Due to struggling myself, I created this guide with all the updates to enable an easy install of Newznab + on Ubuntu Server 12.10 as quite a few things have changed over the official guide.
If you're interested (and I hope you are!) I am using a virtual install of Ubuntu using 1GB memory & 1 core on a Mac Mini, things running great and about to do a backfill....
The install as below has been running for about a week and filling up nicely, please comment if you need any help!
**Revision 8** updated ref some helpful comments
3.1 Newznab on Ubuntu 12.10
This guide covers installing Newznab+ on a fresh copy of Ubuntu 12.10
64-bit server and assumes a basic knowledge of using Linux via the command
line.
3.1.1 Install Ubuntu
Always login as the root user, any other user will get permissions denied left, right & center!!!
Grab a copy of Ubuntu from their website and install it. Once the
install is complete, log in, fire up a terminal window, do a full upgrade and
reboot (entering your password when prompted):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
sudo reboot
You’ll probably want to
install SSH if you don’t have it already:
sudo apt-get install -y ssh
Additionally, we’re going to be compiling some code from source,
so we’ll need the tools to do so:
sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall
3.1.2 Install Newznab
Once Ubuntu is installed and updated, we can begin installing
Newznab. Before we get started though, we need to decide where to install
Newznab. Typically, web-related stuff goes in /var/www/, so lets put Newznab in /var/www/newznab. Let’s
create the directory and set it writeable by our user for now:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/newznab
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab
Now we can begin installing the prerequisites.
Prerequisites
Newznab as a few dependencies, so let’s start with installing the
required software. According to the install docs, Newznab needs the following
software:
1. PHP 5.2+
2. GD Imaging Library w/PHP integration
3. PEAR
4. Database: MySQL (or Percona)
5. Web Server: Apache (or Nginx)
Its worth mentioning a few things at this point. The first is that
the default version of MySQL that comes with Ubuntu is kind of old (version
5.1). Therefore, we’ll also cover installing a higher-performance version (Percona version 5.5) instead. Additionally, Apache is listed as a requirement;
however it is possible to use a different web server instead. Therefore, we’ll
go over how to use the blazing-fast Nginx as well for those who don’t
want to use Apache.
The following software is optional, but we’ll also cover
installing it and setting it up:
1. Unrar
2. FFmpeg
3. Lame
4. MediaInfo
5. Sphinx
By the end of this guide we’ll have a fully working Newznab+
install with all optional components working as well.
PHP
Let’s start by installing PHP and required PHP extensions:
sudo apt-get install -y php5 php5-dev php-pear php5-gd php5-mysql
php5-curl
The install docs also say that PHP needs a few tweaks. Using your
favorite text-editor (I’m using nano) open up php.ini:
sudo nano /etc/php/cli/php.ini
Look for max_execution_time, and set it to (2 minutes):
max_execution_time =
120
Next, look for memory_limit, and either set it to 256MB, or -1 for no limit:
memory_limit = 256M
While you’re here, you should also set PHP’s date.timezone (a list
of available timezone settings can be found here):
date.timezone = Europe/London (or whatever your timezome!)
That should do it for PHP for the time being (we’ll come back to
it when we configure the web server).
Database
You have a few options here, we’ll cover two:
1. Use MySQL 5.1
2. Use Percona 5.5
I’d recommend that you use Percona, but the choice is yours. Pick
one and follow one of the sections below (do not install MySQL and Percona).
MySQL 5.1
If you decided to use MySQL, simply install it via aptitude:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.1 mysql-client-5.1
libmysqlclient-dev
Percona 5.5
Installing Percona requires a little extra work upfront, but in
the long run it is generally worth it as Percona is a high-tuned fork of MySQL.
The first step is to add Percona into aptitude:
gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 1C4CBDCDCD2EFD2A
gpg -a --export CD2EFD2A | sudo apt-key add –
That retrieves and installs the GPG keys needed to add Percona’s
aptitude repository. Now we need to tell aptitude about the repositories:
sudo sh -c "echo \"\n#Percona\"
>> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo sh -c "echo \"deb
http://repo.percona.com/apt lenny main\" >>
/etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo sh -c "echo \"deb-src
http://repo.percona.com/apt lenny main\" >>
/etc/apt/sources.list"
Now update and install it:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y percona-server-client-5.5 \
percona-server-server-5.5 \
libmysqlclient-dev
It’ll ask for a password to use for the MySQL root user, so pick
one and remember it.
Web Server
OK, now for the web server. Once again, you have multiple choices
and we’ll cover two:
1. Apache
2. Nginx
Apache is “easier” and generally more flexible, but it also tends
to be a system hog. So, if you can’t make up your mind it is probably best to
take the easy route and install Apache. If you feel like squeezing the most out
of your machine and you are a little more skilled with configuring software,
Nginx might be a good choice. Again, pick one and follow the steps below (don’t
install both).
