nZEDb is a fork of the popular newznab indexer. It is becoming increasingly popular because it is actively developed and has a plethora of features. This guide will show you how to get nZEDb up and running on Raspbian (September 9, 2014 release) so you can have your own private usenet indexer.

This guide is derived from the official Ubuntu nZEDb guide but has been adapted for the Raspberry Pi. When you are done you can have an always on indexer monitoring a few binary groups (I have been indexing 10 groups for the past 5 days) and use it with your choice of software: Sonarr (NzbDrone), SickRage, SickBeard, Couchpotato, NZBGet and Sabnzbd. You will get an API key and login and password to use with these software packages.

Updated to include moving the MySQL database

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

Usenet Provider Backbone Retention Speed Connections VPN Monthly Annual UsenetServer UsenetServer 3199 Unlimited 30 Yes $10 $95.40 Newshosting Newshosting 3199 Unlimited 30 Yes $10 $99 Frugal Frugal 3000 Unlimited 20 No $4.16 $50 Usenetlink Cloudgate 2000 100 Mbit 30 No $15 $140

Install nZEDb Raspberry Pi for Personal Usenet Indexing

Install some basic stuff like python and git

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties git -y

If you plan on using this indexer long term you will want to mount some USB storage to store the covers, MySQL database and the nzb files.

Install MySQL

All of your nzbs and releases and stuff will be put into a MySQL database. You will install mysqltuner as well so you can get suggestions about how to tweak the database in the future.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient-dev mysqltuner -y

Edit the configuration file

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Here is where you can change the path of the database to your external USB storage

Make sure you make the user mysql the owner of the directory to which you relocate

datadir = /var/lib/mysql

Max allowed packet should already be set

max_allowed_packet = 16M

Add this line in the same section max_allowed_packet is

group_concat_max_len = 8192

Hit Ctrl+X, Y and then Enter to exit the MySQL configuration

Run MySQL and enter your root password you chose during the MySQL installation

sudo mysql -p

Grant your username permission to access the MySQL database

Note: you do not paste the mysql> part for either of these commands.

mysql>GRANT FILE ON *.* TO 'pi'@'localhost';

Exit MySQL

mysql>exit

Install phpMyAdmin

This is optional but it is recommended, it gives you a nice interface to access your indexer databases

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin -y

Since you are running nginx don't tell it to reconfigure anything and just press Enter.

Say ok to dbconfig-common

You will need to enter the root password for the MySQL database which you created earlier

I entered the same password I use for MySQL here, this is the same password you will use to log in to phpMyAdmin

Enter the same password as the previous screen here

Now secure phpMyAdmin with encryption

sudo php5enmod mcrypt

You can access phpMyAdmin at http://ip.address/phpmyadmin

Your login details for phpmyadmin should be same as for MySQL

Install nginx

Install nginx Web Server

Install nginx from the repository

sudo apt-get install nginx -y

Install PHP fast page for nginx

sudo apt-get install php5-fpm -y

Edit the configuration file

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/nZEDb

Paste this code, change HTPCGuides.com to your local ip address (e.g. 192.168.40.110). You can add multiple server names separated by spaces

server_name 192.168.40.110 HTPCGuides.com;

server { # Change these settings to match your machine. listen 80 default_server; server_name HTPCGuides.com; # These are the log locations, you should not have to change these. access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; # This is the root web folder for nZEDb, you shouldn't have to change this. root /var/www/nZEDb/www/; index index.html index.htm index.php; # Everything below this should not be changed unless noted. location ~* \.(?:ico|css|js|gif|inc|txt|gz|xml|png|jpe?g) { expires max; add_header Pragma public; add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; } location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrites; } location ^~ /covers/ { # This is where the nZEDb covers folder should be in. root /var/www/nZEDb/resources; } location @rewrites { rewrite ^/([^/\.]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/? /index.php?page=$1&id=$2&subpage=$3 last; rewrite ^/([^/\.]+)/([^/]+)/?$ /index.php?page=$1&id=$2 last; rewrite ^/([^/\.]+)/?$ /index.php?page=$1 last; } location /admin { } location /install { } location ~ \.php$ { include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; # Uncomment the following line and comment the .sock line if you want to use TCP. #fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; # The next two lines should go in your fastcgi_params fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; } location /phpmyadmin { root /usr/share/; index index.php index.html index.htm; location ~ ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.php)$ { try_files $uri =404; root /usr/share/; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; } location ~* ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt))$ { root /usr/share/; } } location /phpMyAdmin { rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last; } }

Create the nginx log files

sudo mkdir -p /var/log/nginx

Make the log file writeable

sudo chmod 755 /var/log/nginx

Disable the default nginx site

sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Make nZEDb the default site for nginx

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/nZEDb /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/nZEDb

Restart php5-fpm

sudo service php5-fpm restart

Restart nginx

sudo service nginx restart

Add the pi user to the www-data group

sudo usermod -aG www-data pi

Install PHP

nZEDb now requires at least php 5.5 to function. If you are on wheezy you have to add the jessie repository. If you are on jessie skip down to installing the PHP goodness.

echo "deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie main contrib non-free rpi" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

Update repositories to include jessie

sudo apt-get update

Create a preferences file for the jessie repository to control it

sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences.d/jessie.pref

Paste these settings, -1 means it will only install from jessie when we use the -t switch in apt-get install

Package: * Pin: release n=jessie Pin-Priority: -1

Ctrl+X, Y and Enter to Save

Now you can install all the PHP goodness forcing Raspbian to install it from jessie.

