Migrating from decypharr to zurg

Read the shared page first. The trash guard lives there. So does the reason your library lands in __magic__ rather than in a symlink farm.

decypharr and zurg solve the same problem and their root layouts are strikingly close. That makes this the migration with the most that carries over for free.

The debrid side needs nothing. Both servers list the same accounts and present the torrent's own filenames. Those paths are identical once zurg sits at decypharr's mountpoint. Everything below is about the Usenet side.

Two things to settle before you start.

• Providers. They do not limit the migration. zurg has a backend for every service decypharr supports. Premiumize and Debrid-Link accounts come across like the rest. Each has a page under Providers.

• Do not change decypharr's folder_naming before migrating. It renames every folder in the library at once. That breaks every symlink target and every mount-direct Plex path in one stroke.

What differs on the Usenet side

Measured against zurg on the same five releases.

Single-file releases come out of decypharr named after the job. You get ToyStory5/ToyStory5.mkv where zurg keeps the poster's name and serves ToyStory5/Toy.Story.5.2026.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-KyoGo.mkv.

Archive releases are the interesting case and worth understanding because it explains two symptoms at once. decypharr produces this.

FatherBrown/Father.Brown.2013.S02E05.HDTV.x264-TLAfather.brown.2013.s02e05.hdtv.x264-tla.mp4

That is the archive's inner directory name and the file's own name concatenated with no separator. It is a path join that lost its /. So the missing directory level and the malformed filename are the same defect rather than two. zurg reproduces the real structure at FatherBrown/Father.Brown.2013.S02E05.HDTV.x264-TLA/father.brown.….mp4.

Multi-file releases and season packs keep their real filenames on both sides. They match automatically once the folder name matches.

What your library looks like afterwards

Everything is re-added because the library root moves to __magic__. See the shared page for why there is no cheaper path.

The gain is in the names. Every single-payload release comes back under the poster's filename instead of the job name. So ToyStory5/ToyStory5.mkv becomes Toy.Story.5.2026.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-KyoGo.mkv. That is the string Sonarr and Radarr and Plex parse for quality and source and group and edition. Archive releases stop carrying a welded name and sit in the archive's own directory. Multi-file releases and season packs already read correctly and are unchanged.

List the releases whose names move.

MOUNT=/mnt/decypharr
for d in "$MOUNT"/__all__/*/; do
  job=$(basename "$d")
  n=$(find "$d" -type f | wc -l)
  [ "$n" -eq 1 ] && echo "RENAMED BY DECYPHARR: $job"
done

What new content shows up

• Sample clips inside Sample/. This is the one worth configuring for. Set only_show_the_biggest_file: true if you do not want a 9 MB sample turning up as a second version.

• thumbnail.jpg and the .nfo and the poster's .url adverts. All inert.

• Obfuscated releases decypharr dropped arriving as new library items. decypharr published nothing at all for a fully hash-named post. zurg resolves it to the real release name and serves it.

• Empty folders where an archive chain is broken.

Get your NZBs back

decypharr cannot give them to you. It keeps one compressed binary per job at usenet/meta/<uuid>.meta and a usenet/nzbs/ directory that was empty on the bench. There is no documented export. Whether the .meta blobs decode back into NZBs is unverified. Treat the originals as unrecoverable.

What you do have is the job names. On both servers the job folder name is the NZB filename. So the folder list is your shopping list.

MOUNT=/mnt/decypharr
ls "$MOUNT/nzbs" > nzb-jobs.txt      # the usenet jobs
wc -l nzb-jobs.txt

For each job re-fetch the NZB from your indexer by searching the folder name. Then rename the file to exactly that name plus .nzb before dropping it in zurg's nzbs/ directory. The filename is the folder name and the folder name is what keeps the path stable.

Two rules while you do it.

• Skip any release a debrid account already holds. The symlink resolves through the torrent copy. Adding the NZB too makes zurg see two different releases with one name and hash-suffix one of them as Some.Release {a1b2c3}. That breaks whatever pointed at the bare name.

• A release your indexer no longer carries is simply gone. With autoEmptyTrash at 0 the Plex item survives in the trash until you decide to drop it.

Build zurg alongside

Run zurg beside decypharr on its own mountpoint. Both may list the same debrid accounts at once because listing is read-only.

zurg: v1
providers:
  - type: realdebrid
    token: YOUR_RD_TOKEN
  # - type: alldebrid / torbox as you have them
  - type: nzb
    nntp:
      host: news.example.com
      port: 563
      tls: true
      username: USER
      password: PASS
      connections: 30                # your plan's real allowance
retain_rd_torrent_name: false        # align with decypharr's folder_naming
retain_folder_name_extension: false  # true if your folders carry .mkv/.mp4
mount_path: "/mnt/zurg-staging"
rclone_enabled: true
rclone_binary: bin/rclone
directories:                         # optional: mirror decypharr's top level
  torrents:
    filters:
      - not_provider: nzb
  nzbs:
    filters:
      - provider: nzb

Then check the debrid side lines up before going further.

ls /mnt/decypharr/__all__      | sort > decypharr-jobs.txt
ls /mnt/zurg-staging/__all__   | sort > zurg-jobs.txt
diff decypharr-jobs.txt zurg-jobs.txt

Sometimes the torrent folders differ systematically. An extension is present or absent. The RD rename shows up instead of the original. In that case flip retain_rd_torrent_name or retain_folder_name_extension and rescan rather than fixing anything by hand. Folders only on the decypharr side are the Usenet jobs. Premiumize and Debrid-Link folder names were not compared against decypharr's. Check those accounts' folders here too.