****Please note that if Apache is installed by default you will have to remove before installing Nginx, due to port 80 conflicts****
Apache
First install it:
sudo apt-get install -y apache2
You’ll also need to configure the php.ini for Apache, so follow the
section above about configuring PHP (from above), but this time, edit the file /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini:
sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
Let’s create the site configuration file for Apache. Open up a new
file:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/newznab
Here is a template you can use for this file. You should change
settings where appropriate for your setup:
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName localhost # You might want to change this to point to your server IP
# These paths should be fine
DocumentRoot /var/www/newznab/www
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
LogLevel warn
Now we need to disable the default Apache settings, enable the one
we just created for Newznab and enable modrewrite:
sudo a2dissite default
sudo a2ensite newznab
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart
Nginx
First install it:
sudo apt-get install -y nginx
Now, for Nginx there are multiple ways to serve PHP files.
Probably the best is php-fpm, which is basically a daemon that runs and
serves PHP to Nginx. So, let’s go ahead and install that now:
sudo apt-get install -y php5-fpm
You’ll also need to configure the php.ini for FPM, so follow the
section above about configuring PHP (from above), but this time, edit the file /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini:
sudo nano /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
Just for good measure, restart the daemon:
sudo /etc/init.d/php5-fpm restart
Let’s create the configuration file for Nginx. Open a new file:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/newznab
Here is a template you can use for this file. You should change
settings where appropriate for your setup:
server {
# Change these settings to match your machine
listen 80 default_server;
server_name localhost;
# Everything below here doesn’t need to be changed
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
root /var/www/newznab/www/;
index index.html index.htm index.php;
location ~* \.(?:ico|css|js|gif|inc|txt|gz|xml|png|jpe?g) {
expires max;
add_header Pragma public;
add_header Cache-Control "public,
must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
}
location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrites; }
location @rewrites {
rewrite ^/([^/\.]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/? /index.php?page=$1&id=$2&subpage=$3 last;
rewrite ^/([^/\.]+)/([^/]+)/?$ /index.php?page=$1&id=$2 last;
rewrite ^/([^/\.]+)/?$ /index.php?page=$1 last;
}
location /admin { }
location /install { }
location ~ \.php$ {
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
# The next two lines should go in your fastcgi_params
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}
Let’s make sure that the Nginx logs directory exists and is
writeable:
sudo mkdir -p /var/log/nginx
sudo chmod 755 /var/log/nginx
Now, let’s disable the default
Nginx site handler and enable our newznab configuration:
sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/newznab
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/newznab
Finally, let’s restart Nginx:
sudo service nginx restart
Extras
Lame is used for processing audio samples
Unrar is used to extract files from releases
MediaInfo is used to gain information about various types of media files found in releases
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
apt-get install python-software-properties
add-apt-repository ppa:jon-severinsson/ffmpeg
add-apt-repository ppa:shiki/mediainfo && apt-get update && apt-get install ffmpeg x264 mediainfo unrar lame
Sphinx
Sphinx is used for full-text searching. It is insanely fast and if
you really want your Newznab+ install to fly, it is highly recommended.
Unfortunately the version in Ubuntu’s aptitude
repository is horribly old, so we’ll need to
build a newer version. Let’s download the source and extract it:
wget http://sphinxsearch.com/files/sphinx-2.0.6-release.tar.gz
tar xvfz sphinx-2.0.6-release.tar.gz
cd sphinx-2.0.6-release
Download and extract libstemmer_c:
wet http://snowball.tartarus.org/dist/libstemmer_c.tgz
tar --strip-components=1 -zxf libstemmer_c.tgz -C libstemmer_c
Configure it:
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-libstemmer
Now we’re ready to compile Sphinx. For this step you can speed up
the compilation on a multi-core system. If you have a 4-core system, for
example, you can do (replace j4 with the number of cores your machine has):
make -j4
Once that finally finished, install it:
sudo checkinstall --pkgname=sphinx --pkgversion="2.0.6-release" --backup=no --deldoc=yes --fstrans=no –default
Now we have a nice new version of Sphinx installed in /usr/local. Binaries are installed
in /usr/local/bin.
Newznab Source
Finally, we can now begin installing Newznab! We’ll be grabbing
the latest and greatest version, so we’ll need Subversion installed first:
sudo apt-get install -y subversion
Now we can check out the Newznab code:
svn co svn://svn.newznab.com/nn/branches/nnplus /var/www/newznab
(you will need your newznab plus login details here!)
At this point we might as well set the permissions on a couple of
directories as well:
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab/www/lib/smarty/templates_c
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab/www/covers/movies
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab/www/covers/anime
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab/www/covers/music
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab/www
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab/www/install
sudo chmod 777 /var/www/newznab/nzbfiles/
Now that Newznab is installed, we need to configure it.
