Important or Recent Updates
| Historic Updates | Date |
|---|---|
| First version of the setup | 01/08/2021 |
| Updated the general formatting Gave the guide a once over with LanguageTool | 14/03/2022 |
| Added ‘books’ | 15/07/2022 |
| DSM7.2 Update for Container Manager | 22/04/2023 |
| Adjusted screenshot for DSM7.2.1 | 30/04/2024 |
| Amended the first section of this guide to accommodate those using NVMe volumes. | 31/10/2024 |
Container Manager Install
When installing Container Manager for the first time it will automatically create your docker shared folder, so there is no need to create this manually. If you have an NVMe or SATA SSD volume make sure you install the package to it for optimal performance.
Docker path adjustments for NVMe or SATA SSD volumes
If you are using a NVMe or SSD volume you will need to adjust the storage volume shown in each guide for any /docker share to the correct volume number for your fast storage. The /data share remains on your larger hard drive volume.
For example for Plex it would look like this assuming your volume numbers are volume 1 (hard drives) volume 2 (NVMe/SSD)
volumes:
- /volume2/docker/plex:/config
- /volume1/data/media:/data/mediaMedia Folder Set up
When passing folders into a Docker container each mount point is treated as its own filesystem.
This means when moving files between two mount points Docker will do a Copy, then Delete operation. Meaning you are creating a full duplicate of a file while its being ‘moved’ creating unwanted disk IO and temporarily taking up double the space. (especially when seeding torrents after copying to the final folders)
In order to avoid this we need to set up a clean directory structure that allows us to just have one folder or share mounted to our containers.
If you are starting with these guides and have existing media you may need to move around your data in line with this setup, I recommend creating all the folders below using File station to avoid potential permission issues later.
Directory Structure
With this setup all of your media will sit within a single share, you can call this whatever you want but in all the guides it will be called ‘data’. If you change its name you will need to adjust any steps or compose files from my guides accordingly.
Please note: it is important that you make a decision around whether to use lowercase or Uppercase folder names, I recommend just stick with lowercase everywhere as it simplifies setup. If you decide to go against this ensure you change all the volume maps in the guides to match the case! Otherwise, containers and you will be very confused.
Open up the control panel then in ‘Shared Folder’ hit ‘Create’
Screen 1 – fill out the name as ‘data’ and use Volume 1 for its storage location (Your main hard drive volume)
Screen 2 – we leave the folder unencrypted and don’t enable write once features
Screen 3 – Enable data checksums as this will help catch any issues with files during data scrubbing. (These options will not appear if you have ext4 file system – If you are starting this with a clean NAS go back change to BTRFS if possible)
Screen 4 – just click next past the summary
On the final screen we don’t need to change any user permissions yet, we will do that in the second guide.
The Sub-folders
Now we have our main ‘data’ directory we need to create a number of sub-folders to hold our media and downloaded files. You can amend this depending on whether you are using Torrents or Usenet (Newsgroups) or both.
You will initially create 3 folders within /data
- media
- torrents
- usenet
Then under /data/media create
- movies
- music
- tv
- books
Then under /data/torrents create
- completed
- incoming
- watch
Then under /data/usenet create
- completed
- intermediate
- nzb
- queue
Your folder tree should now look like this.
Finally, within the /docker shared folder create a folder called ‘projects‘ which will be used for any containers using the Projects (Docker Compose) feature of Container Manager.
You can now go back to where you left off in the guides and do the next step.
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Hi there,
Love the guides that you made and hope will make more of them because they are structured very well and easy to follow.
I do have a question in regards to the folders that you setup under the data folder.
Is there a way that you can still use the music folder with Audio Station, as I haven’t found a way to make that work with the new location.
Thanks in advance
It has been a long time since using Audiostation I will install it and come back to you.
THANK YOU for this very comprehensive guide!
Some notes while following directions:
* ext4 does not provide data checksums
No problem – Correct at this point you should just use BTRFS for all its extra features. (I will note the guide)
I think if we had selected ext4 for the drive format, there’s no going back. I will use btrfs in future.
This was the only point in the instructions where it was inconsistent for me. Thanks!
I’ve followed your instructions to the letter and have a working system but I get the following error in both Sonarr and Radarr.
“Download client qBitTorrent places downloads in the root folder /data/torrents/completed. You should not download to a root folder.”
I dont understand this since I have
/data/torrents for downloads
and
/data/media for shows
Any ideas of how to fix?
Hey – if you have set the folders as mentioned then this error should not appear. For the actual ‘Root folder’ within Sonarr and Radarr > Settings > Media Management are they set to /data/media/tv and movies respectively.
Just to let you know, I’m using DSM 7.2.1-69057 Update 5. Your Screen 2 shows a different view, but has the same meaning. Here’s the screenshot
[url=https://ibb.co/C9Q3j0h][img]https://i.ibb.co/Wzf4rKg/image.png[/img][/url]
Hey, you link doesn’t seem to be working, I will do the upgrade and swap out the screenshot 🙂
Hey, so I have followed all your guides and set this up but the files are not being moved out of the ‘completed’ folder to the TV folder after they’ve been downloaded. Sonarr is saying it doesnt have access to the ‘data/media/tv folder. The root folder in Sonarr is the data/media/tv and it can read whats in there.
Been trying to figure out and a lot of guides say that they usenet folder should have a ‘movies’ and ‘tv’ folder in it so that sonarr knows where to put the downloaded items. But I have no idea! I have clearly missed something when it comes to permissions, but no clue where.
Hey is the path missing the initial /
The completed download folder doesn’t have to have dedicated tv and movie folders, but it does help.
Drop me a message via my HelpMe! page and we can exchange some screenshots.
Thanks, I have sent you an email