Introduction
Hello! It’s a new year and time again for another update to my long running Sick Beard guide. This will be the sixth update to this specific guide and I decided it was time for a change of scenery. As such, I am recreating this guide and retiring the current one!
This guide will receive updates throughout and will now be based primarily on Linux Mint and Ubuntu (not just Ubuntu). As with my recent XBMC Install, Setup, & Configuration Guide for Ubuntu & Linux Mint (and most of my future guides), this guide will be of a rolling release nature. It will be based on the current version of Linux Mint (with all the current updates), and updated at least every six months.
With my last guide, my introduction section had become far too long. So, to rectify this, I have broken much of the repetitive content out into a Guide Guide and it can be found on Ainer.org’s About page. I strongly encourage you to take a moment to review that now. The guides at Ainer.org are written in a specific manner and this is well explained there. If you have any questions about content or style please check there first!
This guide is written using the Linux Mint mintMenu and Gnome based interface. It is similar to Ubuntu’s menus, but not exact. If you have trouble navigating and finding the specific programs or locations that are mentioned in this guide please don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments below or contact me directly as I’d be happy to point you in the right direction.
This guide is considered a companion to my SABnzbd+ Install, Setup and Configuration Guide. This simply means that this guide assumes that you have SABnzbd+ installed and setup. If you do not, then you may not have some of the required packages already installed (such as Cheetah). You will need to install these prior to running Sick Beard for the first time!
Sick Beard is a super handy program that has seen an unbelievable amount of developmental over the last year. Even a year ago it was already incredibly functional, and it has only grown in it’s robustness and in it’s rich feature-set since then. This rapid rate of development however, means that there are regular updates to the interface and to the options. As such, you may need to make some adjustments as things change (until this guide is updated again!). Until then, if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or to contact me directly!
For those of you that are not already familiar with Sick Beard, and are currently wondering why you should care about all this, think of Sick Beard as a program that fills a role similar to a Personal or Digital Video Recorder (PVR/DVR). You tell Sick Beard what shows you’re interested in, and it’ll keep track of them, search for them, and download them automatically for you. Then, when you have time and an interest to watch them, you do so at your own leisure. However, instead of using a television connection (such as a PVR), Sick Beard utilizes the Internet. And, instead of using a stand-alone device, Sick Beard runs on your own GNU/Linux based personal computer (PC).
When setup, and used in conjunction with SABnzbd+ and XBMC Media Center, Sick Beard offers an extremely streamlined, robust, and automated setup that is second to none for most uses. One drawback of the setup however, is that the artists, writers, and actors that have helped to create these shows we enjoy are not being supported. To offset this, you may want to consider purchasing an Amazon.com Prime membership for their Ubuntu and Linux Mint compatible Instant Video Streaming services. Additionally, or instead of the subscription service, you could purchase digital copies of your favorite shows.
Note: Digital content should help prevent the creation of unneeded waste in the form of DRM restricted Bluray and DVD optical discs and packaging (as well as the various shipping and other supporting resources that are consumed in transporting them around the world).
With that said, if you haven’t already, be sure to review the Guide Guide on the About page, and lets get going with installing Sick Beard!
i get /etc/init.d/sickbeard: permission denied
Her Erik,
I need some more details there. You just trying to start Sick Beard or adding the startup entries? What command (exactly) did you run? Are you running Ubuntu or Linux Mint or Other and what version?
Best of luck!
will you please create a PPA for SB?
Howdy Sick Beard enthusiast,
That’s definitely something I may do in the future. Currently however I don’t have the time to commit to something like that and I don’t want to do it unless I can maintain it well enough to keep it regularly updated.
Downloading Sick Beard is pretty straight forward and it includes its own updater so there’s not a big pull to setup a Private Package Archive (PPA) currently.
Cheers and thanks for the request!
Hi,
I am having difficulty with the script. It executes without problems from the terminal but does not start when I reboot.
I am on Ubuntu 11.04.
Hi DubDubZA,
Have you ever ran Sick Beard or the script using sudo? Without additional information I’m guessing that might be the cause of the problem. If you have you’ll need to delete the .sickbeard folder and re-install as the permissions will be messed up for Sick Beard and anything it touches from here on out.
