Preface

This guide is written for Ubuntu or any debian-based distro of Linux; Mainly because I’m lazy and decided to use apt-get.
I’m also not going to explain newsgroups or .nzb files in general right now. I might write a follow-up for that later. I do however recommend the use of Giganews.

• One: I get a small discount if you use my referral to sign up.
• Two: It’s only $20 for the first month with unlimited download, 20 connections, and SSL.
• Three: It’s the best usenet provider I’ve found so far and is able to max out my connection. Way faster than BitTorrent.

What is HellaNZB?

Here’s a description straight from their website:

hellanzb is a Python application designed for *nix environments that retrieves nzb files and fully processes them. The goal being to make getting files from Usenet (e.g.: Giganews Newsgroups) as hands-free as possible. Once fully installed, all thats required is moving an nzb file to the queue directory. The rest; fetching, par-checking, un-raring, etc. is taken care of by hellanzb.

Installation of HellaNZB

1. Open a terminal or connect to your server using SSH.
2. Use apt-get to install the prereqs :
   sudo apt-get install rar unrar par2 python-dev python-twisted python-pyopenssl wget tar screen
3. Download hellanzb and extract it. (Check the website to get the latest version)
   cd ~ ;
wget http://www.hellanzb.com/distfiles/hellanzb-0.13.tar.gz ;
tar xvf hellanzb*tar.gz ;
cd hellanzb-0.13< /li>
4. Install it (requires root access)
   sudo python setup.py install
5. Copy the configuration file
   sudo cp /usr/etc/hellanzb.conf.sample /usr/etc/hellanzb.conf
6. Edit the configuration file (replace vim with editor of choice)
   sudo vim /usr/etc/hellanzb.conf
   1. Make sure you configure the server information in the .conf file.  It’s pretty self explanatory and gives examples.
   2. If you’re planning to use SSL; make sure you enable the SSL option and change the port from 119 to 443.
   3. Set the PREFIX dir to something like /home/username/ or /mnt/storage/hellanzb/
7. That’s it.  You can download a .nzb file and put it in PREFIX_DIR/nzb/daemon.queue/ and if hellanzb is running, it will automatically start processing the .nzb file and then download its contents.   Start hellanzb like this:
   hellanzb.py
8. Once it finishes downloading a file.  It’ll check to make sure it’s all there and repair it using PAR if it needs to, then unrar it and copy the extracted content to PREFIX_DIR/usenet. It’ll also delete the .rar and .par files once it’s done with them.

Make Hellanzb startup on boot as an init script

I found this init.d script on the ubuntu forums that basically starts hellanzb in a screen session at boot.

1. Download my slightly modified init.d script
   wget http://www.thesh17.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/hellanzb ;
2. Copy and chmod the script
   sudo cp hellanzb /etc/init.d/hellanzb
   sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/hellanzb
3. Set it to run on boot
   sudo update-rc.d hellanzb defaults
4. Edit the init.d script to run hellanzb as your user(IMPORTANT)
   sudo vim /etc/init.d/hellanzb
   1. Change HELLAUSER=yourusernametorunhellanzbas to reflect your username.
5. Start hellanzb to see if it all worked
   sudo /etc/init.d/hellanzb start

Alternate Method to start on boot

If you get any errors. Just add this line inside /etc/rc.local and change $HELLAUSER to whatever your username is.

su -c '/usr/bin/screen -S hellanzb -d -m /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/hellanzb.py > /dev/null 2> /dev/null' $HELLAUSER

Now then.  You should be all set.  Just use SFTP or one of the web interfaces to hellanzb and download .nzb files into the queue folder.

Tags: downloads, giganews, guide, hellanzb, how to, install, linux, movies, newsgroups, nzb, p2p, Ubuntu, usenet

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