DEV Community: Farhan Muzaki

Self-Hosted Media Server with Jellyfin + Jellyseerr using Docker

Farhan Muzaki — Thu, 29 May 2025 07:27:07 +0000

What is Media Server

As I quote from Wikipedia "A media server is a computer appliance or an application software that stores digital media (video, audio or images) and makes it available over a network.". in simpler terms, a media server mean an app that can be accessed via network to play movies, images or any stored digital media.

Media server have a lot of options to choose, from Plex, Kodi, etc. But the one im choosing is Jellyfin. Why Jellyfin? Because its open source and free from ads. Before im choosing Jellyfin, I try using Plex, its a good media server, there's a lot of feature in it such as online connectivity with public, but there is one thing I didnt like, that is ads. I dont want to watch my own self hosted video while ads showing on my login page, while im watching the movies. That one things making me run from Plex, and I found Jellyfin. Jellyfin is a relatively new media server, first released in 2018, with active development and solid community support. Other reason is also because I dont have any intention of make my media server be accessible from outside my LAN network so its better to use Jellyfin with its simple configuration.

I also will add Jellyseer as a plugin for Jellyfin. Jellyseer will be media request management which user on jellyfin can request what movies/animes/series they want to watch. Jellyseer also can be integrated with other *Arr app but I havent configure it. As for now Jellyseer will be used to manage request.

Installing Jellyfin & Jellyseer

To install both these apps im gonna use Docker or more specificaly docker-compose. Here are my directory tree:

📦 Home Lab
├─ jellyfin
│  ├─ docker-compose.yml
│  └─ README.md
└─ jellyseer
   └─ docker-compose.yml

Below are snippets of docker-compose for each jellyfin and jellyseer folder:

Jellyfin docker compose

version: "3"
services:
  jellyfin:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest
    container_name: jellyfin
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Asia/Jakarta
    volumes:
      - ${JELLYFIN_LIBRARY}:/config
      - ${JELLYFIN_TV_SERIES}:/data/tvshows
      - ${JELLYFIN_MOVIES}:/data/movies
      - ${JELLYFIN_ANIME}:/data/anime
    ports:
      - 8096:8096
    restart: unless-stopped

Jellyseer docker compose

version: '3'
services:
  jellyseerr:
    image: fallenbagel/jellyseerr:latest
    container_name: jellyseerr
    environment:
      - LOG_LEVEL=debug
      - TZ=Asia/Jakarta
    ports:
      - 5055:5055
    volumes:
      - ./config:/app/config
    restart: unless-stopped

Here are few explaination regarding my snippets.

PUID and GUID are user and group identifiers, this useful because sometimes I got an permission issue between our host and container when I are using Docker Volume. By default the value is 1000, but you can reconfirm it on your terminal by running this

id your_user

For my case it's like this:

uid=1000(farhan) gid=1000(farhan) groups=1000(farhan)

TZ basically a timezone setting.
Volumes or Docker Volume are a way to store/read data outside the container. For example at Jellyseer snippet, I connect the data inside container of /app/config to host at jellyseer directory, if I put in tree view it would look like this after you successfully run the docker compose.

📦 Home Lab
└─ jellyseer
   └─ docker-compose.yml
   └─ config
   │  ├─ cache
   │  ├─ db
   │  ├─ logs
   └─ └─ setting.json

This also include the Jellfin snippets, the difference is on Jellyfin snippet I'm using environment variable. I set it up by adding it to all users on /etc/environment, below are my environment variables

JELLYFIN_LIBRARY="/home/homelab/jellyfin/config"
# Media Library Path here
JELLYFIN_TV_SERIES="/home/media-library/TV"
JELLYFIN_MOVIES="/home/media-library/Movies"
JELLYFIN_ANIME="/home/media-library/Anime"

With this being setup now every config/cache related to jellyfin will be stored inside my host /home/homelab/jellyfin/config path, while my media is being read by jellyfin based on those paths.

Ports are mapper between host and container, in this case I use default port of 8096 and 5055.

Now let's run the container, I can run it using docker compose command by access its directory

# incase there is warning when running it, its probably because the environment variables is not refreshed, can be fix it by relogin your SSH/telnet or entering and exiting root
docker compose up -d
# or
sudo docker compose up -d

It will building and you can see the progress by doing this command

# remove -f if dont wanna tailing the output
docker logs -f (container_name)
# for jellyfin
docker logs -f jellyfin
# for jellyseer
docker logs -f jellyseerr

After building is done, I can access it through my IP and port which is

192.168.1.97:8096 for Jellyfin
192.168.1.97:5055 for Jellyseerr

After accessing it, you will be guided through wizard on each of them, input each field based on the setting I have added before.

