README

Stable: Testing: Dev:

nZEDb automatically scans usenet, similar to the way web spiders scan the internet. It does this by collecting usenet headers and temporarily storing them in a database until they can be collated into posts/releases. It provides a web-based front-end providing search, browse, and programmable (API) functionality.

This project is a fork of the open source usenet indexer newznab plus: https://github.com/anth0/nnplus

nZEDb improves upon the original design, implementing several new features including:

Optional multi-threaded processing (header retrieval, release creation, post-processing etc)
Advanced search features (name, subject, category, post-date etc)
Intelligent local caching of metadata
Optional sharing of comments with other nZEDb sites
Optional tmux (terminal session multiplexing) engine that provides thread, database and performance monitoring
Image and video samples
SABnzbd/NZBGet integration (web, API and pause/resume)
CouchPotato integration (web and API)

Prerequisites

System Administration know-how. nZEDb is not plug-n-play software. Installation and operation requires a moderate amount of administration experience. nZEDb is designed and developed with GNU/Linux operating systems. Certain features are not available on other platforms. An experienced Windows administrator should be able to run nZEDb on a Windows OS.

Hardware

4GB RAM, 2 cores(threads) and 20GB disk space minimum.

If you wish to use more than 5 threads a quad core CPU is beneficial. While nZEDb can run with these minimums, you will have very limited performance.

The overall speed of nZEDb is largely governed by performance of the database. As many of the database tables should be held within system RAM as possible. See Database Section below.

Software

PHP (current actively supported versions and various modules)
MariaDB 10.0 (strongly preferred database choice)

The installation guides have more detailed software requirements.

Database

Most (if not all) distributions ship MariaDB with a default configuration that will perform well on a Raspberry Pi. If you wish to store more that 500K releases, these default settings will quickly lead to poor performance. Expect this.

As a general rule of thumb the database will need a minimum of 1-2G buffer RAM for every million releases you intend to store. That RAM should be assigned to either of these two parameters:

key_buffer_size (MyISAM)
innodb_buffer_pool_size (InnoDB)

Use mysqltuner.pl for recommendations for these and other important tuner parameters. Also refer to the project's wiki page: https://github.com/nZEDb/nZEDb/wiki/Database-tuning. This is particularly important before you start any large imports or backfills.

MariaDB is normally shipped using MyISAM tables by default. This is fine for running with one or a few threads and is a good way to start using nZEDb. You should migrate to the InnoDB table format if nZEDB is configured to use one of the following:

thread counts > 5
tmux mode

This conversion script is helpful:

misc/testing/DB/convert_mysql_tables.php

Before converting to InnoDB be sure to set:

innodb_file_per_table

Installation

Specific installation guides for common Operating Systems can be found on the nZEDb github wiki: https://github.com/nZEDb/nZEDb/wiki/Install-Guides

Getting Started

After you have installed nZEDb and gone throught the initial web-based installation steps (step1, step2 etc.), then review the settings on the Admin-Site-Edit page.

Most of the default settings are fine, however some will need changing.

The two amazon keys and the associate tag are needed to fetch anything from amazon. The trakt.tv key is optional, but it can help fetching extra information when tvrage and the NFO fails.

Setting the paths to unrar/ffmpeg/mediainfo is optional, but unrar is recommended for retrieving release names and finding passwords. It's best to get the very latest versions of these utilities, whatever comes as default with your distro is often not good enough.

If you have set the path to unrar, deep rar inspection is recommended.

Compressed headers are recommended if your provider supports XFeature gzip compression. (XFeature GZIP compression, originally by wafflehouse : link on pastebin was removed)

Once you have set all the options, you can enable one or two groups and start with the simple screen script running in single-threaded mode. Look in the misc/update directory; update_binaries.php downloads usenet articles into the local database; update_releases.php attempts to group these articles into releases and create NZB files.

Once you've become more familiar with the application, enable a few more groups and if needed enable multi-threading (with low thread counts i.e. < 5). We do not recommend enabling all the groups unless you have performant hardware and good database tuning knowledge.

If you want an automated way of doing this, you can use one of the scripts in the nix, or tmux folder. The Windows scripts may work.

To clean up the release names, check out fixReleaseNames.php in misc/testing.

For an overview of a complete process, look at the misc/update/nix/screen/sequential/threaded.sh script.

Advanced users may be interested to try the tmux version of nZEDb in either Complete Sequential, Sequential or non-Sequential (fully parallel) mode. Before starting, review the tmux settings in Site-Edit -> Tmux Settings.

Support

There is a web forum were you can search for issues previously encountered by others: https://forums.nzedb.com/

Also on IRC: irc.synirc.net #nZEDb

Note

The nZEDb team have no control over and are not responsible for what is posted on the usenet. Best efforts are made to avoid hazardous content (e.g. virii, malware etc) by nZEDb's automated processess. If you find any objectionable content, please direct any complaints to your usenet provider.

The Team

Kevin123, jonnyboy, Miatrix, zombu2, Codeslave, sinfuljosh, ugo, Whitelighter, Bart39, archer(niel), ThePeePs, ruhllatio, DariusIII

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Licenses

nZEDb is GPL v3. See /docs/LICENSE.txt for the full license.

Other licenses by various software used by nZEDb:

Git.php => MIT and GPL v3

Net_NNTP => W3C

PHPMailer => GNU Lesser General Public License

forkdaemon-php => Barracuda Networks, Inc.

getid3 => GPL v3

password_compat => Anthony Ferrara

rarinfo => Modified BSD

smarty => GNU Lesser General Public v2.1

AmazonProductAPI.php => Sameer Borate

GiantBombAPI.php => MIT

TMDb PHP API class => BSD

TVDB PHP API => Moinax

TVMaze PHP API => JPinkney

Zip file creation class => No license specified.

simple_html_dom.php => MIT

All external libraries will have their full licenses in their respective folders.

Some licenses might have been missed in this document for various external software, they will be included in their respectful folders.

nzedb / nzedb

Maintainers

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