SABnzbd in FreeBSD Jail

So today I installed and configured a usenet client, named SABnzbd. This software is perfect for downloading usenet binaries. For more information about the software, you'd better check out http://sabnzbd.org for a better understand about the features of SABnzbd. I'll start off with giving the information I used to create my jail:

Jail information

property	value
Jailname	sabnzbdplus-prd
IPv4 address	192.168.1.102
type	standard
vanilla	FALSE (unchecked)

Getting shell access to the jail

First of all, ssh access should already be configured on the FreeNAS machine. If this is already the case, start an ssh session to the FreeNAS machine. on FreeBSD or Linux, this can be done via a terminal, on windows you will need something like putty.

Once the session is established, run jls to get a list of all the jails present on the server.

In order to get into the sabnzbdplus-PRD jail, you would want to run jexec 9 csh.

Installing the software

The software can be easily installed via the portstree. As this is a new jail, the portstree should first be fetched and extracted into the jail: portsnap fetch extract will do that for us. After the portstree is extracted, sabnzbd can be installed by navigating to the /usr/ports/news/sabnzbdplus folder and executing make install clean. The default config should be OK.

After the installation is finnished, the following will be displayed:

It is important to note the changes which are done by the port:

• group '_sabnzbd' with gid '350'.
• user '_sabnzbd' with uid '350'
• rc script is located in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/sabnzbd (this script will be executed each time the jail boots up)
• default port sabnzbd will listen on: '8080'

By having a quick look at the sabnzbd startup script ( cat /usr/local/etc/rc.d/sabnzbd ) we also get the following information:

• default config dir = /usr/local/sabnzbd
• default user sabnzbd will run as = '_sabnzbd'
• default group sabnzbd will run as = '_sabnzbd'
• python script which is the actual program = /usr/local/bin/SABnzbd.py

Config sabnzbd to start at boot

Add the following line into /etc/rc.conf:

enable_sabnzbd="YES"

Start the sabnzbd daemon

The software is installed, the configuration is done so that sabnzbd will start automatically at boot time. For now, sabnzbd should be started manually. To do this, execute service sabnzbd start.

Allowing other devices to have access to the Web UI

This shouldn't give any problems, Though, it is still necessary to modify the sabnzbd config file in order to allow other machines on the network to have access to the web interface as well. As said earlier, the config file is located in /usr/local/sabnzbd'.

cd /usr/local/sabnzbd

ee sabnzbd.ini

In this file search for "host = localhost" and modify that line so that it becomes "host = 0.0.0.0". Save the changes and restart the sabnzbd service: service sabnzbd restart. This will allow any device on the same subnet as the sabnzbd server to actually access the sabnzbd web UI, The sabnzbd quick-start will help you set up SABnzbd, like adding a usenet server, adding a username and password to prevent everyone on your LAN to access the web UI,...

Storage

All downloads (usenet as well as torrents) will be placed on a dedicated dataset.

All steps done to have this working setup will be shown here. In a future post on setting up transmission (torrent client), the very same dataset will be used for storing the completed downloads.

Creating a dataset

So first of all, a dataset should be created. This is done via the FreeNAS Web UI. Navigate to the storage tab, and select the zpool where the new dataset should be created and click on the create ZFS Datasetbutton:

After the dataset is created, modify the permissions to that they look like the following:

Now this dataset can be mounted inside the jail. To do this, open up the FreeNAS web UI and navigate to the jails tab. Select the sabnzbdplus jail and click on the 'Add storage' button.

Then, point the source to the newly created dataset 'Download'

Note: the value behind 'Source' is as how the FreeNAS box would see it in its filesystem. The value behind 'Destination' is path how the jail would see it!

Additionally, the permissions should also be set so that the _sabnzbd user (from inside the jail) actually has permissions on the mounted folder inside the jail. Since the dataset (in the FreeNAS web UI) has the user 'media' set as owner, and the group 'media' set as group owner, the _sabnzbd user should be added to the group 'media' inside the jail. In order to get to know the user ID and group ID of the media user in FreeNAS, check the 'Account' section in the FreeNAS web UI. In my case, those are '816'.

Now, inside the jail a new group called 'media' should be created with groupID '816' and the _sabnzbd user should be added to that group. This will allow the local _sabnzbd user to actually make use of the mounted dataset inside the jail:
pw add group -n media -g 816 -M _sabnzbd

Folder layout

In order to keep the downloads a little bit organised, the following commands were executed to create a simple folder layout:
mkdir -p /media/sabnzbd/to\ download
mkdir -p /media/sabnzbd/to\ download/nzedb
mkdir -p /media/sabnzbd/to\ download/couchpotato
mkdir -p /media/sabnzbd/to\ download/sickrage
mkdir -p /media/sabnzbd/to\ download/headphones

This should give the following structure (ignore the folder about transmission, they are used by the transmission jail):

Now, the correct permissions on the created folders should be applied so that the '_sabnzbd' user and 'media' group are owners on the folders and both have permission to read, write and execute:

chown -R _sabnzbd:media /media/sabnzbd
chmod -R 775 /media/sabnzbd

Verifying permissions

In order to see if the chown and chmod commands are applied well, a quick ls -alR /media/sabnzbd could be run:

SABnzbd configuration

Now that al permissions are set, the last step is to configure SABnzbd. Open up a webbrowser and navigate to http://192.168.1.102:8080/sabnzbd and click on Config (top right corner of the page). From here, the configuration can be done. It is advised to check all properties on the SABnzbd wiki as the information is very good in line with how the configuration appears in SABnzbd.

NOTE: Beware that all passwords are saved in plaintext in the SABnzbd config file located in /usr/local/sabnzbd/sabnzbd.ini

The most important thing to configure is the "Completed Download folder", "Permissions for completed downloads" and the "Watched Folder" (both can be found in the config > Folders > User Folders).

They should be set to /media/sabnzbd/downloaded, 775 and /media/sabnzbd/to download

Save the configuration and restart sabnzbd.

Final test

Now all configuration is done, SABnzbd should work:

• It watches the folder /media/sabnzbd/to download, so if an .nzb file is placed on the dataset Download/sabnzbd/to download SABnzbd should notice this and import the nzb to be downloaded.
• After the download is finished, SABnzbd will check the files with quickpar. If necessary, the damaged/corrupted files will be fixed automatically if sufficient par blocks are available.
• The archives will also be extracted into the given "Completed Download folder", /media/sabnzbd/downloaded.

NOTE: The following commands should all be executing in the FreeNAS shell, and not inside the SABnzbd jail.

cp /mnt/testfile.nzb /mnt/Fritketel/Download/sabnzbd/to\ download

As shown above, after the copy of the nzb file, sabnzbd automatically started downloading.

And after the download is completed, it is placed nicely into /mnt/Fritketel/Download/sabnzbd/downloaded folder on FreeNAS.

Lock SABnzbd configuration

To prevent that others can read or modify the SABnzbd configuration via the web UI, modify the file located in /usr/local/sabnzbd/sabnzbd.ini and alter the following line: "config_lock = 0" to "config_lock = 1"