Installing Sickbeard on Mac OS X 10.6

SickBeard only has two requirements. The first being Python, which comes with Snow Leopard, and the second is Cheetah, which will need to be installed. This guide assumes that you are using the default Snow Leopard Python. If you have installed another version of Python I am not sure that this will work.

Download Cheetah from http://www.cheetahtemplate.org/download.html. Extract the contents of the archive file you just downloaded to somewhere on your Mac. Open Terminal and cd to the extracted files. Once inside the folder run the following:

sudo python setup.py install

Now you need to download SickBeard. There are two options for this. I did (and still do) option 2.

Option #1 (easier but harder to update)

There is not a binary for the Mac platform so you will have to download the source which you can get from http://github.com/midgetspy/Sick-Beard/zipball/master. Extract the downloaded zip file to wherever you would like the SickBeard app to reside on your computer. Go back to Terminal.app and cd to the SickBeard directory. To start SickBeard type the following:

python sickbeard.py

A browser should open up with SickBeard. If it doesn’t you can get to the app by visiting http://localhost:8081 in your favorite browser.

Option #2 (harder but easier to update – newest version of the code)

We are going to use git to download and update SickBeard. So first you need to install git if you have not already. Download the git OSX binary here. Install git. If you have still have Terminal open cmd+q out of it and then reopen. cd to the directory you want to install SickBeard in. Then type and run the following:

git clone git://github.com/midgetspy/Sick-Beard.git

Now you should have a folder call Sick-Beard. cd into the new folder and then type the following:

python sickbeard.py

A browser should open up with SickBeard. If it doesn’t you can get to the app by visiting http://localhost:8081 in your favorite browser. When you want to update Sickbeard first make sure SickBeard is not running. Open terminal and navigate to the Sick-Beard folder. Then type the following:

git pull

That’s it. Now you are running the latest version of the code.

Some Notes

Unfortunately, I have yet to find an elegant way to automatically start Sickbeard on boot, or to get SickBeard to run without having to have Terminal open. I played around with py2app a bit, but never got a working app out of it. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

UPDATE: SickBeard now has a daemon mode. To start in daemon mode type the following in a Terminal window:

python sickbeard.py -d

You can close the Terminal window and it will continue to run.

Jon

test
shaun

Desperately trying to get Sickbeard up and running! Downloaded the file but nowhere among all the files can I find the application to run and install on a mac!? Easy done on Windows. Don’t know what I am missing? Any help would greatly be appreciated! thanks
Jon

There is not a .app. You need to start the application from Terminal. Navigate to the folder that the files are in and then type “sickbeard.py -d” to start it.
shaun

thanks jon. More questions however. Do I navigate to the files somehow within Terminal itself and then use the command? Transition to Mac hasn’t been as seamless as I wanted! Thanks again
Jon

That’s exactly what you do. When you first open Terminal you will be in
your home directory (the one with your user name). You can cd (change
directory into the one with the Cheetah and then the SickBeard files). If
you are new to the command line you may want to take a look at this:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unix1.html.
http://twitter.com/Metsadah Gerbert Floor

This is not working for me, I get this error:
error “Traceback (most recent call last): File “/Applications/Sick-Beard/sickbeard.py”, line 41, in from sickbeard.webserveInit import initWebServer File “/Applications/Sick-Beard/sickbeard/webserveInit.py”, line 24, in from sickbeard.webserve import WebInterface File “/Applications/Sick-Beard/sickbeard/webserve.py”, line 29, in from Cheetah.Template import TemplateImportError: No module named Cheetah.Template” number 1

I have installed cheetah though, and running the same line in the terminal doesnt give any problems
shaun

thanks much! got it all going and it’s brilliant!
S_sava

Once in daemon mode, how do I shut it down and restart? Having issues with Sickbeard in that it won’t shutdown! thanks
sef

If you start SickBeard in daemon mode, you can pass it the –pidfile flag. This will cause it to create a file with it’s process id. For example:

python SickBeard.py –daemon –pidfile /tmp/SickBeard.py

This will start SickBeard in daemon mode and write the pid to /tmp/SickBeard.py — to kill it, do:

kill `cat /tmp/SickBeard.py`

– note the backquotes (above the tilde on a US keyboard). They cause the output of the cat command to be used as an argument to kill.
sef

Oops. I meant to write /tmp/SickBeard.pid not /tmp/SickBeard.py — it won’t make a difference, but the .py extension implies that it’s a python script
cwf

I’m having the same problem…were you ever able to find a solution?
anonymous

on OS X, in Automator, you can create a wrapper .app for it and have it launched using an icon, or stick it in login items.
cwf

I can’t get it to work either…I get an error “ImportError: no module named sickbeard”

I’ve tried Applescript, Automator, Platypus…I can’t figure out a way to get it to load at login…driving me nuts.
Anonymous

To make SickBeard launch at boot as a background daemon I created an Automator application. Quite similar to the one posted earlier, but this is the command that worked properly in my case. (Note that I have installed Python 2.7 for mac, which adds the ‘pythonw’ app used here.)

1. Open Automator, choose new Application workflow.
2. Drag a ‘Run Shell Script’ action to the workflow area on the right.
3. Set the ‘Shell’ drop-down to ‘/bin/bash’ and the ‘Pass Input’ drop-down to ‘as arguments’
4. In the text box, clear the text there and replace with: /usr/local/bin/pythonw /Applications/Sick-Beard/SickBeard.py -d
5. Be sure to change the path to your SickBeard.py as necessary. Then Save As, Application, and save the file where you like. I put it in the SickBeard application folder.
6. From the System Preferences/Accounts pane, choose the user that will run SickBeard at login, choose ‘Login Items’, and click the ‘+’ button to navigate to and select your new Automator application.

That should be it. This should then launch whenever the user logs in. (For my media center i just have one user that logs in automatically at boot.)
http://www.davidthurston.com David

I have done a bit of a guide to setting up Sick Beard, SABnzbd and getting it all to run on log in here.

A lot of it is plagiarised from other websites but this all works for me. Hope that it helps you too:

http://www.davidthurston.com/articles1.asp?CategoryID=2
Cashxx

Just open up AppleScript Editor and paste this, then Save As: Application.

tell application “Finder”
activate
do shell script “python ./Applications/SickBeard/SickBeard.py”
end tell
MadD0c

Made a modification to your script.

Mine now reads:

tell application “Finder” to get folder of (path to me) as Unicode text
set workingDir to quoted form of POSIX path of result
do shell script “cd ” & workingDir & “; python SickBeard.py -d”
end tell

After saving as Application and placing in the same folder as SickBeard.py the application can be placed where ever you want and it will still run.
D. Burger

Mac OS X uses a background service called ‘launchd’ to manage services to startup at boot. It actually quit simple to get Sick-Beard to launch when you’re Mac boots. I used it to get my Subversion ‘svnserve’ deamon to launch at boot. Using a plist file in /Library/LaunchDeadmons/.

See;
http://sickbeard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=87