NOOB guide to Automatically grab torrents with flexget

I did not create this I was reading how the old forum would be offline as of september 1 and all post's would be lost. After reading this post I thougth it would be a waste as the original poster put alot of time into the write up. Hope the original poster does not mind.
NOOB guide to Automatically grab torrents with flexget

Postby magnets99 » Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:41 am
So, you have openmediavault (OMV) running, it saves all your media for you to stream around the house/office/interwebs
you have transmission running, meaning you can get OMV to download your favorite shows for you
But... you still have to manually find the torrent files and send them to OMV for downloading.
Not such a big deal, but if you have a lot of regular programs you like to watch, this can be time consuming.
If your favorite torrent site offers rss, you can use a program called flexget to read that feed, select from the feed the programs you like the most, and then downoad them.

this guide is how to install flexget.
it is aimed at people who are new to linux
you will probably need some windows knowlege though.

First of all, you need to have OpenMediaVault up and running and be able to see at least one share (with write persmissions) from your windows box.
I also really reccomend you do NOT use a flash drive for your OS, though if you are already running transmission with OMV you will have probably found out that OMV eats flash memory for breakfast

Second remember that linux/debian/unix is CaSe sEnSiTive and that it will punish you for any and all spelling mistakes (sometimes instantly, sometimes many hours later as you are crying out for beer and an ok button).

got it? great.

now were are going to be working in the OMV web gui, windows and the Linux shell, to work with the linux shell you will need a telnet client

download Putty from here
http://www.chiark.greenend.org…atham/putty/download.html
The putty.exe will do fine
Handy tip for putty, Ctrl+shift+c for copy and a single right click for paste
ctrl+c for cancel operation

ok, here we go:

requirements:

OMV NOT RUNNING ON A FLASH DRIVE
bit torrent up and running with a tested watch folder
windows share

in the OMV web gui, click on ssh and enable ssh
leave everything else blank

now my watch folder lives in a folder called Data, inside a share caled dropzone
from windows the path would be
\\openmediavault\dropzone\watch

remember this for later

run putty.exe
in the box marked host name type the ip address of OMV
when it logs in, use root as the username and whatever you chose during install as the password
You should see something like this

Linux openmediavault 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Mon Oct 3 04:15:24 UTC 2011 i686


    The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
    the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
    individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.


    Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
    permitted by applicable law.
    Last login: Sat Jan 28 12:50:59 2012 from 192.168.150.1
    root@openmediavault:~#

Next we install python

see if you've already installed it via another plugin by typing one or all of the following

python -V
    python2.5 -v
    python2.6 -v
    python2.7 -v
    python25 -v
    python26 -v
    python27 -v

if you get anything other than command not found, it's installed

if not, we need to install it, type

apt-get install python2.6

type y to additional disk space

now type

python2.6 -v

and you should get loads of stuff

type

exit()

to actually get out of the python program (which we entered when you typed python2.6 -v)
ok next up is installing easy_install, type

apt-get install python-setuptools

then we can install flexget (yay!) type

easy_install flexget

once installed, verify by typing

flexget -V

(note the capital V here)
i'm running 1.0r2688 but depending on when you are doing this, you may get a later version than me.

next up is to move the default locaiton of the flexget config file so we can edit it from windows.
find out where it currently is

which flexget

it should be

/usr/local/bin/flexget

but we are going to put the config file in the Dropzone folder (the folder that also has my watch folder in it)

to find that path in linux we go to the openmediavault web gui
click on Shared folders and it's wrriten in Directory, my one says
/media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data

now, i got a bit confused here, there is a difference between the path and the share
on windows i vist \\openmediavault\dropzone\
but "dropzone" is the NAME OF THE SHARE on a filer called openmediavault
on openmediavault itself, that 'folder' does not exist (as it's not a folder its the name of a share)

So, in windows i go to \\openmediafiler\dropzone and i create a new text file called config.yml
(you should do this now too)
but in linux/openmeidavault the actual path is

/media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.yml

and not

/media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/dropzone/config.yml

hope that makes sense.

so anyway, create a blank text file called config.yml and pop it in the folder (or share) that contains your watch folder (not actually in your watch folder, the one above it).
ok, now we tell flexget where to get the config file, in putty type

flexget -c /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.yml

obviously change my path shown above to match your path.
you should get an error similar to

2012-01-28 15:09 INFO     manager                       Running database cleanup.
    2012-01-28 15:09 WARNING  manager                       There are no feeds to execute, please add some feeds

if you get

2012-01-28 15:09 INFO     manager                       Tried to read from: /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.ym3
    2012-01-28 15:09 CRITICAL main                          Failed to find configuration file /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.ym3
    2012-01-28 15:09 INFO     manager                       Tried to read from: /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.ym3
    2012-01-28 15:09 CRITICAL main                          Failed to find configuration file /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.ym3

you have typed the path wrong (yes you have, seriously, i spent like an hour doing this. Its not a permisions problem, you have the path wrong ok). Don't forget you can paste with a right click in putty

next up is configuring the flexget config.yml
there are many resources about this; start here
http://flexget.com/wiki/Configuration

its a huge topic and has many options so i'm not going to go into it in this post.
my test config file looks like this

feeds:
tv-shows:
rss: http://my.favoritedownloadsite.com/rss. ... rect&cat=7
series:
- hot geeks and why they are awesome
- futurama
- some other show i like
download: /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/watch/

you can even run flexget now and see what would happen, it has a test scenario where it looks through the config file and tells you what would happen
type

flexget -c /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.ym --test

ok once you are happy that your flexget config is correct, we need to tell openmediavault to run flexget every n minutes.
Linux does this via a utility called cron, if you're used to windows, think of it as task scheduler.
luckily its very easy to set up, we can do it in OpenmediaVaults web gui

click on cronjobs
click on add

now i get mine to run every 5 minutes, so that means i set minute to 5 and tick the box Every N minute
i leave the others.
user i set as root
i set the command to
flexget -c /media/9cefe750-d523-42a3-b9b8-8a03a1a3a2fd/data/config.yml

and to make sure it works i'm going to get it to send an email (i'll turn it off once i'm happy)
this option only works if you've set your email up and working ok from omv

Ok
you now have flexget, watching for the files you are seeking, which then saves them automatically to your watch folder where transmission will download them.
yay

a note:
I'm a beginner linux user so its likley that what i've done here is not best practice. I'm pretty sure i shouldn't have done everything using the root user, and i should have put it in a jail (though i wasn't sure what would happen after a reboot)
so if somoene wants to comment on how i should do it. please feel free
also, if somoene can reccomend a better tool than flexget (and why it's better) please do post.

/media/16bacc3f-3b07-4f97-9e2d-d5f2db20b753/media
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