Your SparkBox week — Oct 8
Posted by tomspark
Here's what shipped to every SparkBox this week — if your box is up to date, you already have all of it: • Doctor: when an app had stopped with an error, sudo sparkbox doctor only showed its exit code, for example "crashed (exit code 128)", so neither you nor Tom AI could see what went wrong. It now shows the reason right under that line: why the app could not be started again (for example a folder, drive or network it needs is no longer there), or the app's own last lines when it stopped by itself. • Media pipeline: when the Storage step said Sonarr or Radarr could not write to a library folder outside the usual Movies, TV and Music folders (for example a second TV folder at /data/media/tv), running sudo sparkbox check-media-perms could still report that everything was fine, because it only looked at the usual folders. It now also tests every other library folder your apps use, from inside the apps, and names any folder they cannot write to along with the one command that fixes it. The Storage step now names that folder too. • Overview: on a brand-new box, right after Claim server, the health line could say "2 services need attention · homepage (stopped), portainer (stopped)" for up to 20 seconds while SparkBox itself was restarting those two apps as part of setup. An app SparkBox has just set up and is about to start now counts as starting, not stopped, in both dashboards. An app that still has not started a minute and a half later is reported as before. • Privacy: anime-style download names (a group name in square brackets, then the show and the episode) are now replaced by a label in full before anything reaches Tom AI or a support case. Before, only the show's name was replaced and the group name stayed in. • Cloud Storage: turning on the Document Server and then saving its address in Nextcloud's ONLYOFFICE settings could fail with "Mixed Active Content is not allowed. HTTPS address for ONLYOFFICE Docs is required." The setup steps on the app card and in the Cloud Storage guide suggested an address on port 8790, which can never have a padlock. They now say what works: give the Document Server its own https address first (tick Document Server under Custom Domains in the classic dashboard's Settings → Network, or add it in Nginx Proxy Manager), then enter that address in Nextcloud without :8790. • App updates: Immich 3.3.0, Home Assistant 2026.10.0, Homarr 2.3.0, Gitea 28.1.0, Ghost 6.69.0, n8n 2.43.1, Ollama 0.40.1, Portainer 2.45.2 and Syncthing 2.1.6. • Jellyfin: new installs now get a "Skip Intro" button on TV episodes in every Jellyfin app — TV, phone and web — from the Intro Skipper plugin, installed through Jellyfin's own plugin system so it always matches your Jellyfin. On a box you already have, it stays off until you switch it on: My apps → Media Center → Settings → "Skip Intro button in Jellyfin" → Save. The first time, it listens to the start of every episode to find the intros, which keeps Jellyfin busy for a while on a big library; playback works meanwhile. What it learns stays on your box — its optional online intro database is never installed. • Jellyfin: a new switch in the same Media Center settings installs the Jellyfin Enhanced plugin — keyboard shortcuts (press ? in Jellyfin), automatic intro skipping, a random-pick button, Spoiler Guard and quality tags on posters, in the browser and the phone and desktop apps (not the TV apps). After it installs, press Ctrl+Shift+R once on Jellyfin's page in your browser (Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac), or nothing new appears. Off unless you switch it on; its optional usage report stays off. 📣 Shoutouts this week: could be you. Report what's broken and you might see your name in next week's thread. Got a bug or a feature idea? Post it right here in d/sparkbox and Tom's team reads it. P.S. Tell a friend about SparkBox: you earn $10 for every Legend sale you refer, and they get $10 off. Free to join: https://tomsparkbox.com/affiliate 📖 The full write-up, with pictures: https://tomsparkbox.com/blog/this-week-in-sparkbox-2026-10-05 Previous weeks: This week in SparkBox: Sep 22 – Sep 28, 2026 — https://tomsparkbox.com/blog/this-week-in-sparkbox-2026-09-28 · This week in SparkBox: Sep 15 – Sep 21, 2026 — https://tomsparkbox.com/blog/this-week-in-sparkbox-2026-09-21 · This week in SparkBox: Sep 13 – Sep 19, 2026 — https://tomsparkbox.com/blog/this-week-in-sparkbox-2026-09-19