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?):
-
Tailscale VPN connection
-
Reverse Proxy with Caddy or similar (this is recommended as easy in the jellyfin official guides and thus is my current leading contender!)
-
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!
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.