JellyFin - Emby Ported to Open Source - Again

As many of you know I have moved from media server to media server over the years. First was Plex. It had open source parts, and I hoped for more, but slowly they moved to closed source, and just went in a direction I didn’t like.

Enter Empy! The group that saw what was wrong with Plex. The saviors for the open source lovers. People bought in, they got great press,a nd now they are just as bad, or worse than Plex. They’ve closed their source code, and are lookin to charge fees for use of any apps not on your netowrk. Jerky indded.

Disparate, I’ve scoured the web for options. I found one that was not bad, but young, and java based, so not ideal for me. Then I found out a group who also was dissatisfied with Emby forked the project, and has continued with it as fully open source.

I installed JellyFin https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin . So far, so good. Not too hard to get installed and setup, thought their docs could be more clear.

It looks exacatly like Emby (as one would expect). I’m excited to have something that’s fully open source. We’ll see how it goes.

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Hi, great vid on Jellyfin as all of yours vids have been, why did you went the docker route instead of installing it on bare Ubuntu? Is there any benefits aside from being all contained to one package?

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I may have answered you on youtube, but I went the docker route after the package for straight install had it’s keys expire and I couldn’t re-install or update. Once I did, I realized that the docker method was soooooo much easier to maintain and keep running.

I keep the configs backedup, so even if I reinstall my OS, I just put the same volumes back, then run the same docker command, and everything is like I never changed anything.

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yes, sorry for double asking but I didn’t realize.
the problem with docker for me is that I can’t add new paths to add media, for ex, on your vid you used 2 paths, but how do I add more paths to then link to more folders inside the jellyfin webgui?

Just add another volume mapping. For instance. I have new TVShows and Archived TVShows, as well as movies. I map them like this.

docker run -d --volume /home/brian/jellyfin/config:/config --volume /home/brian/jellyfin/cache:/cache --volume /media/brian/SSD500:/tv --volume /media/brian/Backups:/movies --volume /media/brian/Backups/TV/TVShows/:/tv-archive --net=host --name jellyfin --restart=unless-stopped jellyfin/jellyfin

I think technically I should be able to get to it from the movies volume since it’s a couple of folders up, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work that way.

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When I type this my way it appear the following error
“docker: Error response from daemon: Conflict. The container name “/jellyfin” is already in use by container “3c6da6d575cad83201427d6822c128a6acbe4ac68305b39db2f83acdc4bcdacb”. You have to remove (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.
See ‘docker run --help’.”

The idea that I get is that I cannot map any more volumes into this container…
a bit confused

I already got it running, but there’s still one of many thing that bugs me, I got it running this way

“sudo docker run -d --volume /home/myName/jellyfin/config:/config --volume /home/myName/jellyfin/cache:/cache --volume /media/myName/Media1/Movies:/Movies --volume /Media1/Series/:/Series --net=host --name jellyfin --restart=unless-stopped jellyfin/jellyfin”

There was a residual folder called Series in the media folder on root, once I deleted it, config and cache and tried to run again it got the media in those two folders visible again.
The thing is, I have the Media1 that is a HDD, inside there is a lot, but mainly a folder called Movies, Series, Software and etc. In Jellyfin, when I map the /Movies folder it goes directly to the Movies folder, but when I do it on the Series folder it goes for the root of Media1 and I still have to choose the Series folder, and it stays like this “Series/Series”, but the Movies just be this way /Movies.
I’m probably give a confused explanation but can you at least understand what I’m trying to explain?

The difference I see, is when you map the Movies folder in your command, you use the full path /meia/yourname/Media1/Movies, but when you map the Series folder you are starting at /Media1 instead of /media/yourname/Media1/Series.

As for the residual Series folder, what I’ve found is if you reboot the machine )Host) without stopping jellyfin, docker seems to hold onto the mapped volumes from the host, and creates an issue on reboot, where the host then mounts the volumes under new names. It’s weird.