Hello. I have just recently started with self hosting my media with Jellyfin… and I am LOVING it! I had been carrying around media players for decades, with everyone looking at me like an insane crank for not giving up on my hundreds of gigs of media for SAS things like spotify… now they’re jealous! We’ve come full circle!
Annnyway. Obviously, I want to access the server anywhere, and don’t want to just raw-dog an open port to the internet- yikes!
There are SO MANY ways and guides and thoughts on this, I’m a bit overwhelmed and looking for your thoughts on the best way to start off… it doesn’t have to be ‘fort knox’ and I am sure I’ll adjust and pivot as I learn more… but here are the options I know of (did I miss any?):
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Tailscale VPN connection
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Reverse Proxy with Caddy or similar (this is recommended as easy in the jellyfin official guides and thus is my current leading contender!)
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Docker/VM ‘containerized’ server with permissions/access control
What are your thoughts on the beginner-friendly-ness and ease of setup/management of these? This is exclusively for use by me and my family, so I don’t need something that’s easy for anyone to access with credentials… just our handful of devices.
Please don’t laugh, but I’m currently hosting on a Raspberry Pi5 with a big-ass harddrive attached (using CasaOS on a headless Ubuntu Server). I know this is JANK as far as self-hosting goes, and plan to upgrade to something like NAS in the future, but I’m still researching and learning, and aside from shitty video transcoding, it’s working fine for now… Thank you in advance for your advice, help and thoughts!
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I opted to remove Jellyfins default login form and require Keycloak for SSO, my Jellyfin instance is technically facing the internet but my reverse proxy has Fail2Ban in front of it blocking non-whitelisted IP’s, makes it easier to share with other people this way compared to having to explain VPN’s to non-tech savvy people,
I use netbird. I found it easy to setup and they also have an android app. You also get a neat URL for each device. I havent tried any other options apart fromthis and wireguard. Wireguard wasnt easy to setup for me.
Easy, mine is local only and on it’s own VLAN.
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Reading jellyfin’s issues it’s clear its web ui and API cannot be allowed to talk to the general internet.
I’d push for a VPN solution first. Tailscale or wireguard. If you’re happy with cloudflare sniffing all traffic and that they make take it away suddenly someday use their tunnel with authentication.
The only other novel solution I’d suggest is putting jellyfin behind an Authentik wall (not OIDC, though you can use OIDC for users after the wall). That puts security on Authentik, and that’s their only job so hopefully that works. I’d use that if VPN (tailscale or wireguard) are problematic for access. The downside is that jellyfin apps will not be able to connect, only web browsers that can log into the Authentik web ui wall.
Flow would go caddy/other reverse proxy -> Authentik wall for jellyfin -> jellyfin
I’d put everything in docker, I’d put caddy and Authentik in a VM for a DMZ (incus + Zabbly repo web ui to manage the VM), I’d set all 3 in the compose to read-only, user:####:####, cap-drop all, no new privileges, limited named networks.
Podman quadlets would be even better security than docker, but there’s less help for that (for now). Do docker and get something working to start, then grow from there
Thanks for your comment. There are several things/products/methods you mention that I’m not familiar with and/or don’t understand:
Authentik Wall OIDC DMZ Incus Zabbly “in the compose” cap-drop all Podman quadlets
As I mentioned, I’m new here. I could just put each of these in duckduckgo in succession, but do you have a particular guide or link that describes any of this for someone less familiar with the process than yourself?
This is absolutely critical. Jellyfin is not made with security as an important factor.
I’m working on deploying Client side certificates that are validated by Caddy
Do you know if that will break applications?
I am not familiar with deploying client side certificates unfortunately. I hope it works, if the certificate is at the OS level and the application will use it, I feel it will work… not sure, in-browser feels straight forward at least
VPN. Jellyfin is not intended for direct exposure to the Internet.
You should run it in docker anyway for convenience. A reverse proxy is optional, but I use traefik also for convenience (so that I can just use domain names on the same port, and so that it can automatically fetch certs).
Use the reverse proxy for access control ? Then you don’t need to install extra software to access it remotely ?
I don’t think jellyfin supports that either. I tried it a while back and only saw partial success.
Yes, that’s the whole reason for the post, as I said above. When you say “docker anyway for convenience” what do you mean? What’s the benefit of docker? Do you have any resources that would let someone entirely new to docker understand/guide through it? You mention Traefik as well… never heard of it till this post… what is it? Why is it convenient?
Docker packs the whole application and its dependencies into a container, hence the name. You can run and delete that application as much as you want without affecting the host system. (But you should probably keep your media library and config outside the container, and use a bind mount. The setup documentation covers this.)
