tofa on Unraid

tofa is a media server for your movies and shows. One container runs everything: the server, its own database, automatic backups, and its own video engine for hardware transcoding. Point it at your media, claim the server with your tofa account, and watch on the web, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Android TV, and Windows.

tofa is in beta. You need a tofa account to claim a server; you can sign up at tofa.tv.

Install

Install tofa from the Apps tab. Two settings are worth understanding before you click Apply, and both are filled in for you by default:

• Config (/data) defaults to /mnt/cache/appdata/tofa. tofa runs its own database in there, and databases do a lot of small writes. Paths under /mnt/user go through Unraid's share layer, which adds overhead to every one of those writes, even when the share lives on your cache pool. Pointing tofa at the pool directly avoids that.

  Check the pool name before you click Apply. That default assumes your pool is called cache. If yours is called something else, change the path to match it, for example /mnt/main_cache/appdata/tofa. Unraid does not fail on a path that does not exist. It creates the folder on its RAM-backed root instead, the container starts, everything looks normal, and the whole database is gone the next time the server reboots. Your pool names are on the Main tab.

• Media (/media) defaults to /mnt/user/media. Point this at wherever your library lives. Set the mode to Read Only if tofa should never delete files from disk.

PUID and PGID default to 99 and 100, Unraid's nobody user and users group, which own appdata and shares out of the box. tofa fixes ownership of its own data folder on every start. It never changes ownership of your media.

The container uses host networking. That is what lets devices on your network connect to tofa directly, and lets tofa ask your router for a port for remote access. tofa listens on port 33333, which avoids the default ports of other media servers, so it can run alongside them.

Claim your server

Open a browser on any device on your network:

http://YOUR-UNRAID-IP:33333

Sign in with your tofa account and claim the server. The first start takes a minute or two while tofa sets up its database. Your server picks up its secure certificate on its own moments after the claim, so there is no need to restart the container.

Then add a library in the web interface and point it at your media inside the container: /media, or a subfolder like /media/Movies. tofa scans, matches, and fills in artwork on its own.

Hardware transcoding

• Intel or AMD, including iGPUs: in the container settings, turn on Advanced View, click Add another Path, Port, Variable, Label or Device, choose Device, and enter /dev/dri as the value. Then use Settings, then Transcoding, then Test hardware in the tofa web interface.
• NVIDIA: install the Nvidia Driver plugin from Community Applications, set Extra Parameters to --init --runtime=nvidia, and add two variables: NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES = all and NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES = compute,video,utility.

Updates

tofa shows an update banner in the web interface when a new build is out. To apply it, use force update on the container in the Docker tab (turn on Advanced View to see it). Your data and settings live in your appdata path and survive updates.

If something is off

• Apply fails with docker: bad format for path. An early version of this template shipped an empty Device entry for /dev/dri, and Unraid passes an empty device straight to docker, which refuses it. Edit the container, turn on Advanced View, and remove the empty Device row (or fill it in with /dev/dri if you have an Intel or AMD GPU), then Apply. The row is gone from the template here, but Community Applications serves its own cached copy and can keep offering the old one for a day or two, so check for the row before you click Apply. Unraid also saves your own copy of the template once you have applied it, so an install that already failed keeps the row until you remove it by hand.
• tofa says your data is not being saved. The folder mapped to /data is in memory rather than on a disk, so everything tofa stores goes away on the next reboot. The usual cause is a pool name that is not cache: the default path /mnt/cache/appdata/tofa never existed, and Unraid created it on its RAM-backed root. Run ls /mnt on the host to see your real pool names. Copy your existing data across before you change anything, and stop tofa first so the database is not copied mid-write: stop the container from the Docker tab, then run docker cp tofa:/data/. /mnt/main_cache/appdata/tofa/ and chown -R nobody:users /mnt/main_cache/appdata/tofa. Then edit the container, point Config at the real pool path, and start it again. Do this before the next reboot, which is what takes the RAM copy with it. Community Applications serves its own cached copy of this template, so a fresh install can still offer the older description for a day or two after we change it.
• The container stops right after starting. Check its log from the Docker tab. If you see a permissions message, confirm PUID and PGID are set to 99 and 100 and that your appdata path is a real disk path like /mnt/cache/appdata/tofa.
• My media isn't showing up. Check that the /media mapping points at the right share and that the nobody user can read those files. Files moved onto the array by other tools occasionally end up with odd ownership; Unraid's New Permissions tool on the Tools tab resets a share to nobody:users.
• Playback stutters on big files. Set up hardware transcoding above, and keep tofa's appdata on a pool device rather than /mnt/user.
• Port 33333 is already in use. Something else on the host claimed it. Stop that service, or switch the container off host networking and map a different port. Off host networking tofa cannot detect your server's address by itself, so also set your Unraid server's LAN IP in the ADVERTISED_LAN_IP variable, or under Settings, then Remote Access in the app. That keeps devices at home connecting directly.

Getting help

Once you have a tofa account, the support portal is at https://accounts.tofa.tv/support, and it is also linked from Settings inside the app. Diagnostics from your server attach to a ticket in one click, which is usually the fastest route to an answer.

About this repository

templates/tofa.xml is the Community Applications template for the tofa media server. Issues with the template itself can be raised here.