It is possible to reset the permissions if you feel like doing some Google’ing and don’t mind a bit more of a learning curve.
Feel free to let me know how it goes, or if you have any other questions or details.
Best of luck!
I’m having the same problem. I did what you recommended and deleted my ~/.sickbeard directory and started over (hey, it’s quick to do anyway). The service starts and stops just great with a manual invoke of the “/etc/init.d/sickbeard start”, however it does not start on system start. Any ideas?
Hi, I have the same problem. I’ve definitely not run the script using sudo. It works manually, but not on startup.
Ubuntu 11.10
Hi,
This is a very nice guide. I am a noob to Ubuntu and all the good stuff shown here so I don’t know if what I am about to say is really relative or not.
I followed your guide to the letter and did exactly as instructed. Everything worked as described until I got to the point just above where I had to put the autoProcesTV directory in the PostProcessing field in Sab. I put this in and kept on getting an error about not been able to create a script. Adding to that I also could not select the script in Sab-> Categories.
I even made a seperate directory and copied the py scripts into that and tried again. At the end of the day I ran the following command to get it to work:
sudo chmod 777 /home/dracosveen/.sickbeard/autoProcessTV
which then gave the permissions needed and then everything started working as described in your guide.
Been new I have no idea why I had to set the permissions.
Hey Dracoseven,
You may have ran sickbeard with sudo at some point. I’d recommend checking the permissions and ownership of the entire .sickbeard folder and everything in it. It’s likely going to cause you additional problems down the line.
Best of luck!
Hey, thanks for posting this guide. It has been very helpful in setting up this environment.
I’m looking forward to your guide to install Couch Potato. Hopefully it will be posted soon since I need some guidelines to get it installed.
Thanks again!
Hey Linux n00b,
Just for you, I’ll get the Couch Potato guide out by Monday or Tuesday evening. I’ll shoot you an email when it’s done.
Cheers, and thanks for the kind words!
Thanks, looking forward to it!
Still hoping this will be posted soon.
Hey Linux n00b & Powderking!
Apologies for the delay and confusion. I’m currently working on the Couch Potato guide. My guides take about 16 hours from start to finish once I finally get sat down and start writing (not counting the initial research or learning the program or anything of the like) and I needed to get my SABnzbd+ guide updated prior to releasing Couch Potato. Thanks for your patience and interest, it should be out VERY shortly.
In the meantime if you guys are stuck in a certain spot feel free to shoot me an email via my contact page and I’ll see if I have an answer for you.
Cheers!
Hi
Is your guide to Couch Potato already available?
I couldn’t find it. But maybe I’m just a little blind ;-)
I do have some problems too and your SABnzbd+ and Sick Beard were great help! So I hope I can solve my problems with Couch Potato too :-)
Cheers
Hey daemox
First off, your site is pure gold – Not just the guides you write, but also that you find just the software (HeadPhones & Couchpotato) which I need :)
With that said, I have a rather annoying bug with SickBeard..
Whenever a download has finished, it isn’t post-processed..
The script log from Sab gives the error: 401 Unauthorized
I don’t know if it’s significant, that download and “TV Archive” are on separate HDD’s..
I hope you can help :)
Hey The_Eggert,
Thank you kindly for the compliments!
The two different drives shouldn’t be an issue unless there’s a permission issue going on (such as if you ever ran Sick Beard as root or with sudo, or don’t presently have ownership of the archival disk). Other than that, if Sick Beard is otherwise communicating with SABnzbd+ just fine, I wouldn’t think it’d be a API Key or user/password issue between Sick Beard and SABnzbd+ so hard to guess at other possibilities currently.
You may want to just hop on the Sick Beard IRC channel, or hit up their forum and post your log as they see more problems than I do on a regular basis. Also if you want to send me the full log I can take a look (dae...@gmail.com). Both Sick Beard’s and SABnzbd+’s log may be helpful in this case and you may also want to take a look at the permissions and ownership of the script itself as well as any files it tried to post-process recently but failed.
Best of luck, and when you get this figured let me know how it goes!
I tried removing all passwords and user names, which fixed it, so I must have just written the wrong thing somewhere – Thanks for your help :)