Usenet downloader

[Sources/Credits Methanoid & Fantasymick on NAS-central.org, Caveman on OpenFSG.com and DrChair at wl500g.info]

Note from author (Methanoid): I no longer recommend this method/program. It's been superceded by the more efficient NZBget, a guide for which is in the forums. Both are more efficient than SABnzbd+ which takes too much resource for a Linkstation (400mhz ARM models) to be usable.

This has been tested and works well on a ARM9 Linkstation Live. Should work on others. We are using HellaNZB which is a NZB-based usenet "leech" client which also PAR checks and un-archives the files you have downloaded.

=Prerequisites=

There are 2 options:


 * Open_Stock_Firmware/jtymod + bootstrapping to the optware feed
 * Category:FreeLink

=Stock firmware/jtymod=

Installation
ipkg update ipkg install py24-hellanzb (or py25-hellanzbd if you want to use Python 2.5 rathern than 2.4)

This installs Python, HellaNZB and all the dependencies such as Twisted, RAR, Par2Cmdline and the faster YEnc decoder

Configuration
You can edit the config file now to get it set up for your provider etc

cd /opt/etc vi hellanzb.conf You need to change the settings to match those of your usenet provider (username, password, server,number of connections). Remember, the Linkstation is a NAS box not a high spec PC so don't be too greedy on the number of connections as it might actually make it go slower. For example, I can happily max out a 4Mbit line with 4 connections. Try different numbers and see how you get on.

defineServer(id = 'your usenet', hosts = [ 'yourusenet:119' ],
 * 1) Set both the username and password to 'None' (without the quotes) if your
 * 2) usenet server does not require authorization
 * 1) hosts = [ 'news.changeme.com', 'morenews.changeme.com:8000' ],

username = 'your username', password = 'your password',
 * 1) username = None, # no auth
 * 2) password = None,

connections = 4,

Hellanzb.PREFIX_DIR = '/mnt/disk1/shared/download'
 * 1) Important locations

A further important change is to fix the permissions (you want to be able to move files from the download directory presumably?) so change Hellanzb.UMASK = 0022 to Hellanzb.UMASK = 0000

Now there should be hellanzb.py and your hellanzb.conf there. Now you can fire up hellanzb either from command line or from script.

cd /opt/bin python hellanzb.py -D (or python25 hellanzb.py -D if running Python 2.5)

The -D makes it run in Daemon mode, i.e it runs in the background until stopped.

or you can run via script. Unfortunately the script needs some changes before use vi /opt/etc/init.d/S71hellanzb

Change it to read

nice /opt/bin/hellanzb.py -D
 * 1) !/bin/sh

Then check/fix the permissions/ownership and run it (first time only, it will autostart with the Linkstation in future!)

cd /opt/etc/init.d chown root /opt/etc/init.d/S71hellanzb chmod ugo+rx /opt/etc/init.d/S71hellanzb sh S71hellanzb

If everything went well hellanzb is running and will create the necessary sub-dirs in the dir you created

/mnt/disk1/shared/download /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb/daemon.current /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb/daemon.queue /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb/daemon.postponed /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb/daemon.temp /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb/daemon.processing /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb/daemon.working

Just pop your NZB file in the /mnt/disk1/shared/download/nzb/daemon.queue dir and hellanzb will start downloading and pop the unarchived resulting files in your destination directory.

You can monitor (without a web frontend) by typing python hellanzb.py status

Adding a webfrontend
Realistically you will probably want a web based frontend. Hellahella doesn't seem to want to run, Zussaweb looks pretty for monitoring downloads but the upload NZB and Newzbin ID imports don't work for me. I used Lighttpd but you could use a 2nd instance of Apache or maybe piggyback on the Apache that runs the LS's web interface but it didn't work for me. I chose HellaPHP as it worked 100%, required minimal configuration and the author was prepared to amend it to work 100% on my Linkstation setup. He's also adding some more functionality in future like password protection etc and a new look.

ipkg update ipkg install lighttpd php-fcgi You'll need to configure (of course) vi /opt/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf change into "mod_fastcgi", change url.access-deny            = ( "~", ".inc" ) into url.access-deny            = ( "~", ".inc", ".sqlite" ) change into fastcgi.server            = ( ".php" =>                               ( "localhost" => (                                  "socket" => "/tmp/php-fastcgi.socket",                                   "bin-path" => "/opt/bin/php-fcgi"                                 ) )                           ) Give some thought as to where you want to have your webpages. I like mine accessible to my Windows PCs so that I can edit directly in Frontpage or whatever but in this case I won't change the defaults.. Also you may need to open a port to the webserver if you want to have your HellaPHP available remotely over the internet. Now you are ready to start lighttpd by /opt/etc/init.d/S80lighttpd
 * 1)                               "mod_fastcgi",
 * 1) fastcgi.server            = ( ".php" =>
 * 2)                               ( "localhost" =>
 * 3)                                   "socket" => "/tmp/php-fastcgi.socket",
 * 4)                                   "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/php"
 * 1)                                   "bin-path" => "/usr/local/bin/php"

Download and unpack HellaPHP. Change the values of $disk and $download_nzb_path in config.php to match your download and NZB directories Now you can use the interface at http://linkstation:8081/hella/ (or wherever you've popped the HellaPHP index.php and other files)

Security
You might have noticed that HellaPHP has no security. Anyone who knows the IP of the machine you have it running on can view your downloads, interfere with yours and start their own. After tinkering with the PHP files to provide security I found a much simpler solution. You can configure the lighttpd webserver software to protect any page or directory you want with a password.

Go into /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled (it might be /opt/etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled in certain configurations). Enable the mod-auth module with

ln -s ../conf-available/10-auth.conf 10-auth.conf

Now edit the /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf (or /opt/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf). Make sure that you have the module "mod_auth" in the server.modules section and add the lines

auth.debug = 2 auth.backend = "plain" auth.backend.plain.userfile = "/home/lighttpd/.lighttpdpassword"

auth.require = ( "/hella/" => ( "method" => "basic", "realm" => "Password protected area", "require" => "user=changeuser" ) )

Put in whatever user name you want instead of "changeuser".

Now create (or edit) the "/home/lighttpd/.lighttpdpassword" file. You can use any file you want as long as it's accessible by the lighttpd process.

Add the line

changeuser:changeme

to the file (with the user name you used in the lighttpd.conf file and the password you want).

Restart the lighttpd

lighttpd

and you're done. Your web interface is now password protected.

= Freelink =