Games¶

This page is for everyone who gets PC games through the server: finding and grabbing a game in Questarr, then copying it to a PC from the read-only games download page or over SFTP, including how to resume a big download. Games are the games module in COMPOSE_PROFILES. The pipeline behind it is in Games flow.

The server only stores these games. They are Windows or PC files; it can't run them.

Questarr: finding a game¶

Open Questarr at http://<tailscale-ip>:5000 and log in as admin with QUESTARR_PASSWORD from .env. Questarr needs a free IGDB key before it can search for games or show covers; the owner sets that up once (Getting started).

Questarr works like Radarr, with one difference: it doesn't pick releases for you.

1. Search for the game, add it and mark it Wanted.
2. Questarr searches the indexers on a schedule and lists what it found on the game's page.
3. Choose a release: a known repack group with plenty of seeders. Public trackers carry fakes, so check a release's comments and uploader before you run anything from it.
4. Click download. A Usenet release goes to SABnzbd, a torrent to qBittorrent inside the VPN.

Questarr's "auto download" only fires when a search returns exactly one release, so it stays off. Finished downloads sometimes stay untracked in Questarr; use Claim on its Downloads page.

The owner gets push notifications (ntfy): Game Available when a wanted game has releases to pick from, and Download Started, Completed or Aborted for downloads.

For viewers: everyone shares the one Questarr login, and Questarr has no approval step. So the rule is: mark games Wanted, and leave picking the release to the owner. "Download Started" is how the owner learns someone picked one anyway.

Where the files land:

Cleanuparr leaves game downloads alone: game releases always contain .exe files and archives, which its malware rule would otherwise reject. Questarr takes its indexers from Prowlarr; after adding an indexer there, the owner re-runs configure-questarr.py to pick it up.

The games download page¶

The page is SFTPGo, set up read-only: nobody can upload, rename, delete or share anything there.

Log in with your games login: the owner's is GAMES_USER / GAMES_PASSWORD from .env, and viewers get their own from viewer-add.py (the same password as their Jellyfin one). The page shows two folders, Torrent and Usenet.

• One file: click it to download.
• Several files or folders: tick them and press Download to get one zip.

Resuming big downloads¶

• A single file continues where it stopped if the connection drops: press Resume in the browser's downloads list.
• A zip of several items is built on the fly and starts over if interrupted.

So for a big game over the internet, download the files one by one, or use SFTP.

Whole folders with resume: SFTP¶

SFTP copies a whole game folder and resumes after an interruption. It answers on the tailnet only (port 2022 is closed to the home network), so connect over Tailscale.

In WinSCP (Windows) or FileZilla:

Then drag a game folder across. It is read-only, like the page.

The owner can use rsync over SSH instead (the path shown is the default DATA_ROOT):

rsync -avP --partial "<host>:/mnt/storage/data/torrents/games/<game>" ~/Downloads/

How fast¶

The server's disk usually reads a game faster than a gigabit network can carry it.

Away from home, a 50 GB game over a 30 Mbps upload takes about four hours.

When something goes wrong, see Troubleshooting.