I host it publicly accessible behind a proper firewall and reverse proxy setup.

If you are only ever using Jellyfin from your own, wireguard configured phone, then that’s great; but there’s nothing wrong with hosting Jellyfin publicly.

I think one of these days I need to make a “myth-busting” post about this topic.

OK, add step above: use wildcard certificate for your domain.

Terminating the TLS connection at your perimeter firewall is standard practice, there’s no reason your jellyfin host needs to obtain the certificate.

Actual answer for 3:

• put jellyfin behind a proper reverse proxy. Ideally on a separate host / hardware firewall, but nginx on the same host works fine as well.
• create subdomain, let’s say sub.yourdomain.com
• forward traffic, for that subdomain ONLY, to jellyfin in your reverse proxy config
• tell your relatives to put sub.yourdomain.com into their jellyfin app

All the fear-mongering about exposing jellyfin to the internet I have seen on here boils down to either

• “port forwarding is a bad idea!!”, which yes, don’t do that. The above is not that. Or
• “people / bots who know your IP can get jellyfin to work as a 1-bit oracle, telling you if a specific media file exists on your disk” which is a) not an indication for something illegal, and b) prevented by the described reverse proxy setup insofar as the bot needs to know the exact subdomain (and any worthwhile domain-provider will not let bots walk your DNS zone).

(Not saying YOU say that; just preempting the usual folklore typically commented whenever someone suggests hosting jellyfin publicly accessible)

No, mate. I don’t need a guide, or a tour. Just a single clarifying sentence.

“My product does x”. Right now, x could be:

• help you scam people
• provide a meditation partner
• help you learn how to code in Cobol
• give travel tips
• …

What does your product DO? And dong you dare answer “it helps you make money”, that does not explain anything.

I have clicked every link on that site and I still have exactly zero clue wtf this is.

FWIW, I have no issues sending mails/having them be received from my self-hosted to Google mail

On many trackers, you get “paid” for time seeded. Usually in the forms of bonus points or the like. You can then exchange these for improving your ratio (or a freeleech token, or an invite,…).

It’s a system that also rewards keeping media available even if you are not uploading to anyone.

Also, keep in mind that often, a large part of the available content is freeleech (meaning leeching it doesn’t affect your ratio), but seeding those torrents usually still does improve your ratio.

Sorry, I should have mentioned: liking bare-metal does not mean disliking abstraction.

I would absolutely go insane if I had to go back to installing and managing each and every services in their preferred way/config file/config language, and to diy backup solutions, and so on.

I’m currently managing all of that through a single nix config, which doesn’t only take care of 90% of the overhead, it also contains all config in a single, self-documenting, language.

Nice. My partner has a Proxmox setup, so we’ve adapted the Nix config to spin up new VMs of any machine with a single command.

NixOS :)

Maybe I should have clarified that liking bare-metal does not imply disliking abstraction

Containers != services.

I don’t think I am better than anyone. I jumped into these comments because docker was pushed as superior, unprompted.

Installing and configuring does not an expert make, agreed; but that’s not what I said.

I would say I’m pretty knowledgeable about the things I host though, seeing as I am a contributor and / or package maintainer for a number of them…

They are using a hosting provider - their dad.

“The cloud” is also just a bunch of machines in a basement. Lots of machines in lots of “basements”, but still.

OK, but I’d rather be the expert.

And I have no troubling spinning up new services, fast. Currently sitting at around ~30 Internet-facing services, 0 docker containers, and reproducing those installs from scratch + restoring backups would be a single command plus waiting 5 minutes.

No, I actually think that is a good analogy. If you just want to have something up and running and use it, that’s obviously totally fine and valid, and a good use-case of Docker.

What I take issue with is the attitude which the person I replied to exhibits, the “why would anyone not use docker”.

I find that to be a very weird reaction to people doing bare metal. But also I am biased. ~30 Internet facing services, 0 docker in use 😄

I would say yes, it’s still self-hosting. It’s probably not “home labbing”, but it’s still you responsible for all the services you host yourself, it’s just the hardware which is managed by someone else.

Also don’t let people discourage you from doing bare-metal.

Yeah why wouldn’t you want to know how things work!

I obviously don’t know you, but to me it seems that a majority of Docker users know how to spin up a container, but have zero knowledge of how to fix issues within their containers, or to create their own for their custom needs.

Which shouldn’t really be an issue since you should only host on 443, which tells bots basically nothing.

Configure your firewall/proxy to only forward for the correct subdomain, and now the bots are back to 0, since knowing the port is useless, and any even mildly competent DNS provider will protect you from bots walking your zone.

Sorry, saw this only just now. I don’t really have any guides to point to, so just the basic steps:

• host jellyfin locally, e.g. on http://192.168.10.10:8096/
• configure some reverse proxy (nginx, caddy, in my case it’s haproxy managed through OPNSense)
• that proxy should handle https (i.e. Let’s Encrypt) certificates
• it should only forward https traffic for (for example) jellyfin.yourdomain.com to your Jellyfin server
• create a DNS entry for jellyfin.yourexample.com pointing either to your static IP, or have some DynDNS mechanism to update the entry

90% of this is applicable to any “how to host x publicly” question, and is mostly a one-time setup. Ideally, have the proxy running on a different VM/hardware, e.g. a firewall, and do think about how well you want/need to secure the network.

In any case, you then just put in https://jellyfin.yourdomain.com/ in the hotel TV.

I have never used Tailscale. I have also Jever seen anyone in the wild recommend it and explain what exactly the use-case is beyond plain, old, reliable, open source WireGuard.

So yeah, agreed.

Also I have been hosting Jellyfin publicly accessible for years with zero issues, so idk… I also dint k ow what the “you have to use Tailscale for jellyfin” people are doing with TVs/Firesticks/… in hotels, airbnbs,…

Managing 30+ machines with NixOS in a single unified config, currently sitting at a total of around 17k lines of nix code.

In other words, I have put a lot of time into this. It was a very steep learning curve, but it’s paid for itself multiple times over by now.

For “newcomers”, my observations can be boiled down to this: if you only manage one machine, it’s not worth it. Maaaaaybe give home-manager a try and see if you like it.

Situation is probably different with things like Silverblue (IMO throwing those kinds of distros in with Guix and NixOS is a bit misleading - very different philosophy and user experience), but I can only talk about Nix here.

With Nix, the real benefit comes once you handle multiple machines. Identical or similar configurations get combined or parametrized. Config values set for Host A can be reused and decisions be made automatically based on it in Host B, for example:

• all hosts know my SSH pub keys from first boot, without ever having to configure anything in any of them
• my NAS IP is set once, all hosts requiring NAS access just reuse it implicitly
• creating new proxmox VMs just means adding, on average, 10 lines of nix config (saying: your ID will be this, you will run that service) and a single command, because the heavy lifting and configuring has already been done, once -…