Installing SABnzbd on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

SABnzbd does a great job of easing the pain of leveraging Newzbin NZB files for liberating compressed multi-part binaries from Usenet. This short guide details the process of installing the latest version of SABnzbd on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. Although we'll rely on packages available in the official Ubuntu apt repositories for this how-to it's worth noting that if you're using either Debian Etch or an older release of Ubuntu that the install process is the same. Copy and paste these commands into a terminal for usenet.

Installing dependencies with apt-get

$ sudo apt-get install python2.5 python-cheetah python-cherrypy unzip par2 unrar python-yenc python-feedparser wget

Getting and installing SABnzbd from source

$ cd ~/
$ wget http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/sabnzbd/SABnzbd-0.2.5.tar.gz
$ tar xfvz SABnzbd-0.2.5.tar.gz
$ cd SABnzbd-0.2.5/
$ sudo python setup.py install

Making working directories and moving things into place

Here we'll make a couple of directories in our home folder that SABnzbd can use to do it's work.

$ mkdir ~/usenet/complete/ -p
$ mkdir ~/usenet/session/
$ mkdir ~/usenet/watch/

We also need to copy the web interface templates from the source files we extracted

$ mv templates/ ~/usenet/

Final configuration

To finsh the setup lets copy and rename the SABnzbd.ini.sample configuration file in the source to the root of our home directory and edit it with nano.

$ mv SABnzbd.ini.sample ~/.sajavascript:void(0)bnzbd.ini
$ nano ~/.sabnzbd.ini

Here what your sabnzbd.ini may end up looking like:

__version__ = 016

[misc]
    ## host we should listen on, leave "" for localhost
    host = ""
    
    ## port we should listen on
    port = 8080
    
    ## username for the web-interface
    username = ""
    
    ## password for the web-interface
    password = ""
    
    ## web file dir for (custom) Cheetah templates and the default.css file
    web_dir = "/path/to/usenet/templates"
    
    ## dir to put downloads to, won't be created automatically
    download_dir = "/path/to/usenet/session"
    
    ## dir to put completed downloads to, won't be created automatically
    complete_dir = "/path/to/usenet/complete"
    
    ## If specified, .nzbs fetched by postid (or added by the dirscanner) will 
    ## be backed up to this readable/writeable dir
    nzb_backup_dir = ""
    
    ## dir to store cache and cookie files, windows users should
    ## leave this at .
    cache_dir = "/path/to/media/usenet/session"
    
    ## location of your log directory, "" to disable logging
    log_dir = "/path/to/usenet/session"
    
    ## dirscan directory
    ## SABnzbd will consume everything in that dir
    ## while trying to add it to the queue
    dirscan_dir = "/path/to/usenet/watch"
    
    ## Scheduling options
    ## Syntax: minute hour day action
    ##         1st argument must be 0-59 (minute)
    ##         2nd argument must be 0-24 (hour)
    ##         3rd argument must be 1-7 (day) or *
    ##         4th argument must be resume or pause
    ##
    ## e.g schedlines = 0 7 * pause, 0 21 * resume 
    ##     to pause SABnzbd at 7:00 and resume operation at 21:00
    schedlines = ,
    
    ## default options for dirscan added items
    ## 0 = None
    ## 1 = +Repair
    ## 2 = +Unpack
    ## 3 = +Delete
    dirscan_opts = 3
    
    ## Enable/disable filejoining
    ## 0 = Disabled
    ## 1 = Enabled
    enable_filejoin = 1
    
    ## Enable/disable unraring
    ## 0 = Disabled
    ## 1 = Enabled
    enable_unrar = 1
    
    ## Enable/disable unzipping
    ## 0 = Disabled
    ## 1 = Enabled
    enable_unzip = 1
    
    ## Enable/disable periodic queue saving
    ## 0 = Disabled
    ## 1 = Enabled
    ## Enable this on unstable systems
    enable_save = 1
    
    ## Enable/disable
    ## 0 = Disabled
    ## 1 = Enabled
    ## Enable to cleanup par2 files 
    ## (only if verifiying/repairing succeded)
    enable_par_cleanup = 1
    
    ## should we failover on yenc crc errors
    ## 0 = no
    ## 1 = yes
    fail_on_crc = 0
    
    ## should we download to group folders? 
    ## (i.e /my/download/dir/alt.bin.whatever/somepost/)
    ## 0 = no
    ## 1 = yes
    create_group_folders = 0
    
    ## bandwith limit
    ## 0 == ignore
    ## Slowdown factor, try values between 0.01 and 1.0.
    bandwith_limit = 0
    
    ## Cleanup List
    ## List of file_extensions that should be deleted
    ## Example: ".nfo," or ".nfo, .sfv"
    cleanup_list = ,
    
    ## Only get articles from topmost collection
    ## Enable for less memory usage
    ## Disable for more efficient downloading
    ## 0 = Disabled
    ## 1 = Enabled
    top_only = 1
    
    ## Automatically sort by average age
    ## 0 = No
    ## 1 = Yes
    auto_sort = 0
    
    ## Send group command before requesting articles
    ## 0 = No
    ## 1 = Yes
    send_group = 0
    
    ## Article cache limit
    ## 0 = Disable Cache
    ## -1 = Unlimited cache
    ## >0 = Maximum memory (in bytes) to use for cache
    cache_limit = 0
    
    ## Umask to use for directories/files
    umask = 755
    
[logging]
    ## max size of SABnzbd.log (in bytes)
    max_log_size = 5242880
    
    ## how many backups of SABnzbd.log to keep around
    log_backups = 5
    
    ## enable cherrypy logging
    ## 0 = no
    ## 1 = yes
    enable_cherrypy_logging = 1
    
## Fill in your servers here
## If your server doesn't need password auth set
## username and password to ''
## fillserver field must be 0 for non-fillservers (>0 otherwise)
[servers]
    [[server 0]]
       host = news.ngroups.net
       port = 119
       username = 
       password = 
       connections = 8
       fillserver = 0
#    [[server 1]]
#   host = news.myfillserver.com
#   port = 119
#   username = ""
#   password = "" 
#   connections = 8
#       fillserver = 1

## www.newzbin.com support
[newzbin]
    username = "username"
    password = "password"
    
    ## Place downloads into newzbin.com category folders
    ## 0 = No
    ## 1 = Root category only
    ## 2 = Root category + subcategory
    create_category_folders = 0

Test drive
Lets try and start SABnzbd

$ SABnzbd.py -f ~/.sabnzbd.ini

Now navigate to http://localhost:8080/sabnzbd and you should reach the web interface. If you don't then take a look at the output on the terminal and see if SABnzbd is complaining about not being able to find some of the working directories, you may need to go back and double check the paths you set in the sabnzbd.ini

The final countdown

If everything went okay with the test drive shutdown SABnzbd and restart it with the -d switch:

$ SABnzbd.py -f ~/.sabnzbd.ini -d

This will set SABnzbd running in background daemon mode. You can now close your terminal window and SABnzbd will continue to run in the background until you shut it down from the web interface.