quick help

Posted by fwaygo

so do i have to do all of this under wsl2 if im on windows, and second if i alr have jellyfin setup with movies those will transfer over? and where do the files go to so i make sure theyre on the right hdd?

4 replies

tomspark wrote:

Hey fwaygo, three quick answers: WSL2 on Windows — yes, SparkBox runs inside WSL2. It's a Linux stack (Docker + bash), so WSL2 is the Linux environment it lives in. The install command runs inside your WSL2 distro's shell, but you'll access the dashboard from your normal Windows browser at http://localhost:8443. WSL2 handles the bridging automatically — you don't need to be in the Linux shell day-to-day, only for the install. Existing Jellyfin transfer — files yes, settings no (with one workaround). Your actual movie files don't need to "transfer" anywhere — you just point SparkBox's Jellyfin at the same folder where they already live (see 3). What WON'T auto-migrate is your existing Jellyfin's user accounts, watch history, and library metadata — that lives in your old Jellyfin's config folder. If you want to keep all that, stop your old Jellyfin, copy its config/ and cache/ and metadata/ directories into SparkBox's Jellyfin volume (/opt/sparkbox/modules/media/config/jellyfin/ on Linux/WSL2), then start SparkBox. Not officially supported as a one-click migrate, but works fine as a manual move. Where files go — you control it. Default media root depends on platform: /opt/sparkbox/data/ on Linux/WSL2, /volume1/sparkbox-data/ on UGREEN NAS. To put it on a specific HDD on Windows, mount that drive in WSL2 (it auto-mounts at /mnt/d/, /mnt/e/, etc.) and set SBDATADIR=/mnt/d/your-folder BEFORE running the install one-liner. Or after install, edit /opt/sparkbox/.env and change MEDIAROOT=/mnt/d/whatever then run sparkbox restart media. SparkBox will create Movies/, TV/, Music/ subdirs there. If your existing movies are at e.g. D:\Movies, set SBDATADIR=/mnt/d and SparkBox will use that path; you'd need to make sure your existing files are organized in the Movies/, TV/, etc. subfolder structure Jellyfin/Sonarr/Radarr expect. For other questions, make sure to check https://tomsparkbox.com/docs since it's very extensive, but I'll also be here to help.

fwaygo wrote:

ok and last question, is hostinger vps required to run this? i got a lil confused and trying to keep this as free as one can. thank you in advance

tomspark wrote:

If you want to host it on a VPS, you can, but you can also use Windows or various linux distros. The VPS is paid, but only if you want it in the cloud.

tomspark wrote:

Nope, Hostinger's just a recommendation — SparkBox runs on any Linux VPS (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr, whatever) or your own hardware. The affiliate link just means I get a small cut if you click it, but it's the same product at the same price. For WSL2 on Windows you don't need a VPS at all — it runs locally on your machine for free.