Configuration is done via a web browser.
Run Installer
It is now time to configure Newznab. This is done via a web-based
installer. Open up
http://localhost/install in a web browser (or whatever the address/IP address is of your
server)
and follow the guided steps.
Enable Groups
Head over to /admin/group-list.php
in your web browser and pick some groups to
index by clicking “activate” on a few groups.
Set Paths and Options
Make sure to set your newznab
ID.
We need to let Newznab know where all the extra software is that
we installed earlier, so head over to
/admin/site-edit.php in your browser, scroll down to the “3rd Party Application Paths”
section and update the fields:
Unrar Path /usr/bin/unrar
Mediainfo Path /usr/bin/mediainfo
Ffmpeg Path /usr//bin/ffmpeg
Lame Path /usr/bin/lame
If you’d like to enable audio previews, check Save audio preview. It is
worthwhile to do rar checking, so set Check For Passworded Releases to Deep.
That’s it for configuration right now, but don’t close your
browser yet as we’ll be coming back to the configuration page when configuring
Sphinx.
Back at the command line its time to fire up the binaries and
releases update scripts:
cd /var/www/newznab/misc/update_scripts
The update_scripts folder contains a lot of scripts. The most
important ones are update_binaries.php
and update_releases.php. If you have any experience with screen or tmux, it is highly recommended
that you use one of these to run the update scripts, as it will allow you to
monitor the update process, observe and resolve issues; this is especially
important for newcomers to Newznab. With that said, Newznab also ships with an
init-sytle script that can be installed to make Newznab run more or less as a
daemon that will start and stop with startup and shutdown, respectively.
Screen or tmux
If you want to go the screen
or tmux
route, you’ll need to pick one and install it:
# Install screen...
sudo apt-get install -y screen
# ...or tmux
sudo apt-get install -y tmux
In the nix_scripts directory there is a useful script called newznab_screen.sh that
runs
update_binaries.php and update_releases.php, in addition to a few other scripts,
continuously
and automatically. First, we need to modify it however, so lets
change dir and make a copy:
cd /var/www/newznab/misc/update_scripts/nix_scripts
cp newznab_screen.sh newznab_screen_local.sh
Now open newznab_screen_local.sh in a text editor and modify NEWZNAB_PATH near
the top to point to our installation path:
nano newznab_screen_local.sh
Set NEWZNAB_PATH:
export NEWZNAB_PATH="/var/www/newznab/misc/update_scripts"
Ensure correct permissions:
chmod +x newznab_screen_local.sh
Now we can run the script via screen:
screen bash
./newznab_screen_local.sh
You should see the script download headers for the groups that you
have enabled and then run various stages that will attempt to group and
catalogue the headers. For now, just leave the script running and detach from screen by typing cntl a d.
Sphinx
As mentioned previously, Sphinx is a fast full-text indexer. By
default, it is disabled in Newznab, so go ahead and enable it by visiting /admin/site-edit.php and setting “Use Sphinx” to “Yes”. While there, you’ll also notice
that there are a few other configuration options for Sphinx. By default, Sphinx
will index all of the release information, however, there are three other
optional indexes: NZB contents, NFO contents and release files. Enabling these
optional indexes will add increased processing time, so you will likely want to
experiment to see what combination works best for your hardware. For now, you
don’t have to enable any of the optional indexes.
To get Sphinx running, we need to generate a sphinx.conf file. To do this we’ll use
the nnindexer.php script in misc/sphinx:
cd /var/www/newznab/misc/sphinx
./nnindexer generate
The script will print out the location of the sphinx.conf file, which by default
will be
/var/www/newznab/sphinx/sphinx.conf. This path needs to be entered into the “Sphinx Configuration
Path” setting located at /admin/site-edit.php.
Now we need to start the search daemon and create the indexes and
restart the daemon:
./nnindexer.php daemon
./nnindexer.php index full all
./nnindexer.php index delta all
./nnindexer.php daemon --stop
./nnindexer.php daemon
Sphinx in Newznab admin site (my recommended) settings:
Set use sphinx to yes
index nzb contents to no
index nfo contents yes
index releasefiles yes
index predb no
3.1.6 Summary of Installed Software
• PHP v5.3.6
• Pear v1.9.2
• MySQL v5.5 or
• Percona v5.5.17
• Apache v2.2.20 or
• Nginx 1.0.5
• FFmpeg v0.8.7
• MediaInfo v0.7.50
• Lame v3.98.4
• unrar v4.00-beta3
• Sphinx 2.0.4-release
To Update your Newznab installation:
1. Run svn update (making sure you are in the correct folder /var/www/newznab)
2. Run any new patches since your last update located in /db/patch/0.2.3/date_patchname.sql
3. Delete contents of cached smarty files in /www/lib/smarty/templates_c/*
