tdarr-desktop-node

Tdarr Desktop Node

This is a Tdarr worker node that runs on the gaming desktop (NVIDIA RTX 3090). It connects to the Tdarr server running on TrueNAS over the LAN and processes transcode jobs using the 3090's GPU.

Tdarr's node model is designed for exactly this use case: nodes can come and go without losing queue state. When the desktop is on, it pulls jobs and crunches through them; when it's off, TrueNAS's own node carries on. The 3090 is significantly faster than the TrueNAS GPU for encoding, so leaving this running while gaming-idle will make a large dent in a backlog.

Architecture

Gaming Desktop                          TrueNAS (LAN)
┌──────────────────────┐               ┌──────────────────┐
│ tdarr-node-desktop   │──── :8266 ───►│ tdarr server     │
│ RTX 3090             │               │                  │
│                      │               │ /mnt/Data/Media  │
│ NFS mount ◄──────────┼───────────────┘                  │
│  /data/media         │  (reads/writes media over LAN)   │
└──────────────────────┘

Media files are accessed via NFS mount from TrueNAS. Transcode scratch space is a local path on the desktop — keeps temp files off the network.

Prerequisites

TrueNAS:

• NFS export configured for /mnt/Data/Media — allow the desktop's LAN IP

Gaming desktop:

• Docker Desktop with WSL2 backend
• NVIDIA Container Toolkit: docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/container-toolkit
• NFS client enabled in Windows (optional features → Services for NFS → Client for NFS)
• Local directories created:

  mkdir C:\Docker\tdarr\configs
  mkdir C:\Docker\tdarr\logs
  mkdir C:\Docker\tdarr\transcode-cache
  

Quick Start

cp example.env .env
# Edit .env — set TDARR_SERVER_IP and TRUENAS_IP to the TrueNAS LAN IP
docker compose up -d

Open the Tdarr web UI → Nodes — Desktop-3090 should appear within ~30 seconds.

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
TZ	America/New_York	Container timezone
PUID	1000	User ID (Docker Desktop default)
PGID	1000	Group ID (Docker Desktop default)
TDARR_SERVER_IP	—	TrueNAS LAN IP address
TRUENAS_IP	—	TrueNAS IP for NFS mount (usually same as above)
TDARR_CONFIGS_PATH	C:\Docker\tdarr\configs	Local path for node config
TDARR_LOGS_PATH	C:\Docker\tdarr\logs	Local path for logs
TDARR_TRANSCODE_PATH	C:\Docker\tdarr\transcode-cache	Local scratch space for in-progress encodes

Worker Limits

The compose sets transcodegpuWorkers=2 and transcodecpuWorkers=2. The 3090 has enough VRAM and compute to run two concurrent GPU encodes. Raise or lower in .env → restart to apply.