this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

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I am almost done building my first self hosted streambox through Docker. That's a total of 16 instances, each fulfilling 1 specific role.

As I'm new to the *arr world, could you please help me understand why it is standard to deploy multiple *arr services for each media type (ex: readarr1 for books + readarr2 for audiobooks) instead of using 1 that does multiple media types?

Thank you.

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 year ago (4 children)

In the software world, based on personal experience and the UNIX philosophy, software should aim to do one thing and do it really well.

Then there are also the bloat complaints (why should I download a whole stack of arr services when I only care for movies)

The most unfortunate one however can be them mixing. If my child looks up Star Wars but instead the suite ends up downloading a Star Wars porn parody.. that’s just.. bad

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Star Whores is a masterpiece, don't disparage it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's got nothing on Super Hornio Bros, though.

[–] ElBarto 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The bobs burger porn parody is a piece of cinematic perfection.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My all time favourite is the girl doing pterodactyl position, dressed as a pterodactyl.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do wish I didn’t need to run a second Radarr instance to have both 1080p and 4K media.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not everyone has to, though. I use one instance for a wide variety of resolutions, depending on the show and consumption model; including 360,480,720,1080, 2160 (HDR/10-bit). But I run Plex on a box with quicksync that is doing my transcoding for me.

So why have you chosen to run different instances?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's not as relevant today as it used to be, that's for sure. Originally it was to limit transcoding of 4K content (which used to be a lot harder), and also to avoid the HDR tone mapping issues with 4K content during transcoding, both of which are largely resolved with newer hardware and Plex software updates.

The only reason I keep them separated now is because most of the folks I share with can't direct stream 4K content anyway, and so I only share out the 1080p libraries in Plex. It keeps bandwidth usage down and limits having to go to hardware transcoding, which can reduce quality and introduces startup delays. The library I use locally indexes both the 1080p and 4K content, so Plex will always prefer the 4K if it's there.

If diskspace ever became an issue, I'd probably consider merging the libraries again.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sure but they also seem to share quite a bit of GUI code at least. Couldn't all of these just be plugins for a core *arr service?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I think the goal of the original project (I think it was Sonarr?) was just to cover TV shows. The others had forked and the rest is history. It was never aimed to be a multi platform thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Good idea! You have one hobby more now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

And everyone thinks they can make a better one

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's because of the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago

When I was an up and coming Unix admin, the senior admin told me it was all about "little tools for little jobs", and the OS lets you string them together into whatever solution or outcome you need.

That was nearly 30 years ago. Still holds true today.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

That will be one big bloated software extremely painful to maintain.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The simpler services are, the less likely to break down. Google SRE guidance

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

And easier to maintain with different dev groups

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Because no one creates one that will work on many media types.

The source information and structure of the media types can be quite different, you can’t just add books to sonarr for example. It’s often better with niche tools that to one thing well than some huge bloated software that does everything poorly.

Maybe one day someone will create what you are asking for.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

People have tried and failed to make the "one arr to rule them all" but the current stack is pretty lightweight, stable and mature so it is better to just install them all in containers then have some kind of frontend and request system in front of them for users and admins.

I use Organizr as a frontend (keeps them all together in one interface and optionally handles SSO across all of them) then I have Overseerr for users to add media without having to give them access to the arrs directly.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I just want audiobooks and they're very difficult to find a large library of

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Given how many audiobooks Audiobookbay seems to be missing it would certainly be helpful to have a complementary source given that even private torrent trackers and usenet aren't much better for that than public torrent trackers it seems...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Check your local library and Libby

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

All the *arrs are in the same Github repo.