Note: this installs a lot of libraries from Jessie which can cause conflicts when installing other software. I therefore recommend using the Raspberry Pi as an indexer be the sole job of that particular Raspberry Pi.

sudo apt-get install -t jessie php5 php5-cli php5-gd php-pear php5-mysql php5-curl php5-dev -y

For some reason php5 includes Apache so you will have to remove Apache2

sudo apt-get purge apache* -y sudo apt-get remove apache* -y sudo apt-get autoremove -y

Edit the main php file

sudo nano /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

Change the following settings:

The default execution time is 30 seconds, change it to 120 seconds

max_execution_time = 120

The Raspberry Pi has a small amount of memory, I am using the B+ version which has 512MB so I will limit the memory to 300MB. You are welcome to leave it at -1 so it uses maximum memory.

The 300M is not a typo, if you put in 300MB in either php ini file you will get an out of memory error when trying to run the scripts

memory_limit = 300M

Change your timezone from a list of timezones here. Remove the preceding ;

List of Timezones

date.timezone = YourLocalTimezone

Enable error logging (Needed when reporting bugs) should be already set

error_reporting = E_ALL

log errors, should also be set to on

log_errors = On

Add this line under log_errors so you have a log file location

error_log = php-errors.log

Close and save this file.

Make the same changes in nginx php file

For log_errors you will need to add the lines shown above to the php.ini file, for nginx edit this php file

sudo nano /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

Ctrl+X, Y and then Enter

Install php_yenc_decode

PHP decode is used to decode the yenc posts on usenet, it is the fastest and most efficient. If you are on Raspbian Jessie install this first

sudo apt-get install libboost-regex1.55-dev -y

Then install php_yenc_decode

cd ~/ git clone https://github.com/kevinlekiller/simple_php_yenc_decode cd simple_php_yenc_decode/ sh ubuntu.sh cd .. rm -rf simple_php_yenc_decode/

Install Memcached

This is only necessary if you are sharing with other users, if you will be the only one using it there is no point

Grab memcache to enable caching for php

sudo apt-get install memcached php5-memcached -y

You will enable this later in the Finishing up section

Install nZEDb

Git clone the latest nZEDb

sudo git clone https://github.com/nZEDb/nZEDb.git /var/www/nZEDb

Change ownership of the nZEDb installation to pi

sudo chown -R pi:www-data /var/www/nZEDb

Change permissions so nZEDb can put covers places, unpack rar files and execute stuff in general

Note: if you are using an external USB the covers and resources paths you may have them setup differently.

sudo chmod 777 /var/www/nZEDb/libs/smarty/templates_c sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/nZEDb/resources/covers/ sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/nZEDb/www/ sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/nZEDb/resources/nzb/ sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/nZEDb/resources/tmp/unrar/ sudo chmod 777 /var/lib/php5 sudo chmod 777 /var/lib/php5/sessions

Restart or you might get some preflight errors during the initial setup

I got php-json not supported Error and several Warnings , restarting made them disappear.

Restart nginx

sudo service nginx restart

Restart php-fpm

sudo service php5-fpm restart

Install unrar if you want to check for passworded releases

sudo apt-get install build-essential -y cd /tmp RARVERSION=$(wget -q http://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm -O - | grep unrarsrc | awk -F "[\"]" ' NR==1 {print $2}') wget $RARVERSION tar -xvf unrarsrc*.tar.gz cd unrar sudo make -j$(nproc) -f makefile sudo install -v -m755 unrar /usr/bin cd .. rm -R unrar* rm unrarsrc-*.tar.gz

The latest unrar is now installed

nZEDb Initial Setup Configuration

Point your browser to the box http://ip.address/install to start the Installation setup.

Time to do a pre-flight check

Everything should be fine, the warnings will usually disappear if you restart the webserver

Scroll down and click Set up the database

Database system is mysql

Hostname is localhost or 127.0.0.1

Port is 3306

Username is root

password is the MySQL password you chose during the MySQL installation

Database to connect to is nzedb

Click Setup Database

On to OpenSSL

Since this is a personal indexer we will skip over OpenSSL. Click Verify OpenSSL

It will say success, now it's usenet provider time. I use UsenetServer because they support compressed headers.

