Nunca Diga Nunca

The Big Little NAS, Pt 2

If you missed part 1, go here.

Broadcatching ?

When I started building the server, I was (and still am) a fan of torrents. Using sites like ezrss.it, I could then automate the downloading of torrents with a simple RSS downloader script. Then I’d set up watch folders in rTorrent and it would take care of downloading and notifying me when complete.

That is, until I was told about Usenet.

Usenet, for the uninformed, is one of the oldest systems available on the Internet. Also know as user groups or discussion groups, Usenet servers store (up to a certain limit, called retention) messages posted by users who connect to them using specific software. You can get a feel for Usenet by using Google Groups, although technically Google’s implementation is a little different and doesn’t store binary files.

Now, due to post size limitations, these binary files need to be split into smaller chunks. And to prevent a lot of grief, each collection of posts containing chunks of a bigger file also contain a PAR file, which holds parity information to ensure that when all chunks are stitched together no bit is missing. It’s like a photo ID for the file.

You can download and stitch the files together, then check the parity of the file against the PAR file, but that’s a laborious process that can take a long chunk of your time for each download, so the best way here is to automate this process.

Enter SABnzbd+. The name may not make much sense, but this is the BEST way to automate downloads. There are plenty of docs on how to set it up on all different machines, but for Ubuntu all you need is follow this guide.

I’ll give you some time to get your head around SABnzbd+. Go on. I’ll wait.

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