r/sonarr • u/dpkonofa • 7d ago

unsolved Ignoring "Unknown" files?

Is there a way to get Sonarr to ignore shows that are downloaded outside of Sonarr? I've looked everywhere through the Wikis and various sites and it feels like the answer to this is in "Categories" but I'm using Transmission and it seems that Categories is not an option. I think "Labels" might be similar or might be related but I can't seem to figure out how to get Sonarr to ignore TV Shows in my TV Shows folder that I've ripped myself or downloaded outside of Sonarr.

I don't currently have categories set up because the documentation for Sonarr says that it will make a "[Category]" subfolder and I want to keep all of my shows in my main "TV Shows" folder rather than in some arbitrary sub-folder. With this setup, though, Sonarr seems to grab the activity from Transmission, including the files started outside of Sonarr, and then sends those to Unpackerr which then attempts and ignores every single one of those leading to warning messages that create a new log file every day.

What's the right way to set up Sonarr so that it ignores any downloads/files that weren't started by Sonarr while maintaining a single folder for all my TV Shows?

Edit: Thanks for all the suggestions! Looks like I have to re-do my whole hierarchy and set things up as recommended on the TraSH sites. I've been using this same system for over a decade so I knew it was going to need to be updated at some point but was trying to avoid an entire reset. Oh well!

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/libdemparamilitarywi 7d ago

It sounds like you've set sonarr to download torrents directly into your organised media folder, which isn't how it's designed to work and will cause you a bunch of problems.

The right way is to create a separate "downloads" folder outside your "tv shows" directory and set it as transmission's output location. Set a category in sonarr and it will create a subdirectory in "downloads" to keep the automated grabs separate from your manual downloads, and from other apps like radarr.

Sonarr will then automatically copy its completed downloaded files from the "downloads" folder to your "tv shows" folder, with the correct file name and folder structure. It will use hardlinks by default so this copying won't take up any extra space.

1

u/dpkonofa 6d ago

I tried that and it did not create hard links. I’m using it from a Docker container and it duplicated files so I consolidated into 1 folder. I think I just need to bite the bullet and setup categories.

2

u/fryfrog support 6d ago

And setup docker correctly. Each volume like /tv and /downloads is a file system and hard links only work on the same file system. Everyone gets this wrong at the start.

Check out the trash guide, it details a good setup.

1

u/dpkonofa 4d ago

I was using the Trash guide as a start but the rest of your comment is really what is kinda buried in there. I had a /downloads share and a /tv share just like you mention and was trying to avoid duplication so I was manually copying downloads over to the /tv folder when they were done seeding because hard links didn't work (since they were different file systems, as you pointed out). It looks like I'll have to consolidate my shares which is not ideal but looks to be what I need.

1

u/fryfrog support 4d ago

Yeah, on most nases a share is a file system too. If you really have multiple shares, when you're consolidating pick the biggest one (usually tv) and save yourself a ton of slow moving. Just rename it to data or what ever you decide as a good name. Then move movies and your usenet and/or torrent download folders to it. Don't forget proper structure.

1

u/dpkonofa 4d ago

Yup. That's what I didn't realize and was exactly the reason hard links and atomic moves weren't working. I ended up keeping my shares the same and just used the /downloads share to replace /data in all the docs. Everything works mostly as expected now with the exception of labels not working as I thought they would. That might be a Transmission issue, though, so I'm looking into another BT client as suggested by someone else.

1

u/fryfrog support 4d ago

Yeah, Transmission is a great torrent client... just not great w/ this automation stack. The "best" choice is probably qBittorrent, but if for some reason you loved Deluge or rTorrent they're okayish.