the configpage is pretty much exactly what you guessed it was. it asks for a newsserver, username/password and max number of connections. with these basic settings it can start downloading from usenet. if you need to edit more settings, you can open the configfile in the browser and edit it there. to put files somewhere you should fill in (bottom half of the page) a windows server/share (or samba) and username/password for that. if you click save it will edit the appropriate configfiles for you and connect everything as needed. if you want to check the settings manually, download putty, log in with root/root and have a look at the /etc/hellanzb.conf and /etc/auto.dl files.

The other 2 links are hellaworld and torrentflux.

hellaworld is a management page for the newsserver downloads that are currently running. you can download a .nzb file on binsearch.info or yabse.com and upload it in the hellaworld page. it will automatically start downloading and get par2 files as needed to repair the files if they didn't download completely. next it will unpack the download and cleanup after itself.

torrentflux is the management page for torrent downloads. login is root/root and that makes you admin on it. you can change the connection ports (defaulting to 51000-51100) if you are behind a firewall, nat these ports to the virtual ip address. now all you basically need to do is enter something in the search field and it will list possible downloads for you, click one with a high number seeders and it will add it to the download list. now you have to click the little green arrow and the download will start. torrents usually take a few minutes to get under way so be a bit patient.

all downloads eventually end up in the share you gave. i entered a mediacenter share (which is also a linux box ;)) so everything i downloaded is automatically put in the play-list.

hope this helps, don't hesitate to post any more questions you may have.

1: looks like the smbfs package is missing. it's very strange since it won't work at all without it. you can try re-installing it by typing 'apt-get install smbfs' on the commandline. very strange it disappeared though.

2: unfortunately a lot of torrentsites keep changing their site. downloader pages have to keep up to stay functional but the torrentflux package doesn't update often enough. the mininova downloader page i found on the internet worked. i haven't found updates for other torrentsites but if anybody knows where to find an update, let me know so i can add them to the appliance.

3: if you get the connection refused error, the hellanzb server isn't running. there's no way to check what's going wrong from the webpage but most likely it sees that the download directory isn't available and stops. to see the exact errormessage, type 'nzb' on the commandline and it will tell you.

hope this helps.

there are a few common mistakes that will break the appliance. if you run hellanzb or nzb directly as root there will be certain files that change ownership to root. the user running the service by default won't be able to write those files and will stop functioning.

to fix this, log into the console and type 'chown www-data /opt/hellanzb -R'

if you still have problems you could try becoming the www-data user and starting the program manually. first type 'su - www-data', then '/usr/bin/hellanzb'. it should tell you what goes wrong. once that works, the web interface should be able to connect.

i'm curious why you're having so many problems. sounds like it started with the missing smbfs package (perhaps an apt-get upgrade or autoclean?) and finding the way to fix it caused more problems. perhaps unzipping it from scratch and just type 'apt-get install smbfs' would be the easiest way to fix it?

i'm working on a small update so restaring services doesn't require logging in to the console anymore but is done simply from the web interface. i'll post that soon and will doublecheck for these kinds of problems before doing so.