Usenet Streaming on a Seedbox: InfiniDysk, STRM Files and the Path Mapping You Need

Usenet streaming means your library stops costing disk

The normal Usenet pipeline downloads a file, unpacks it, and keeps it. Your library grows until your plan runs out of room, and then you start deleting things you liked.

InfiniDysk does it the other way round. It takes the NZB, works out where every article lives on your provider, and presents the result as a file on a WebDAV server without downloading it. Press play and it fetches the bytes you are watching as you watch them. Seek forward and it jumps to the articles for that part of the film. Nothing is stored, so a thousand films take about as much disk as a thousand bookmarks.

It also speaks the SABnzbd API, so Sonarr and Radarr treat it as an ordinary download client. From their side nothing is unusual: they search, they grab, the job completes, they import.

That is the pitch, and it is real. The catch is not the streaming, it is the handover to the arrs, and on a managed box one of the two handover methods is much easier than the other. That is what most of this guide is about.

Install Infini Dysk, not Nzbdav

Both are in the app library, and they are the same project at two points in its life. The original is nzbdav, and its GitHub front page now opens with "NOTE: This project is no longer maintained." The author says his interests changed, and he points at the community forks. InfiniDysk is the one that took over the whole stack, down to the Usenet and yEnc decoding libraries, and its README says plainly that NzbDAV is now InfiniDysk.

So install Infini Dysk. The older tile stays in the library because we do not move anybody's running app without asking, and because upstream says the /config folder is drop-in compatible, which makes moving over a copy rather than a rebuild. If you are on the old one and it works you are not in trouble, you are just on a version nobody is fixing.

Install it from the panel and you get a web address at https://infinidysk.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me, a login that is your appbox username, and a password generated at install. One thing worth knowing: if you reinstall over a config folder that already has an admin, the panel will not show you a password. That is on purpose. It would rather give you nothing than give you a password the app does not actually have. Keep the one you had.

You still need a provider and an indexer

Streaming does not get you off paying for Usenet access. You need:

• A Usenet provider, because that is where the articles are. Retention matters more here than in a download setup. A file you never stored is a file you need the provider to still have the next time you press play.
• An NZB indexer, so there is something to search. InfiniDysk has its own Newznab search built in, and it also works behind Prowlarr like anything else in the Arr stack.
• A second provider if you care about reliability. InfiniDysk pipelines article requests across providers with failover, which matters more here than in a download setup: a missing article is a film that stops mid scene rather than a download that failed last Tuesday.

Put your provider and your WebDAV credentials in under Settings before you wire anything else up. The WebDAV user and password are separate from your login, and they are what any client reading the virtual filesystem has to send.

Two ways to hand finished jobs to Sonarr and Radarr

This is the decision that matters. InfiniDysk calls it the Import Strategy, under Settings, SABnzbd.

	Symlinks	STRM
What the arr imports	a symlink into the WebDAV tree	a small text file holding a URL
Needs an rclone FUSE mount	yes	no
Upstream's recommendation	classic Plex libraries	Emby and Jellyfin
Works on a managed appbox out of the box	no	yes

Symlinks is the default, and it is the wrong default here. It writes files whose targets point into InfiniDysk's own WebDAV namespace, and they only resolve into real video if that tree is rclone-mounted onto the box. The mount is not part of the install. Upstream's recipe for it is an rclone container asking for SYS_ADMIN, an unconfined apparmor profile, /dev/fuse and a shared /mnt bind, which a rootless container on shared hosting does not get and should not get. Leave the default on and you get a folder of links pointing nowhere and an arr queue stuck on "missing".

STRM skips all of it. Upstream's words: "Skip the rclone FUSE mount, no /dev/fuse required." The completed job becomes a .strm file containing a URL, Sonarr or Radarr imports that tiny file into your library, and the media server plays the URL. No mount, no FUSE, nothing privileged.

So on an appbox, set Import Strategy to STRM.

The one setting that decides whether anything imports

Here is the part that is specific to a managed box, and the reason people get stuck.

InfiniDysk runs in a container, and the only folder it shares with your appbox is /config. On your box that folder is ~/.config/infinidysk. Anything the app writes anywhere else is inside the container and invisible to your Sonarr, which runs natively on the box rather than in the container next to it.

So the completed-downloads directory has to live under /config. Set it to something like /config/completed-downloads and the files land in ~/.config/infinidysk/completed-downloads, where your arrs can read them.

Now the mapping. Upstream says the completed path InfiniDysk reports must appear at the same absolute path inside Radarr and Sonarr. On your box those two paths are not the same thing. InfiniDysk reports /config/completed-downloads. Sonarr sees /home/hdN/USERNAME/.config/infinidysk/completed-downloads. Sonarr will report the job as complete and then refuse to import it, because it went looking for a directory that does not exist.