Cut over

One path whatever you have today. Nothing here moves bytes.

1. Turn on __magic__ and restart. The routes are registered at startup so a dashboard toggle needs a restart before the namespace answers.

magic:
  enabled: true

2. Make the root folders. They go at the root of __magic__, beside the __all__ zurg keeps there. Not __magic__/__all__, not __magic__ itself and not the mount root. Both *arrs raise a health check for those; siblings trip neither.

In Docker the *arrs must reach __all__ and these root folders through one volume. decypharr setups often bind a downloads folder and a media folder separately. Two volumes turn every import into a full copy. Bind the parent of zurg's mount once instead. The walkthrough shows it.

mkdir -p /mnt/zurg/__magic__/tv /mnt/zurg/__magic__/movies
ls /mnt/zurg/__magic__/__all__/   # your releases are already listed here

__magic__/__all__ mirrors the library so every release is present before you organise anything.

3. Organise it. A mv inside __magic__ writes a row and moves no bytes.

mv "/mnt/zurg/__magic__/__all__/Some.Release.S01E01.1080p/ep1.mkv" \
   "/mnt/zurg/__magic__/tv/The Show/Season 01/S01E01.mkv"

If Sonarr and Radarr organised your old library then move it in with one script. It renames every file the old library links to into a new root folder under __magic__. Each one lands at the path the *arr already expects. Nothing is copied. Then you switch the *arr's root folder without letting it move anything. The steps and the script are on the shared page. Never let an *arr move the files itself. That crosses the mount boundary. It is a copy and it downloads your library.

The script needs a zurg_path function for decypharr's links. Save this as zurg_path.sh beside it and set OLDMOUNT to where decypharr is mounted.

OLDMOUNT=/mnt/decypharr         # decypharr's mount, where the old links point
zurg_path() {
  local rel=${1#"$OLDMOUNT"/__all__/}
  [ "$rel" = "$1" ] && return   # not a link into decypharr
  local job=${rel%%/*} name=${1##*/} f videos
  [ -f "$ZURG/__all__/$rel" ] && { echo "$ZURG/__all__/$rel"; return; }
  # decypharr welded an archive's inner folder and file into one name.
  for f in "$ZURG/__all__/$job"/*/*; do
    [ "$(basename "$(dirname "$f")")$(basename "$f")" = "$name" ] && { echo "$f"; return; }
  done
  # decypharr named a lone video after the job. Take the job's one video.
  case "$name" in "$job".*) ;; *) return ;; esac
  videos=$(find "$ZURG/__all__/$job" -type f \( -iname '*.mkv' -o -iname '*.mp4' -o -iname '*.avi' \) ! -ipath '*sample*')
  [ "$(printf '%s\n' "$videos" | grep -c .)" -eq 1 ] && echo "$videos"
}

A link into a debrid release or a multi-file NZB release names the same file on both servers. decypharr renamed two kinds of NZB release. It named a lone video after the job and it welded an archive's folder and file into one name. The function finds zurg's copy of both. A job with more than one video is never guessed at. It prints NOT IN ZURG instead.

4. Point Plex at the root folders you made — __magic__/tv and __magic__/movies — and at those only. Never the root of __magic__, which holds the whole library at __magic__/__all__ as well, and never __magic__ and a filter directory, or every episode is found twice. Confirm autoEmptyTrash is 0. Add the new location and scan. Then remove the old one. That is your *arr library path or the decypharr mount if Plex read it directly.

5. Empty the trash once you have spot-checked a few items. Watch state comes back through the GUID match. Collections and artwork choices do not.

Leave decypharr running until then. It costs nothing and it is your rollback. Do not delete its config or db/ or usenet/ state either. When you are done stop it.

sudo systemctl stop decypharr

Afterwards

Automation carries over, both halves. zurg has an opt-in SABnzbd-compatible endpoint so Sonarr and Radarr can hand it an NZB, and an opt-in qBittorrent-compatible endpoint so they can hand it a magnet or a .torrent for a debrid account. Both import out of __magic__/__all__ by rename. Your options.

• NZBs. Turn on sabnzbd.enabled and point the *arrs at zurg. zurg checks each grab before it reports it finished. It asks the news servers about the start and the end of every file. It also downloads the first article of each file. That is up to sixty-four of them plus a few more of a release with only a few files. Some news servers still say an article exists after its content was taken down and only a download shows that. zurg rebuilds a release with articles gone from its PAR2 files where it can. One it cannot rebuild is reported Failed. The *arr then blocklists it and grabs another. The check is a sample and not the whole post. A post that lost a stretch the sample did not reach still reports Completed and fails on the read that reaches the gap.

• Torrents. Turn on qbittorrent.enabled and add it as a second download client. A private tracker's release works when the indexer hands out a .torrent file rather than a bare magnet, because the file keys the account's cache lookup by hash directly.

• One-off adds. zurg's dashboard has no add button. Add a magnet or a .torrent through the qBittorrent endpoint with one *arr's category and it goes to that *arr. Adding a release by hand shows how. A magnet added through DMM and an NZB dropped into nzbs/ both list in zurg. Neither reaches Sonarr or Radarr on its own. zurg's own acquisition also fetches requests by itself. They come from your Plex watchlist and from Seerr and the *arrs. It takes NZBs from Newznab indexers and torrents from Torznab indexers when your account already has them cached.

• Hybrid. Keep decypharr purely as the *arrs' download client pushing into the same debrid accounts with zurg serving the mount. Both list the same account so zurg picks up what decypharr adds. The *arr import step then needs remote path mapping onto zurg's tree. That tree and the root folders must sit in one volume. Test one grab first.