Lidarr FAQ

How does Lidarr work?

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• Lidarr relies on RSS feeds to automate grabbing of releases as they are posted, for both new releases as well as previously released releases being released or re-released. The RSS feed is the latest releases from a site, typically between 50 and 100 releases, though some sites provide more and some less. The RSS feed is comprised of all releases recently available, including releases for requested media you do not follow, if you look at debug logs you will see these releases being processed, which is completely normal.
• Lidarr enforces a minimum of 10 minutes on the RSS Sync interval and a maximum of 2 hours. 15 minutes is the minimum recommended by most indexers, though some do allow lower intervals and 2 hours ensures Lidarr is checking frequently enough to not miss a release (even though it can page through the RSS feed on many indexers to help with that). Some indexers allow clients to perform an RSS sync more frequently than 10 minutes, in those scenarios we recommend using Lidarr's Release-Push API endpoint along with an IRC announce channel to push releases to Lidarr for processing which can happen in near real time and with less overhead on the indexer and Lidarr as Lidarr doesn’t need to request the RSS feed too frequently and process the same releases over and over.

I am getting an error: Database disk image is malformed

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• This means your SQLite database that stores most of the information for Lidarr is corrupt. There is an excellent guide here to copy the contents from the corrupt database into a new one: http://techblog.dorogin.com/2011/05/sqliteexception-database-disk-image-is.html

• Another possible cause of you getting an error with your Database is that you're placing your database on a network drive (nfs or smb or something else not local). Simple answer to this is to not do this as SQLite and network drives not typically play nice together and will cause a malformed database eventually. Lidarr's config folder must be on a local drive. If you're trying to restore your database you can check out our Backup/Restore guide here if you want to try to rescue your current database you can check out our guide here<--Needs guide

• If you are using mergerFS you need to remove direct_io as sqlite uses mmap which isn’t supported by direct_io as explained in the mergerFS docs here

I use Lidarr on a Mac and it suddenly stopped working. What happened?

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• Most likely this is due to a MacOS bug which caused one of the Lidarr databases to be corrupted. Follow these steps to resolve:

1. In the Finder, select the Go menu, and the option Go to Folder...
2. Enter ~/.config/Lidarr and click the Go button to open Lidarr's data folder
3. Move the following files to Trash: logs.db, logs.db-journal
4. Attempt to launch Lidarr and see if it works. If so, congrats!
5. If not, then the log DB didn't get corrupted, and it might have been the primary database. You will need to restore from backup.
6. Move the following files to Trash: Lidarr.db, Lidarr.db-journal
7. Open the Backups folder you see and find the .zip archive with the most recent date. Decompress it. Move everything from the resulting folder into the main Lidarr data folder, over-writing any files.
8. Attempt to launch Lidarr and see if it works. If it does not work, you'll need further support. Post in our reddit or hop on discord for help.

Help I have locked my self out

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To disable authentication (to reset your username or password) you will need need to edit config.xml which will be inside the Lidarr Appdata Directory.

1. Open config.xml in a text editor
2. Find the authentication method line (will be <AuthenticationMethod>Basic</AuthenticationMethod> or <AuthenticationMethod>Forms</AuthenticationMethod>
3. Change the AuthenticationMethod line to <AuthenticationMethod>None</AuthenticationMethod>
4. Restart Lidarr
5. Lidarr will now be accessible without a password, you should go the Settings: General in the Lidarr UI and set your username and password

Help I have forgotten my password

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• Please see steps listed in here.

Why isn't Lidarr accessible remotely on Windows?

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Binding to an externally accessible interface on Windows requires running as admin. If you have Lidarr running as a Service, stop the service. Open AppData_Directory and run Lidarr.exe as admin. You can then shutdown Lidarr and start the service.

Why does Lidarr only show studio albums, How do I find singles or EPs?

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Lidarr defaults to only bringing in studio albums for each artist. However, you can expand the album types per an artist, or for your entire library by utilizing Lidarr Settings#Metadata Profiles.

Lidarr grabbed a release, why can’t it import it?

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Why can't I add a various artists album?

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Various Artists and other meta artists on Musicbrainz are due to the number of entries they provide.

Can I add just an album?

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Not at the moment.

Can I download single tracks?

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Lidarr works by searching for and downloading full releases, therefore individual tracks cannot be downloaded unless they were released as a single by the artist.

Why doesn't artist X show up in search?

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Search is still a work in progress. Artists that don't show up in search may be added by searching for `lidarr:mbid` where `mbid` is the Musicbrainz ID of the artist.

Lidarr matched an album with too many tracks. How can I change the Album to the correct Release?

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Open the Album details page and select the Edit Icon in the top nav. There you can find a dropdown of all releases tied to that Album.

I'm having trouble importing my artists, what could it be?

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The artist import process just imports the Artist names and path locations, which are then stored in the database so that a) metadata can be retrieved and b) downloaded content can be put in the same location in future. To this end, the user account that Lidarr runs under needs both read and write to your data directory.