Hello! I never used *arr stack, and was interested into it, but one thing is stopping me. I see a lot of articles like how it is Netflix (or any other ONLINE theater) replacement, but as I see it is not online. I see two big factors that stops me from trying seerr + jellyfin (and other stuff in between):
- You have two switch between those apps to search and then watch.
- You can’t watch media before it’s completely downloaded.
I imagine sitting on coach, searching for show. Then you want to watch some, and then you have to wait half an hour for full episode (or even season?) to download. And then you can realize that you not into it and have to repeat all the steps above. Is my expectation correct? Please don’t consider this as negative opinion. Just want to know what to expect. I remember an app called “popcorn time” that does not have that flaws.
UPD: Thanks for replies guys! I read it all. I will deploy the stack some day, but right now I will keep my current setup (which is qbittorent-nox, some public web jackett instance local for my country, and just simple smb shared folder). I also have some selfhosted debris alternative torrserver for times I don’t have enough space to download full show.


Anyone has a good tutorial on how to setup a complete are stack with docker on Linux?
Already one that quickly explains what arr does what would be helpful. I know there is radarr, sonarr, bazarr and loads more and I have no idea which system does what or how to connect them.
I’ve found tutorials about individual pieces, but those are of little help
And then the biggest one: I have jellyfin, I’d like to use it over the internet, bit I need to have that obviously VERY safe. How to do that? I know of a popular reverse proxy for those things (name escapes me for a sec) but again, the tutorials I’ve found were lacking at best.
I’m looking for something where I can write a bunch of docker files and start it all up from scratch on Linux, is that possible?
You can go with this tutorial - https://trash-guides.info/
docker images are available for the arr stack at https://www.linuxserver.io/our-images
radarr and sonarr asks prowlarr to search torrents
then radarr and sonarr asks qbittorrent to download the torrents
jellyfin grabs metadata and shows them for you. if you have seerr installed it manages searches with radarr and sonarr.
if you want truly unmanaged setup. setup trakt and import watchlist in radarr and sonarr. Whenever you add to watchlist in trakt it automatically gets downloaded in radarr/sonarr.
I can recommend Yet Another Media Server the only down side is that you won’t really learn how to use and manage containers (docker or podman). But this solution is quick and easy it also helps setup a qbittorent container with a VPN. For downloading Linux ISOs. ;D
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
I don’t have any links on hand, but there a post either in this community or !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com that explains how to setup a full arr stack in docker. I’ll see if I can find it in the morning.
Here’s a quick and dirty explanation for your other questions. Sonarr and radarr manage your media. Sonarr handles TV, radarr handles movies. That is the only difference. Without a download client (e.g. qBittorrent) they don’t do anything. Jellyfin is how the downloaded (qBittorrent) and managed (*arrs) media gets played on your screen.
I’m foggy on the details, but jellyfin has specific vulnerabilities that make it not recommended to expose publicly. If you must watch remotely, set up a VPN. If you don’t to manually setup wireguard you can use tailscale, which itself uses wireguard, but it does the hard part for you