Jellyfin is not intended for direct exposure to the Internet.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-install/networking/
There are multiple ways of exposing Jellyfin to the outside - the most common ones are:
forwarding its Ports directly to the internet (not recommended!)
forwarding through a Reverse Proxy
using a VPN connection to enter the Network
use a VPS to Reverse Proxy to your home networkIntended… not recommended. The reverse proxy one should also not be recommended until they resolve the unauthed endpoints issue as well really. Security is a weak point on Jellyfin in general.
I’ve tested the worst of these endpoints and they were already secured, just the issues haven’t been updated.
For instance, from the security split-out issue list: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415#issuecomment-2825369811
I took the only one that could lead to admin/system infiltration (LDAP config escalation, others are about media access), and found it to have already been secured: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/13989
others are about media access
Yup, and these are the biggest risks IMO. I find the well organized, big media companies with deep pockets and a few basic scripts that we know to work to be the biggest vector of liability.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/1501
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415#issuecomment-2071798575 (and the following comments)
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/13984A person’s biggest threat running Jellyfin is going to be the media companies themselves. Sony (the company known for installing rootkits on people’s computers) can pre-hash a list of their movies with commonly config’d locations/name schemas for their content and enumerate your system for if you have their content. Since you don’t have any authentication on the endpoint, they’re likely not violating any law through circumvention. The “random UUID” is just the MD5 hash of the path/filename. So it’s actually highly guessable… especially for people using default docker configs and *arr stacks and you normalize names using these tools.
Their response was “this attack isn’t in the wild”(as if they actually know… running a script and checking a few hundred thousand requests to go through a list of movies isn’t all that taxing and users won’t even notice it to report it… let alone have enough logging to notice it to begin with) and “it breaks compatability, so we don’t want to do it”. Which I find laughable. It turned me off from Jellyfin all together.
Edit: And because every time I bring up the issue I get downvoted for “fear mongering”… There are answers to resolve it… you need to use non-standard naming schemes in your files/folder structure and fail2ban. But that expects users to do that… And I could do that… but it’s a security risk non-the-less and the developers response to the risk being what it is is what’s scary to me.
Edit2: The LDAP one… I should clarify I don’t care about that one since well… requires you to additionally config stuff that most users won’t. But the media exposure issues are default and universal and require setting things “non-standard” to have any protection from, which users generally WON’T do.
Well, I wouldn’t say the media issues are worse than a full domain access issue, but despite my comment above, I agree with you.
The security split-issue feels reminiscent of when Plex didn’t use SSL and wouldn’t implement it until a white-hat POC token exploit was produced and provided to them (of which I was the author). If JF was my project, these would be top of my list.
Well I don’t mean to harp on it… Plex in this instance is much better off. When provided proof of the problem they fixed it. Jellyfin has had issues about this going back to 2019… 6 years ago. Still no fix in sight. And the first ticket I linked proved the concept can be abused. With the issues getting hidden because “We’re closing this because we’re consolidating… oh wait… we’re closing it because we’re splitting the issues out.” I’ve legit had people tell me that the problems were fixed because they saw the issue closed.
And now I hear that JF is even deprecating SSL and mandating proxy or esoteric custom config to implement SSL themselves again… Seems they’re going backwards?
I had Jellyfin setup for just myself because I’d love to get away from the risk of Plex screwing shit up (and to get off their SSO). But the frustration of the dev responses to some of these issues and the fact that I’m literally the only person who’s able to deal with the restrictions needed to keep it secure… I just turned it off. I didn’t want to deal with managing two systems because my kids/wife/other family couldn’t figure out how to use it.
They need to switch to cookie based auth instead of doing the weird thing with the URLs
Yeah the API token exposure in the URLs is another thing… And that can expose itself in all sorts of ways.
My favourite way of having a secure Jellyfin is using Plex
Yes, then you only get hacked by the software manufacturer
Yeah, and in contrast to the Jellyfins devs, they acknowledged a security risk and fixed it. The chances of Jellyfin actually doing something to improve the security is rather slim, since they prioritize client compatibility
I have used Tailscale for about a year now. Flawless for a small ecosystem and couple of people and doesnt expose anything.
Bonus of routing all my traffic through pi-hole at home and then through VPN client on router
tailscale here as well. it’s honestly 2ezpz to set up, and that’s about it! this also allows you to access other services you may be hosting.
you can also specify an exit node that your traffic will route through if you are connected to your tailnet. for example, if you had a VPN client on your home router, you could set a PC on that network as your exit node and your remote traffic through tailscale would ultimately hit your home network and then out through your PC -> VPN -> Internet setup.
