Installing Sickbeard on Mac OS X 10.6

This post is outdated and I have written an updated guide. Click here to view it now.

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.