Jellyfin in docker

guide-by-example

Purpose & Overview

Stream movies/tv-shows/music to a browser, or a large selection of devices and services.

Jellyfin if a free media system, an alternative to proprietary Plex.
The core server side is written in C#, web client in Javascript, and a number of other clients written in various languages and frameworks.

Starting point for me was this viggy96 repo

Files and directory structure

/mnt/
└── bigdisk/
    ├── tv/
    ├── movies/
    └── music/
/home/
└── ~/
    └── docker/
        └── jellyfin/
            ├── jellyfin_cache/
            ├── jellyfin_config/
            ├── .env
            └── docker-compose.yml

/mnt/bigdisk/... - a mounted media storage share
jellyfin_cache/ - cache, includes transcodes
jellyfin_config/ - configuration
.env - a file containing environment variables for docker compose
docker-compose.yml - a docker compose file, telling docker how to run the containers

You only need to provide the two files.
The directories are created by docker compose on the first run.

docker-compose

Relatively simple compose.
The only special thing being the passthrough of the graphic card for hardware accelerated transcoding. This is done in the devices section along with permissions in group_add.

This basic setup worked for me with modern intel and amd cpus with igpu, but how to setup things might change over time so one should check the official documentation

docker-compose.yml

services:

  jellyfin:
    image: jellyfin/jellyfin:latest
    container_name: jellyfin
    hostname: jellyfin
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file: .env
    devices:   
      - /dev/dri/renderD128:/dev/dri/renderD128  # ls /dev/dri
    group_add:
      - "989"  # match output of: getent group render | cut -d: -f3
    volumes:
      - ./jellyfin_config:/config
      - ./jellyfin_cache:/cache
      - /mnt/smb_share/filmy_1:/media/filmy_1:ro
      - /mnt/smb_share/filmy_2:/media/filmy_2:ro
      - /mnt/smb_share/filmy_3:/media/filmy_3:ro
      - /mnt/smb_share/shows:/media/shows:ro
    ports:
      - "8096:8096"
      - "1900:1900/udp"

networks:
  default:
    name: $DOCKER_MY_NETWORK
    external: true

.env

# GENERAL
DOCKER_MY_NETWORK=caddy_net
TZ=Europe/Bratislava

All containers must be on the same network.
Which is named in the .env file.
If one does not exist yet: docker network create caddy_net

Reverse proxy

Caddy is used, details here.

Caddyfile

jellyfin.{$MY_DOMAIN} {
    reverse_proxy jellyfin:8096
}

First run

Specifics of my setup

no real long term use
findroid app does not jump subtitles like official one
amd cpu and no gpu, so no experience with hw transcoding

media files are stored and shared on trunas scale VM and mounted directly on the docker host using systemd mounts, instead of fstab or autofs.

/etc/systemd/system/mnt-bigdisk.mount

[Unit]
Description=12TB truenas mount

[Mount]
What=//10.0.19.19/Dataset-01
Where=/mnt/bigdisk
Type=cifs
Options=ro,username=ja,password=qq,file_mode=0700,dir_mode=0700,uid=1000
DirectoryMode=0700

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/systemd/system/mnt-bigdisk.automount

[Unit]
Description=12TB truenas mount

[Automount]
Where=/mnt/bigdisk

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

to automount on boot - sudo systemctl enable mnt-bigdisk.automount

Troubleshooting

We're unable to connect to the selected server right now. Please ensure it is running and try again.

If you encounter this, try opening the url in browsers private window.
If it works then clear the cookies in your browser.

No playback at all but GUI works fine

Might be no access to network share, for example if dockerhost boots up faster than NAS.

Update

Manual image update:

docker-compose pull
docker-compose up -d
docker image prune

Useful

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1bit5xr/livetv_on_jellyfin_2024/