Fix it with a remote path mapping, in Sonarr or Radarr under Settings, Download Clients, Remote Path Mappings:

• Host: infinidysk.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me
• Remote Path: /config/completed-downloads/
• Local Path: the real path on your box, which is your home folder plus .config/infinidysk/completed-downloads/

Set the Base URL too, to https://infinidysk.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me. That is what goes inside every .strm file, so it has to be an address your media server can actually reach. It also means those files carry working credentials for your library, so treat that folder as private and do not share it over a public file browser.

Connecting Sonarr and Radarr

InfiniDysk's own instructions give Host nzbdav and Port 3000, because they assume it and your arrs are containers on one Docker network. On an appbox your arrs are native and InfiniDysk is behind Traefik, so use the public address:

• In Sonarr or Radarr: Settings, Download Clients, Add, SABnzbd.
• Host: infinidysk.USERNAME.SERVER.bysh.me, with no https:// in front of it.
• Port: 443. Tick SSL. Leave URL base empty.
• API Key: from InfiniDysk, Settings, SABnzbd.
• Category: whatever you set up there, usually movies and tv.

Then register the arrs inside InfiniDysk, under Settings, Radarr and Sonarr, with their own addresses and API keys. That is what lets it manage a stuck queue instead of leaving it to you.

One detail: prefer uploading the NZB rather than passing a URL. Sending a private indexer URL needs an allowlist entry on InfiniDysk's side, and uploading the file needs nothing.

If you want the symlink route anyway

You might, because of Plex. Upstream's media server page puts Plex on symlinks with an rclone mount, and Emby or Jellyfin on STRM. If your library is a classic Plex library and you do not want to change that, here is the honest state of it on a managed box.

You can run rclone mount yourself against the WebDAV address. We do not set it up or keep it alive, so that part is yours. Two things catch everybody:

• A mount run in a terminal dies when you close the terminal. Run it detached, and expect to start it again after a reboot. Our rclone guide covers the mechanics.
• The --links flag is what turns the .rclonelink entries into real symlinks, and it does nothing on older rclone. Symlink support for mounts landed in rclone v1.69.0 in January 2025, and InfiniDysk's own flag table asks for v1.70.3 or newer. Run rclone version before you blame anything else. On an older build the flag is accepted and ignored, you get 77 byte text files where videos should be, and Sonarr parks the lot as unimportable.

There is one more cost. Upstream tells you to point rclone at the backend on port 8080 rather than the frontend on 3000, because the frontend adds proxy overhead to every read. We only route 3000, so from outside the box the frontend is the endpoint you have. Since version 1.3.0 InfiniDysk notices an rclone client on 3000 and shows a warning in the admin UI that you cannot dismiss. It is telling the truth, and on this shape of hosting there is nothing you can do about it. That is a good reason to pick STRM and a media server that plays it, and Jellyfin installs in one click here as well.

What it will not do

• It rejects compressed RAR and 7z content, on purpose. Seeking needs stored, uncompressed payloads, so RAR m0 or 7z Copy. A compressed release comes back through the SABnzbd history as Failed with a reason, which is the normal failure signal your arr already knows how to act on. Turn on automatic redownload of failed downloads and it will go and find another release.
• It does not keep anything. If your provider loses articles, that film is gone, and health checks and repairs exist because that happens. A library you only stream is a library you are renting from your provider's retention.
• It does not replace a download client. Things you care about, you still download and keep. SABnzbd and the rest of the Usenet pipeline are still the right tool for that, and the two run side by side perfectly well.
• It is not a debrid service. Same idea, different supply. If you are weighing the two, see the debrid comparison and Decypharr, which hits the same mount wall from the debrid side.

Is it worth running here

Two reasons it fits an appbox better than most places you could put it.

Bandwidth on the Appbox line is unmetered on a 10 Gbit port. A streaming library spends traffic instead of disk, every single play, and on a metered host that is a bill rather than a feature. Here it is not.

And disk stops being the thing you buy. Appbox Lite is EUR 5 a month for 500 GB, which is a laughable amount of room for a media library and plenty for a few thousand .strm files and the apps around them. Keep the handful of films you rewatch, stream the rest. If you want headroom for both, Appbox +1 is EUR 11 for 1 TB and Appbox +3 is EUR 14 for 3 TB, and the plan also sets your simultaneous transcodes, two on Lite and four on +3. Prices exclude VAT and the first seven days are refundable pro rata.

Start with STRM, get one film to import end to end, and only then point Sonarr at a whole season.