There is also a lot of plugin I can have on Jellyfin setting, but I will not explain it futher in this article and some of it also a niche plugins that I use to handle my anime/others collection.

Visual Overview

Problems

As Im building this the only problems happen actually when setting up environment variables, which after adding the variable and value its doesnt show when testing it using ECHO command. To fix it I try to reconnect with my telnet/SSH and viola worker correctly, OR can use sudo command when executing docker compose.

Enhancement

There are also several enhancement I can add in the future such as:

Integrating Jellyseerr with *Arr Program to automatically find and download requested media. *Arr apps (like Radarr, Sonarr, etc.) are automation tools commonly used in self-hosted media setups to automatically search, download, and manage media files from various sources.
Better directory for media. As you already read Im using /home partition to store all of my config and even media, this is bad practice, since /home partition have different permission for each own folder, so need to manually add permission to it. Suggesting using a new or specific partition to store any configuration or even media, for example creating /srv partition and having special permission/user access it is a good example.

💬 What's Next?

That’s it for my Jellyfin + Jellyseerr setup!

In my next article, I will be focusing on my setup for download tools such qBittorrent and JDownloader.

If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comments or connect with me on LinkedIn!

Repository also coming soon! I’ll update this post once I’ve cleaned up and published the full repo with environment examples and configuration notes.

Thanks for reading!

How I Built My Self-Hosted Homelab with Docker on Ubuntu 24.04

Farhan Muzaki — Sun, 25 May 2025 09:47:10 +0000

🧠 Why I Built This Homelab

This has been one of my personal projects in 2024, but I hadn’t had the time (or motivation) to properly document it — until now.

The main reason I started this was because I had an old laptop (bought in 2014) that kept crashing. I reinstalled it about 3-4 times last year. Usually, my mom uses it for her work since she uses Excel on that. But now that it’s out of commission, I figured — why not turn it into something fun and useful instead of tossing it? There are several ideas for it, one of which is, of course, to create a gaming device out of it, but after some thought rather than just focusing it as a game center, I thought how about a media server or even my own home lab to dev some app, and here we are. So this is what I'm gonna do for this old laptop, I'm gonna create a media server to store movies, animes, or series using Jellyfin, and also just found out that I can also manage my finance/log my income/outcome using Firefly III (I have been using google spreadsheet since 2019).

🧰 Hardware Setup

First, I'm gonna show my specs for Asus X455LA.

CPU: i3-4030U 1.9Ghz, with 2 Core 4 Threads
RAM: 6GB DDR3L 1333/1600 (2GB+4GB)
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4400 Mobile 2GB VRAM
2x USB 2.0
1x USB 3.0
1x Lan Port (RJ45)
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
HDD 500GB (Upgradeable with SSD Sata 2.5")
HDD 500GB (connected using HDD caddy, replacing my DVD RW slot)
1 HDD External using USB port (USB 3.0 1TB)
Integrated Speaker+Microphone
1x HDMI Port
1x VGA Port
1x Audio Jack
Card Reader (SD Card)
1 slot of PCIE 4x1 and 1 slot of 2x4.

This server will be using Ubuntu Server 24.04 as the main OS, while docker will be used to deploy the applications. There might be some apps that are unable to run with docker and are being installed on the OS itself.

🧩 Services & Applications

Category	App(s)	Purpose
Media Server	`Jellyfin`	Store and stream movies, anime, and series
Finance	`Firefly III` + `Firefly Importer`	Manage income/expenses, import from spreadsheets
Download Tools	`JDownloader 2`, `qBitTorrent`	Download manager and torrent client
Dashboard	`Homarr`, `Dashdot`	Centralized service dashboard
SQL Tools	`CloudBeaver`/`DBeaver`	Web-based SQL management
File Sharing	`Samba`	Share files with Windows devices
Development	`Git`	Version control for personal projects
Admin Tools	`Webmin`	Web-based system administration
Emulation	`RomM`, `EmulatorJS`	ROM manager with embedded emulator
Media Requests	`Jellyseer`	Handle media requests for Jellyfin

⚠️ Note: Some plugins or services are more niche or personal. I might cover them in future posts if there's interest.

Each app listed above deserves its own deep dive, so I'm gonna break it down:

Media Server Setup using Jellyfin+Jellyseer & Download tools
Self Host Finance app using Firefly III
My own SQL playground using Cloudbeaver.
Self-host game ROM Library using RomM+EmulatorJS
Web Development using PHP framework Laravel using Caddy and FrankenPHP

📸 Visual Overview

My Homarr Dashboard

Topology Logic

💬 What's Next?

In upcoming posts, I’ll dive deeper into each part of this setup. If there’s any app or setup you want me to write about first, let me know in the comments, or connect with me on LinkedIn!

Thanks for reading!