NZBGet is a lightweight usenet downloader. NZBGet and the Raspberry Pi are like a match made in heaven. The Raspberry Pi is a weak yet capable little machine and NZBGet runs well on low spec hardware. This will be in my upcoming Ultimate Raspberry Pi Usenet Guide. I recommend a UsenetServer account for downloading from usenet. I tested this guide 3 times on a fresh Raspbian image from September 2014.

There is an updated version of this guide

If you are trying to figure out which hardware would work best for you, consider reading the Pi benchmarks.



Pi Unit Processor RAM RAM Bus Network WiFi USB SATA Cost Raspberry Pi 3 1.2 GHz ARMv8

Quad Core 1 GB DDR2 450 MHz 100 Mbit Yes 4 No $35 Raspberry Pi 2 900 MHz ARMv7

Quad Core 1 GB DDR2 450 MHz 100 Mbit No 4 No $35.00 Raspberry Pi 700 MHz ARMv6

Single Core 512 MB SDRAM 400 MHz 100 Mbit No 4 No $25 Banana Pi 1 GHz ARMv7

Dual Core 1 GB DDR3 432 MHz Gigabit No 2 Yes $36.99 Banana Pi Pro 1 GHz ARMv7

Dual Core 1 GB DDR3 432 MHz Gigabit Yes 2 Yes $45.00

Install NZBGet Raspberry Pi

Update and upgrade

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Install the Correct Unrar version

This fixes Error Unrar 10

echo "deb-src http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy main contrib non-free rpi" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list sudo apt-get update -y sudo apt-get build-dep unrar-nonfree -y sudo apt-get source -b unrar-nonfree -y sudo dpkg -i unrar*.deb

It also solves Unrar error 64 as long as you are using absolute paths in NZBGet

Install dependencies

sudo apt-get install build-essential libsigc++-dev sigc++ libncurses5-dev libssl-dev libxml2-dev libpar2-0-dev unzip p7zip-full -y

Download the NZBGet 13 source

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/nzbget/files/nzbget-stable/13.0/nzbget-13.0.tar.gz

Unpack the source and enter the folder it creates

sudo tar -xvf nzbget-13.0.tar.gz && cd nzbget-13.0

Grab updated libpar2 which nzbget needs to par check rar files

Note: This fixes the ‘nzbget: error while loading shared libraries: libpar2.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory’. Run apt-get install libpar2-dev first and then run the following which will solve the problem so you can compile NZBGet without errors.

wget –no-check-certificate https://launchpad.net/libpar2/trunk/0.4/+download/libpar2-0.4.tar.gz

Unpack libpar 2 and enter its folder

tar -xvf libpar2-0.4.tar.gz && cd libpar2-0.4

Compile libpar2. This will take a good 10-15 minutes.

./configure && make && sudo make install

Go to nzbget directory

cd ..

Compile, install and create the configuration file for nzbget 13.0. This also takes a good 10 minutes.

./configure && make && sudo make install && sudo make install-conf

Change the permissions of the configuration file

sudo chown pi:root /usr/local/etc/nzbget.conf

Install the Videosort post processing script to have NZBGet sort your video media automatically

Enter the NZBGet scripts folder

cd scripts

Download VideoSort 5.0

sudo wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/nzbget/files/ppscripts/videosort/videosort-ppscript-5.0.zip

Unpack the VideoSort Script

unzip videosort-ppscript-5.0.zip

Note: Your extension scripts folder is ~/nzbget-13.0/scripts/ which you set in NZBGet Settings -> Paths -> ScripDir

Note: For the Raspberry Pi the extra / is necessary after scripts

Run the nzbget daemon

nzbget -D

Now try and access NZBGet at http://ip.address:6789 username:nzbget password:tegbzn6789

Let's make it autostart on the Raspberry Pi using an upstart script on boot

Install upstart

sudo apt-get install upstart

Enter Yes, do as I say!

Create the upstart file

sudo nano /etc/init/nzbget.conf

Paste this code and save the file with Ctrl+X, Press y and then Enter

Note: if you are on Raspbmc remove the setuid and setgid lines (thanks to Raijmond)

#description "NZBGet upstart script" #author "Ben Vassie" setuid pi setgid pi start on runlevel [2345] stop on runlevel [016] respawn script exec nzbget -D end script pre-stop script exec nzbget -Q end script

See if the nzbget service works

sudo service nzbget start

It should say something like

nzbget start/running, process 4422

Reboot to make sure NZBGet starts on boot

sudo reboot

If you plan to use SSL with NZBGet use this cipher RC4-MD5 recommended by hugbug the developer of this fine software.

Since the Raspberry Pi is not the strongest machine, I recommend changing Parscan to Limited.

Click Settings then PAR CHECK/REPAIR and make Parscan Limited

Now you are ready to configure NZBGet