FreeNAS: Jackett Manual Install

Manually installing Jackett on your FreeNAS media server is essential to ensure that you are upto date with accessing the latest torrent download sites and to ensure you are more likely to find all your torrents and newsgroups files. Jackett works as a proxy server: it translates queries from apps (such as Sonarr, Radarr, SickRage, CouchPotato, Mylar, etc) into tracker-site-specific http queries, parses the html response, then sends results back to the requesting software. This allows for getting recent uploads (like RSS) and performing searches. Jackett is a single repository of maintained indexer scraping and translation logic – removing the burden from the other apps and greatly increasing the ability to find and reliably download torrent files. This article will show you how to install Jackett from the FreeBSD repository and then update it manually to the latest version from the GitHub page to the most recent version of the software. So lets jump right in and begin the install and update.

This article is part of my series of FreeNas setup, configuration and install articles.

Install Jackett from Repository

First we will need to ensure all software is up to date and upgraded with the following commands:

pkg update
pkg upgrade

Once that is done we will install Jackett from the FreeBSD repositories with the following commands:

pkg install jackett

When prompted, press ‘y’ to accept installation and continue. That’s it, Jackett is installed from the repository. Unfortunately its an old version and so we will need to update it.

Enabled and Start Jackett

We now need to ensure that the Jackett service is set to enabled by entering the following command (or by manually editing /etc/rc.conf):

sysrc "jackett_enable=YES"

and now start Jackett:

service jackett start

You can now manage Jackett through the web interface at [ipaddress]:9117/

Download Latest Jackett Version

For some reason the repository has an old version of Jackett (version 0.11.496.0 at the time of this article) and we will need to do a manual update by grabbing the latest from the GitHub repository. Go to the command line for the jail in which Jackett is installed and follow these steps:

First we need to ensure that the Jackkett service is stopeed by entering the following:

service jackett stop

Next we will need to download the latest version of Jackett from its GitHub repository. First you will need to go to Jackett GitHub releases page and make a note of the latest version number. At the time of the writing this article, the latest version is v0.11.802 as shown in the image below.

Now download the latest version with this command (replacing “v.0.11.802” with the latest version):

fetch https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett/releases/download/v0.11.802/Jackett.Binaries.Mono.tar.gz -o /usr/local/share

Setup Latest Jackett Version

Unzip the downloaded file:
tar -xzvf /usr/local/share/Jackett.Binaries.Mono.tar.gz -C /usr/local/share

Delete the downloaded zip file:
rm /usr/local/share/Jackett.Binaries.Mono.tar.gz

Now for some reason it will extract to “Jackett” rather than “jackett” so run the following:

mv /usr/local/share/jackett /usr/local/share/jackett-old
mv /usr/local/share/Jackett /usr/local/share/jackett

Start Jacket Service is Verify it is Running

To start the Jackett Service, you can either run the following command or restart the jail:

service jackett start

After this command or a reboot of the jail we can open a web browser and navigate to http://x.x.x.x:9117 where you enter your local IP address. If everything is working, you should be greeted with the Jackett web interface.

That is it! Now you can go about setting Jackett up with your favorite torrent or newsgroup sites. Happy… er… jacketting.

~Raze42