenetic has a search built in rather than trawling binsearch for nzb files.
I feel you on the difficulty. Mostly it took me just taking a leap into it and deciding that if I lost a little money on it no biggie as I’ve gotten so much for free over the years. Biggest thing that tipped me into finally trying was black Friday sales from Usenet providers. Getting a pretty dang cheap deal and then fiddling with sabnzb, getting my first download going was awesome. Especially the speeds. And 99% of the things I’m looking for being available. Even really old stuff that is pretty hard to find active torrents of. Would highly recommend.
I miss when Usenet subscriptions just came as part of your ISP package. What the hell ever happened with that?
Seems like it was a mix between usenet being a magnet for piracy, which all the ISPs were getting pressure to combat, and demand for usenet cratering - as newer users came on the internet they went to other places (myspace had started which appealed more to young users)
Dang, that’d be cool. Didn’t even know that was a thing. Probably before my time on the internet. Mostly got connected in the late 2000s and haven’t ever heard that was a thing.
This comment 100% … You get popped uploading not downloading.
I used to agree but retention is a killer for a lot of older content.
For new releases its pretty great though.
I have a tracker on standby for this reason. What indexers were you using? I haven’t had too hard of a time finding some older stuff so far.
I was on geek, dog, and a few others. Been considering going back because I’m sick of seeding a bunch of shit.
No matter how good your indexers are you still might not get retention no matter the provider.
100% get 2 providers 2 indexers and setup the Arr stack and never touch it again
Make sure they’re not from the same company though.
One of the first things I made sure of
Usenet was great 10-15 years ago but nowadays it’s flooded with fake / private downloads and retention is shit simply because the few remaining backbone providers comply with takedown requests. Absolutely useless for older content by any major studio. It’s all new stuff which is mostly garbage anyway. We were able to get a ton of “this old house” recently though.
Its important to have a supplemental block account, that won’t generally accede to DMCA requests. The big guys will of course, but they don’t get rid of the whole file, so you can grab the remainder from the block account. I can’t even think of the last time I wasn’t able to download something between my main and block account.
appreciate the advice, would make it less aggravating. Which one do you recommend? I’m on newshosting and have no problems that aren’t just general usenet problems.
I’m just gonna to invite you to google this and see where it takes you. Might not be up your alley, might be a compete gamechanger: InviteHawk
If you are looking for German (or German + English dual language) content it can be very hard to find stuff on public torrent trackers and it’s pretty hard to get onto private German trackers - but don’t worry, there is a solution:
Usenet and the indexer sceneNZBs.com that specialises in German releases have got you covered!
If you want to automate the search for German Dual Language content using Radarr/Sonarr I made a guide (that also works for torrents too): https://github.com/PCJones/radarr-sonarr-german-dual-language
Synology NAS (with SynoCommunity) + Transmission + Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr/etc + Kodi
It’s amazing, the new episodes or movies just show up right there in the media center, with correct metadata, ready to be watched.
I’ve personally found it better to pay for a seedbox and connect to it via encrypted FTP than to worry about VPNs and downloading torrents locally. I share the cost between a couple of friends and we all access the seedbox and download/stream what we need from it. I don’t have to worry about keeping my computer running either.
So my question is, whose name is on the seedbox? I’ve seen people say this…is it one of the special hosts that will just send you a notice and not tell the complaint filer who you are? Connecting to a VPN or proxy has been easy enough and cheaper lol.
Personally I switched away from a seedbox to a VPN, but only after building up a stupid ratio on several trackers. It’s annoying to manage two copies of everything, you have to download everything twice, and drive space on seedboxes is expensive.
Yeah, but i
hatelike messing around with docker and setting it up myself, lol
You can use IRC to pirate ebooks that you won’t be able to find on torrent sites.
Yandex is currently the best search engine for pirate stuff. You might need to change the language setting to only show english results, tho, as it gives preference to russian stuff.
If you’re on Windows, you can block any address “forever” by running Notepad as an admin and opening the file
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts- Any line starting with 0.0.0.0 will automatically “fail” to find the page. For instance,
0.0.0.0 www.whatever.comwill completely block that domain. It won’t blockwww.whatever.co.ukorwhatever.com, so you’ll have to add one line for each top level domain. It’s great for blocking the worst ad networks (the ones that leave 6 clickjacks per page)
Another pro tip: just use an ad blocker, lol.
Always good advice, but some websites need a little more… “persuading”
I think i had to do that for adobe at one point.