Click Setup news server connection

Enter your usenet provider server address, username and password.

Set the port to 563 or 443 if you are using SSL. Check off SSL.

Scroll down and click Test primary connection

Click Save Settings

Now it's time to set up an Admin. Enter a username and password, you also need an email address.

Click Create Admin User

Click Set file paths

If you are using an external USB storage for the covers and nzbs, set the paths here otherwise leave them as they are and click Set file paths

You succeeded! click admin home page to go to the administration page

You should see this login screen, enter the admin username and password you just created

Here is the admin page 🙂

Updating your Indexer

It is best to do a test to make sure the indexing scripts work correctly

In your admin page, click Settings -> Group and choose View

Enter teevee in the search field and click Go

In the Active column, click Activate, leave Backfill Deactivated for now

Back in Terminal, enter the scripts folder

cd /var/www/nZEDb/misc/update/

Run the script to download headers from the usenet group you enabled

php update_binaries.php

If everything looked normal, you can process the headers. This creates releases and nzb files from the headers you just downloaded

php update_releases.php 1 true

You can now go browse your TV category by clicking TV then All TV in your indexer's web interface, you should see some releases added in list view.

If it's all working, let's automate the process using Screen so you don't have to keep running these scripts manually.

First change these Site Settings

In the Admin page, click Site Settings -> Edit Site

Scroll down to 3rd Party Application Paths

Make the unrar path /usr/bin/unrar

Make yEnc type simple_php_yenc_decode

Scroll down to Release Settings

Change Minimum File Size to Make a release to 1

Change Delete Passworded and Delete Possibly Passworded Releases to Yes

Change Show Passworded releases to Don't show passworded or possibly passworded

If you don't plan on setting the predb to decrypt hashes then set Misc->Hashed Retention Hours to 1 and it will discard the releases after one hour

Scroll down to Post Process Settings

Change Lookup Par2 to yes

Change Add PAR2 contents to file contents to Yes

Scroll down to NFO Processing Settings

Change Lookup NFO to Yes

Scroll down to Post Process Additional Settings

If you want to ignore very tiny files (warning this may ignore books) change your Minimum Release Size to Post Process to 1

Set Check for Passworded Releasees to Deep (requires unrar)

Scroll down a bit further but remain in the same section

Set Extract RAR/ZIP using rarinfo to No

Scroll down to Usenet Settings

Change Use Compressed Headers to Yes

Scroll down to the bottom and click Save

Screen Script Method

This will automate the updating of releases and post processing

Install screen

sudo apt-get install screen -y

Go into the scripts folder

cd /var/www/nZEDb/misc/update/nix/screen/sequential

Screen is used to keep the shell running even after you have detached and exited from your SSH session

screen sh simple.sh

To detach the screen so it continues running in its shell, press Ctrl+A, let go, then press D

To reattach the screen list the screen session

screen -r

From here you can kill the script with Ctrl+C

You can also detach again using Ctrl+A, release and press D

Finishing touches

Enable Memcache

sudo nano /var/www/nZEDb/www/config.php

Add these lines at the bottom of the config file

// Enable memcache define('MEMCACHE_ENABLED', 'TRUE');

Tuning MySQL

You installed mysqltuner which can give suggestions about how to optimize your database

It is best to run this after the indexer has been running for a few days

Run it using this command.

mysqltuner

You will get some suggestions and you can search how to implement them

Usually it will involve editing the mysql.conf file

Make sure you stop running your scripts first or they will freeze

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

To save and exit the mysql configuration hit Ctrl+X, press Y and then enter

Restart MySQL for the configuration changes you made to take effect

sudo service mysql restart

Start your scripts again

Reinstall nZEDb

You may make some mistakes or want to start over with your nZEDb indexer, this is how I did it.

Change username to your username you use to log on with

sudo service apache2 stop sudo service nginx stop sudo rm -r /var/www/nZEDb/ cd /var/www/nZEDb sudo git clone https://github.com/nZEDb/nZEDb.git /var/www/nZEDb sudo chown pi:www-data /var/www/nZEDb

My nZEDb configuration guide should follow in the future, but this initial setup should get you indexing a few groups for personal usage.

Move the SQL Database

It is a good idea to move your nZEDb Mysql database

I will assume you have mounted a USB drive properly

Stop MySQL and Nginx temporarily

sudo service mysql stop sudo service nginx stop

Make a MySQL directory on your USB or SATA drive and change the owner to mysql

mkdir -p /mnt/usbstorage/mysql sudo chown -R mysql:mysql /mnt/usbstorage/mysql

Copy the database over

cp -r /var/lib/mysql/ /mnt/usbstorage/mysql

Change the MySQL configuration

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Find this line and adjust it to your USB storage path's mysql folder

datadir = /var/lib/mysql

Ctrl+X, Y and Enter

Restart MySQL and nginx