Readarr FAQ

Readarr Specific FAQ entries coming soon(tm) once it is out of pre-alpha testing.

General FAQs

Can I update Readarr inside my Docker container?

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• Technically, yes. But you should absolutely not. It is a primary philosophy of Docker. Database issues can be caused for Readarr if you upgrade your installation inside to the most recent nightly, then update the docker container itself which might downgrade to an older version.

Help, my Mac says Readarr cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified

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• This is simple, please see this link for more information here

Developer Cannot be verified

Help, my Mac says Readarr.app is damaged and can’t be opened

That is either due to a corrupt download so try again or security issues, please see this related FAQ entry.

How do I request a feature for Readarr?

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This is an easy one click here

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 Readarr is corrupt.
  • Try restoring from a backup
  • You can follow our instructions on this wiki.
  • Alternatively, there is 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

• This error may show if the database file is not writable by the user/group Readarr is running as.

• 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. Readarr'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 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 Readarr 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 Readarr databases to be corrupted.

Follow these steps to resolve

Then attempt to launch Readarr 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.

Why can’t Readarr see my files on a remote server?

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In short: the user Readarr is running as (if service) or under (if tray app) cannot access the file path on the remote server. This can be for various reasons, but the most common is, Readarr is running as a service, which causes one of two things:

• Readarr runs under the LocalService account by default which doesn’t have access to protected remote file shares.
  • Solutions:
    • Run Readarr’s service as another user that has access to that share
      • Open the Administrative Tools > Services window on your Windows server.
      • Stop the Readarr service.
      • Open the Properties > Log On dialog.
      • Change the service user account to the target user account.
    • Run Readarr.exe using the Startup Folder

• You’re using a mapped network drive (not a UNC path)
  • Solutions:
    • Change your paths to UNC paths (\\server\share)
    • Run Readarr.exe via the Startup Folder

Mapped Network Drives vs UNC Paths

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• Using mapped network drives generally doesn’t work very well, especially when Readarr is configured to run as a service. The better way to set shares up is using UNC paths. So instead of X:\Movies use \\Server\Movies\.
• A key point to remember is that Readarr gets path information from the downloader, so you’ll also need to setup NZBGet, SABNzbd or any other downloader to use UNC paths too.

How do I change from the Windows Service to a Tray App?

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1. Shut Readarr down
2. Run serviceuninstall.exe that's in the Readarr directory
3. Run Readarr.exe as an administrator once to give it proper permissions and open the firewall. Once complete, then you can close it and run it normally.
4. (Optional) Drop a shortcut to Readarr.exe in the startup folder to auto-start on boot.

How do I Backup/Restore my Readarr?

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Backing up Readarr

• Using built-in backup

1. Go to System: Backup in the Readarr UI
2. Click the Backup button
3. Download the zip after the backup is created for safekeeping

Backup Readarr

• Using file system directly

1. Find the location of the AppData directory for Readarr
   • Via the Readarr UI go to System: About
   • Readarr Appdata Directory
2. Stop Readarr - This will prevent the database from being corrupted
3. Copy the contents to a safe location

Restoring from Backup

Restoring to an OS that uses different paths won’t work (Windows to Linux, Linux to Windows, Windows to OS X or OS X to Windows), moving between OS X and Linux may work, since both use paths containing / instead of \ that Windows uses, but is not supported.

• Using zip backup

1. Re-install Readarr
2. Run Readarr
3. Navigate to System > Backup
4. Select Restore Backup
5. Select Choose File
6. Select your backup zip file
7. Select Restore

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• Using file system backup

1. Re-install Readarr
2. Run Readarr once to get the AppData directory location
3. Stop Readarr
4. Delete the contents of the AppData directory (Including the .db-wal/.db-journal files if they exist)
5. Restore from your backup
6. Start Readarr
7. As long as the paths are the same, everything will pick up where it left off

• Restore for Synology NAS

CAUTION: Restoring on a Synology requires knowledge of Linux and Root SSH access to the Synology Device.

1. Re-install Readarr
   

2. Run Readarr once to get the AppData directory location
   

3. Stop Readarr
   

4. Connect to the Synology NAS through SSH and log in as root
   

5. Execute the following commands:

   rm -r /usr/local/{{{ARRNAME}}}/var/.config/{{{ARRNAME}}}/{{{ARRNAME}}}.db*
   cp -f /tmp/{{{ARRNAME}}}_backup/* /usr/local/{{{ARRNAME}}}/var/.config/{{{ARRNAME}}}/

6. Update permissions on the files:

   cd /usr/local/{{{ARRNAME}}}/var/.config/{{{ARRNAME}}}/
   chown -R {{{ARRNAME}}}:users *
   chmod -R 0644 *

   On some installations, the user is different: chown -R sc-Readarr:Readarr *

7. Start Readarr

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 Readarr 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>

1. Change the AuthenticationMethod line to <AuthenticationMethod>None</AuthenticationMethod>
2. Restart Readarr
3. Readarr will now be accessible without a password, you should go the Settings: General in the Readarr UI and set your username and password

Help I have forgotten my password

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• Please see steps listed in here.

Jackett shows more results than Readarr when manually searching

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This is usually due to Readarr searching Jackett differently than you do. See this troubleshooting article for further information.

Weird UI Issues

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• If you experience any weird UI issues like the Library page not listing anything or a certain view or sort not working, try viewing in a Chrome Incognito Window or Firefox Private Window. If it works fine there, clear your browser cache and cookies for your specific ip/domain. For more information, see the Clear Cache Cookies and Local Storage wiki article.

Web Interface Only Loads at localhost on Windows

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• If you can only reach your web interface at http://localhost:{{{ARRPORT}}}/ or http://127.0.0.1:{{{ARRPORT}}}, you need to run Readarr as administrator at least once, maybe even always.