I second this. Especially for the PiHole access. Its also handy as it covers any of my self-hosted stuffs.
Do you mind explaining PiHole to me? I’ve heard it mentioned, not sure what it is.
@Profligate_parasite @thejml #PiHole sits in your network replacing your existing DNS server you may have configured. By using a specified blocklist(s) it’s mostly used to block adverts and malware sites. Can be very effectives. Can take a little tinkering, for example one side-effect for me was it blocking a local TV streaming app.
To start with I put one on a free cloud provider, with a VPN from my router to it and played with it until I was happy.
I think the big deciding factor is how many folks will be watching remotely.
For my case, I use a VPN to tunnel back to my network and watch jellyfin that way. My son also lives away and watches jellyfin, but for him I simply punch a hole in my firewall for only his public ip, which doesn’t change much.
This works for me, but if I had to host for any more ppl, I would likely go the caddy route.
Put Jellyfin behind something else that requires authentication before you can access Jellyfin at all
Which breaks basically every client, since none of them can deal with basic auth getting in the way
Well the other option would be a VPN
Yeah and that kills Jellyfin as a drop in replacement for Plex. I would’ve deployed it years ago with a subdomain and given it to friends if it was as easily shareable as Plex
I personally wouldn’t expose anything to the internet. You could always setup a computer on a different network that routes traffic over netbird
I hide it behind Cloudflare. I assume that since most of the world pays them for domain security, and if Cloudflare goes down so does half the internet, I thought to try them out. Best decision I’ve made. They blocked substantial DDoS attempts on my IP, a fuck ton of malicious web scrapers that attempt CVEs, and they also allow me to have very specific users access to my domain using complex allow lists, zero-trust, and DNS over HTTPS.
I heard something about cloudflare not being stream friendly. Guess jellyfin doesn’t count?
used to be against terms of use for proxy, the forbidding language has been gone for a year or two now
Others have recently reported being been banned if more thab 1 streaming. Fyi
not the person you replied to, but i have been using cloudflare zero trust for my streaming needs; have not gotten a complaint yet.
just make sure you have the upload bandwidth.
Others have recently reported being been banned if more than 1 streaming. Fyi
Others have recently reported being been banned if more than 1 streaming. Fyi
So… do you have to register the server as a domain, then set up and register it w cloudflare?
I’ve tried tailscale and cloudflare tunnels in the past and ended up just using PiVPN to set up a WireGuard VPN on my Pi5. Tailscale for some reason was very slow for me, and cloudflare tunnels have a 100mb limit iirc which isn’t ideal for streaming. PiVPN is quite straightforward, it sets everything up for you and all you have to do is forward a UDP port. That was the bit I was most worried about, but, unless I’ve misunderstood something, because a UDP port will just ignore invalid requests to the outside world it will appear closed so it’s not very risky. It then generates a key for each device which you can scan from a QR code onto your VPN client. I have my phone set to auto-connect to the tunnel when I disconnect from my home wifi network and the tunnel is fast enough that I’ve accidentally turned off my phone’s wifi connection before and streamed a TV show through the tunnel over mobile data and not noticed any difference in speed.
I hadn’t thought to automate connecting to Wireguard when not on my home network, that’s a good call. I’ve just set up Tasker on my phone and tablet.
Wireguard tunnels with a ssh tunnel as a backup.
i only use it for my family so like just me, my brother, and my parents so i just spun up a subdomain and configured apache to reverse proxy and use certbot for a lets encrypt certificate so i’m not exposing my port or ip. (the subdomain is just hosted on an ec2 server that i was using anyway)
I don’t get it
How do you control access?
Pangolin with an Authentik login required. Jellyfin’s set up with OIDC too but that’s more for convenience than security (especially since password auth doesn’t seem possible to disable, so it’s just hidden with CSS which does jack shit for security).
I’m paranoid so I only expose 3 services total without Pangolin/Authentik in front of them: Authentik itself, headscale, and navidrome’s rest endpoint (the last one skeeves me a bit but it’s mandatory for it to work remotely in the situations I want it, like a web player on work machines). Anything else I personally need remote access to, I can get through tailscale - Pangolin for me covers friends and family usage and a few niche situations.
Caddy + crowd sec + some kind of auth solution is what I’m aiming for though I haven’t got authentik working with it yet so I haven’t opened it up yet. I wouldn’t want to do jellyfish without the auth solution though as there local stuff isn’t so robust.
VPN in and a few local users would be the most secure if you haven’t got too many folks connecting.