This is functionally what PIHole does. Though you can do this with any DNS you control, such as Unbound or Bind.
Why Yandex over other search engines?
Yandex is good. Sometimes Qwant.com and Metager.org will find things, too. When Google/Bing/Yahoo/Startpage, etc., don’t find what you’re looking for, just try search engines based in other countries. Russia/Yandex probably cares less about western DRM than Qwant/France and Metager/Germany. Incidentally, if you open a VK (aka Vkontakte, Russian Facebook) account, you can also open a mail.ru (part of VK) account. Don’t forget to set the UI language to something you understand :)
Russia has long been a haven for digital piracy and Yandex doesn’t block pirate results at all. When I noticed that duckduckgo began quietly censoring some pirate sites I frequented, I ditched it for those purposes.
Yup ororo is a cheap streaming service masquerading as an English teaching tool to avoid regulations. Totally legal in Russia.
Any line starting with 0.0.0.0 will automatically “fail” to find the page. For instance, 0.0.0.0 www.whatever.com will completely block that domain. It won’t block www.whatever.co.uk or whatever.com, so you’ll have to add one line for each top level domain. It’s great for blocking the worst ad networks (the ones that leave 6 clickjacks per page) 11
Pi-hole is worth looking into if you’re into this
Pihole is a good option, but it’s extra hardware that you need to keep running. Changing your own OS’s etc/hosts doesn’t need anything you might not have ;)
- Any line starting with 0.0.0.0 will automatically “fail” to find the page. For instance,
If you have a large steam library, the rin forum has some tools to help backup a good chunk of those games. Usually you can’t run a steam game without the steam client, but steamless and goldberg can make them run without needing the client.
Won’t you lose out on achievements and stuff if you run it without the client? 🤔
Yes, but there are work arounds if you really want achievements
With just goldberg yeah. There’s another program, i don’t recall it’s name at the moment, that keeps track of acheivements.
If you really want to build an awesome Plex/Jellyfin library, start using Usenet instead of torrents.
Please tell me what I can get on usenet that isn’t on PTP, BTN, or RED.
I would bet that 99/100 releases are uploaded to private trackers before usenet.
It isn’t availability that makes me prefer Usenet, but its speed and security features.
The download speed on any popular release will max out even the fastest connections. I assume the retention for less popular content is a lot better on trackers, but I don’t have enough experience with usenet to say that for sure.
security features
What features?
Usenet connections can be encrypted. No need for a VPN or any other obfuscation.
Torrents can be encrypted as well, and there isn’t a need for a VPN unless you use public trackers, which I don’t recommend.
What is the monthly fee for Usenet? I’m more in favor of decentralized systems with the use of seedboxes to speed up distribution, but I’m not against usenet either.
What is the monthly fee for Usenet?
About 5 bucks a month or a little less if you pay by the year.
I’d like to know this as well. Haven’t used Usenet for over 10 years. PTP, BTN, and Red are all I need. Seed box and Plex. I’m into indie/obscure films also, so what would Usenet offer that they don’t?
You should look into Karagarga
If you have cabal and able to maintain ratio (yeah BTN is ratio less) you don’t need Usenet
But thats such a small proportion of people. Usenet is what I recommend to entry level people who want top tier access but aren’t will to spend time/effort/networking but will spend money m
I’ve personally found that usenet isn’t that good unless you’re trying to grab things immediately. I find trying to grab older stuff really hit or miss, mostly miss.
Use two providers on different networks. They can fill in the gaps for each other.
Right, get a block account with another provider on a different backbone and you should be good to go!
Most indexers have a request form for content. Ive used the one on NZBGeek numeous times and gotten what I wanted within a day or two.
Idk man, Usenet was solid for me for years but now everything is DMCAd in a flash.
what is usenet just a DDL site?
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Affordable? I’m not here to pay people for things, that’s for sure 😅
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Huh, a couple years ago everything was being DMCAd haven’t come accross that issue in awhile, at least me personally.
Interesting. I guess I’ve just been lucky enough to find all the content I look for.
SlavArt Revolt bots are THE WAY to go for high quality music from almost any service
IPv6 torrenting for the most part goes unchecked by the companies who send threat letters to your ISP. I have a US seedbox which doesn’t have IPv4 and it’s been working great with a lot of public torrents
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VPN seems like a bigger hassle for me, I change one parameter to off in /etc/network/interfaces and it works great.