Permissions

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• Readarr will need to move files away from where the downloader puts them into the final location, so this means that Readarr will need to read/write to both the source and the destination directory and files.
• On Linux, where best practices have services running as their own user, this will probably mean using a shared group and setting folder permissions to 775 and files to 664 both in your downloader and Readarr. In umask notation, that would be 002.

System & Logs loads forever

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It's the easy-privacy blocklist. They basically block any url with /api/log? in it. Look over the list and tell me if you think that blocking all the urls in that list is a sensible idea, there are dozens of urls in there that potentially break sites. You selected that in your adblocker. Easy solution is to whitelist the domain Sonarr is running on. But I still recommend checking the list.

Finding Cookies

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Some sites cannot be logged into automatically and require you to login manually then give the cookies to Readarr to work. This page describes how you do that.

• Chrome
  

  Chrome cookies
• Firefox
  

  Firefox cookies

Unpack Torrents

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Most torrent clients doesn’t come with the automatic handling of compressed archives like their usenet counterparts. We recommend unpackerr.

uTorrent is no longer working

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1. Ensure the Web UI is enabled

2. Ensure that the Alt Listening Port (Advanced -> Web UI) is not the same as the Listening Port (Connections)
3. We'd suggest changing the Web UI Alt Listening Port so as to not mess with any port forwarding for connections.

Does Readarr require a SABnzbd post-processing script to import downloaded episodes?

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No. Readarr will talk to your download client to determine where the files have been downloaded and will import them automatically. If Readarr and your download client are on different machines you will need to use Remote Path Mapping to link the remote path to a local one so Readarr knows where to find the files.

I got a pop-up that said config.xml was corrupt, what now?

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Readarr was unable to read your config file on start-up as it became corrupted somehow. In order to get Readarr back online, you will need to delete .xml in your | AppData Folder, once deleted start Readarr and it will start on the default port ({{{ARRPORT}}}), you should now re-configure any settings you configured on the General Settings page.

Invalid Certificate and other HTTPS or SSL issues

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Your download client stopped working and you're getting an error like `Localhost is an invalid certificate`?

Readarr now validates SSL certificates. If there is no SSL certificate set in the download client, or you're using a self-signed https certificate without the CA certificate added to your local certificate store, then Readarr will refuse to connect. Free properly signed certificates are available from let's encrypt.

If your download client and Readarr are on the same machine there is no reason to use HTTPS, so the easiest solution is to disable SSL for the connection. Most would agree it's not required on a local network either. It is possible to disable certificate validation in advanced settings if you want to keep an insecure SSL setup.

VPNs, Jackett, and the * ARRs

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Unless you're in a repressive country like China, Australia or South Africa, your torrent client is typically the only thing that needs to be behind a VPN. Because the VPN endpoint is shared by many users, you can and will experience rate limiting, DDOS protection, and ip bans from various services each software uses.

In other words, putting the * Arrs (Lidarr, Radarr, Readarr, and Sonarr) behind a VPN can and will make the applications unusable in some cases due to the services not being accessible. To be clear it is not a matter if VPNs will cause issues with the * Arrs, but when: image providers will block you and cloudflare is in front of most of arr servers (updates, metadata, etc.) and liable to block you too

In addition, some private trackers * ban* for browsing from a VPN, which is how Jackett works. In some cases (i.e. certain UK ISPs) it may be needed to use a VPN for public trackers, in which case you should then be putting only Jackett behind the VPN. However, you should not do that if you have private trackers without checking their rules first. Many private trackers will ban you for using or accessing them (i.e. using Jackett) via a VPN.

Jackett's /all Endpoint

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The Jackett /all endpoint is convenient, but that is its only benefit. Everything else is potential problems, so adding each tracker individually is recommended.

May 2021 Update: It is likely Readarr support will be phased out for the jackett `/all` endpoint in the future due to the fact it only causes issues.

Even Jackett says it should be avoided and should not be used.

Using the all endpoint has no advantages (besides reduced management overhead), only disadvantages:

• you lose control over indexer specific settings (categories, search modes, etc.)
• mixing search modes (IMDB, query, etc.) might cause low-quality results
• indexer specific categories (>= 100000) can't be used.
• slow indexers will slow down the overall result
• total results are limited to 1000

Adding each indexer separately It allows for fine tuning of categories on a per indexer basis, which can be a problem with the /all end point if using the wrong category causes errors on some trackers. In Readarr, each indexer is limited to 1000 results if pagination is supported or 100 if not, which means as you add more and more trackers to Jackett, you’re more and more likely to clip results. Finally, if one of the trackers in /all returns an error, Readarr will disable it and now you don’t get any results.

Why are there two files? | Why is there a file left in downloads?

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This is expected. This is how the Torrent Process works with Readarr.

1. Readarr will send a download request to your client, and associate it with a label or category name that you have configured in the download client settings. Examples: movies, tv, series, music, ect.
2. Readarr will monitor your download clients active downloads that use that category name. This monitoring occurs via your download client's API.
3. Completed files are left in their original location to allow you to seed the file (ratio or time can be adjusted in the download client or from within Readarr under the specific download client). When files are imported to your media folder Readarr will hardlink the file if supported by your setup or copy if not hardlinks are not supported.
   • Hardlinks are enabled by default. A hardlink will allow not use any additional disk space. The file system and mounts must be the same for your completed download directory and your media library. If the hardlink creation fails or your setup does not support hardlinks then Readarr will fall back and copy the file.
4. If the "Completed Download Handling - Remove" option is enabled in Readarr's settings, Readarr will delete the original file and torrent from your client, but only if the client reports that seeding is complete and torrent is stopped.