Arr downloads

Arr Downloads

Nothing arrived. The chain from "user wants a thing" to "file is in the library" has six links, and the useful skill is finding which one broke instead of restarting everything.

request front-end -> arr decides -> indexer search -> release grabbed
   -> download client -> import into library

Walk it in order. Assumes arr-connect.

Start with health and history

Two calls answer most of these before you form a theory.

# the app has usually already diagnosed it
curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/health" \
  | jq '.[] | {source, type, message}'

# what actually happened recently, per title
curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/history?pageSize=30" \
  | jq '.records[] | {date, eventType, sourceTitle, data: (.data.reason // .data.message // empty)}'

eventType tells you exactly how far down the chain a title got: grabbed then nothing means the client never took it or never finished. downloadFolderImported means it worked. downloadFailed and importFailed name their own problem.

Link 1: the request front-end

If users say requests are being declined, check whether they actually failed. Request front-ends often surface a failed hand-off to the arr with wording that reads as a rejection.

The most common cause is a stale quality profile id in the front-end's server settings, usually after profiles were renumbered. The front-end's log carries the real error: adding the item failed because the quality profile does not exist. Fix the server settings, then retry the failed requests rather than asking users to re-request, because re-requesting hits the duplicate guard. Details in arr-quality-profiles.

Link 2: is the arr even searching

A search command returning queued means accepted. It does not mean anything was searched for. The most common reason a search matches nothing is that the target is not monitored, which arr-library-hygiene covers in depth.

# Sonarr: how many episodes are actually armed
curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/episode?seriesId=$SID" \
  | jq '[.[] | select(.monitored)] | length'

Link 3: indexers

Run an interactive search and read the rejection reasons. This is the single most informative thing in the whole chain and it is one call:

curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/release?movieId=$ID" \
  | jq '.[] | select(.rejected) | {title, quality: .quality.quality.name, size, rejections}'

If the array is empty, the indexers returned nothing and the problem is sourcing. If it is full of rejected releases, the indexers are fine and your profile, size limits, or format scores are refusing them. Those are opposite problems and the queue looks identical for both.

Check the indexers themselves:

curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/indexer" \
  | jq '.[] | {name, enable, priority, protocol: .protocol}'

An indexer that keeps failing gets automatically disabled for a backoff period, which presents as "it worked yesterday". Health warnings name it.

Source diversity is a real fix. Content that has aged past Usenet retention will never complete no matter how many times you blocklist and retry. If a category of titles consistently fails on one protocol, add indexers on the other protocol rather than tuning the retry behaviour. In practice large 4K Usenet posts fail repair far more often than 1080p posts of the same title, because completeness degrades with size and age, so a library that leans 4K needs a torrent path.

Link 4: download client

curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/downloadclient" \
  | jq '.[] | {name, implementation, enable, protocol}'

Then look at the queue for items that were grabbed but are not progressing:

curl -sf -H "X-Api-Key: $ARR_KEY" "$ARR_URL/api/v3/queue?pageSize=100" \
  | jq '.records[] | {title, status, sizeleft, timeleft, errorMessage}'

Torrents at zero peers: check port forwarding first

A torrent client behind a VPN with no forwarded port can only make outbound connections. You get a handful of peers, throughput in the tens of KB/s, and everything looks "connected" because the VPN reports healthy. The VPN being healthy and the torrent path being usable are different claims.

Three things to check, in order:

1. Is port forwarding enabled at all in the VPN container's configuration. It is commonly off by default.
2. Does your VPN provider offer forwarding in the region you selected. Several major providers do not offer it in US regions specifically. A perfectly healthy connection to an unsupported region will never forward a port. Switch to a supported region.
3. Is the forwarded port actually propagated to the client. Providers issue a port on a lease and it changes. The usual pattern is a hook script, fired by the VPN container when the port is assigned, that calls the torrent client's preferences API to set the listening port. If that hook is missing or broken, you have a forwarded port nobody told the client about.

The fix is usually a region change plus enabling forwarding plus the hook, and throughput moves by two orders of magnitude when it lands.

Restarting a VPN-wrapped client can leave it down

When the torrent client shares the VPN container's network namespace and depends on its health check, a redeploy forces a fresh tunnel negotiation. If that negotiation fails, the VPN sits unhealthy and the client stays gated off entirely. You have now converted a slow download into no downloads.

Prefer changing configuration over redeploying, keep a copy of the last working compose or config before editing, and treat "restart it" as a real intervention rather than a free diagnostic step on this particular container.

Usenet repair failures

Failed par2 repair on large posts is a retention and completeness problem, not a client misconfiguration. Confirm by testing whether smaller releases of the same title complete. If they do, stop tuning the client.

Link 5: grabbed but never imported

importBlocked and importFailed in the queue mean the download finished and the move into the library failed. Causes, roughly in frequency order:

• Path mapping. The client reports a completed path the arr cannot see, or can see at a different prefix. This is the container-path problem from arr-connect, arriving from the other direction. Compare the client's download directory as the client sees it against the same directory as the arr sees it, using docker inspect on both.
• Permissions. The arr cannot move or delete in the completed directory. Check the effective uid of both containers, not the directory's owner name.
• Already imported. Usually the phantom-episode loop in arr-library-hygiene, not a genuine duplicate.

Clearing a stuck queue and the blocklisting behaviour that goes with it is in arr-library-hygiene.

When to stop looking at the arr

Some symptoms are upstream of the arr entirely and will waste your time if you treat them as arr faults:

• Metadata lookups timing out while the rest of the API is fine: the .NET IPv6 stall, in arr-connect.
• Slow throughput on everything, all protocols, all titles: network or storage, not the arr.
• Files arriving and playing badly: arr-playback. The download chain did its job.