How to fix Sonarr Couldn’t add report to download queue syntax errors

Recently Sonarr began misbehaving for a number of people using the FreeNAS Sonarr Plugin. The problem basically boils down to an old version of mono. Updating it manually resolves the issue.

The symptoms involve nothing being sent to the download agents, no activity showing up and syntax errors in the logs such as:

|Warn|ProcessDownloadDecisions|Couldn’t add report to download queue.

System.Xml.XmlException: Syntax Error after ‘<‘ character:

As a result, no shows will download into SABNZBD or your other download agents.

To fix follow these steps:

1. SSH into your freenas
2. Find out what the name of your Sonarr jail is by typing warden list
3. Type jexec <nameofthesonarrjail> you got from the previous step
4. You are now running commands in the sonarr jail
5. pkg install mono
6. follow the prompts to install
7. let it complete
8. Note if you aren’t familar with Linux VI text editor then I suggest you run pkg install nano first and use that
9. Edit the config file sonarr uses to find mono
   1. Nano users: nano /usr/local/etc/rc.d/sonarr
   2. VI users: vi /usr/local/etc/rc.d/sonarr
10. File a line with procname="xxxx" which mentions mono and change it to
11. procname="/usr/local/bin/mono"
12. type exit to leave the jail
13. type warden restart <nameofthesonarrjail> to restart the jail (or just use the FreeNAS webUI)