Feasibility

Can I host Netflix on my own? of course yes, many open source software offers similar functionality, you can set it to work only inside your home network or make it available throughout the internet.

I already own a server, I rent out a server for hosting my development activities, so why not use that server as a media server, I don’t want it to run just inside the home LAN, I want it to be exposed to the internet, of course with required security measures.. if its open others can access it.

What I need

  1. Media server, there are many to choose from using a quick Google search, I’ve chosen Jellyfin, as it has all the features I need.

  2. Application to download, media to the server, i.e. torrent client. Qbittorrent-nox

That’s all you ask…? Yeah, I was surprised too. anyway I know I need these two software, but how am I going to install and run them on my server?

Installation

The choice here would be to use docker/podman because it won’t affect the host machine. First, to run the media server, I need to mount a new drive to store all the movies and TV shows, I chose a 150 GB drive, cuz I don’t need more than it and I can remove any torrents and add another one whenever needed.

  • show disk mount volumes

    df -h

Filesystem                  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/sdb                    150G  134G   16G  90% /mnt/external-disk

I use Podman, this is the command I use to install Jellyfin. If you notice, I mount all the configs, cache, and media to the host.

podman run -d \
  --name=jellyfin \
  -e TZ=IN \
  -e PUID=<UID> \
  -e PGID=<GID> \
  -p 8096:8096 \
  -v /home/opc/jellyfin/cache:/cache \
  -v /home/opc/jellyfin/config:/config \
  -v /mnt/external-disk/torrents:/media \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  docker.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest

wait.. is that it? Yea, it is that simple!

How do I download stuff, so I can watch it in Jellyfin?

By running Qbitorrent nox, make sure you set the username and password, when you visit the web-ui, you need to be authenticated to access it.

yum install qbittorrent-nox
qbittorrent-nox -d --webui-port=8181
  • Qbittorrent UI screenshot

Access the web-ui and start watching.

Watch it on mobile/ iPad/ TV..etc

There is an official client for everything.

  • using web vs native app.. download links..etc, you need to configure the endpoint Url of Jellyfin, (covering that in a different post)

  • configuring the mobile app.

End

You just have to spend a couple of hours every year in total to maintain update & maintain. The server costs you can share it with friends. I think people are spoon-fed nowadays~

You have to consider the fact that, the streaming wars are real, this video summates my frustration.

Misc

To update Jellyfin and get the latest build and not lose data, since we are running it in podman, it’s pretty easy. Check the command from top to bottom, it is self-explanatory,

  podman pull docker.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest
  podman image ls -a
  podman ps
  podman stop jellyfin
  podman container ls -a
  podman container rename jellyfin jellyfin_bkp_<date>
  podman container ls -a
  podman run -d \
  --name=jellyfin \
  -e TZ=IN \
  -e PUID=<UID> \
  -e PGID=<GID> \
  -p 8096:8096 \
  -v /home/opc/jellyfin/cache:/cache \
  -v /home/opc/jellyfin/config:/config \
  -v /mnt/external-disk/torrents:/media \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  docker.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest
  podman ps

Personal update - Rant about past - Backstory

This is usually at the start of each post, but I thought it would be better suited at the bottom from now on.

Back before I got a job, basically a broke ass student, I/ we/ everyone used to pirate entertainment content all the time, u name it, movies, tv shows, music..etc, those times were before the JIO era, back when 59kbps was the unlimited internet provided by BSNL for everyone, youtube videos where limited to 240/ 360p, Aor downloading a show or game, we would run it for days, I vividly remember my friend downloading a show with 600+ episodes show for multiple days, now we got unlimited 5g, 200 Mbps unlimited broadband.. boy times have changed. I have to note it down somewhere..make sure future me remembers.

After I got my job and the JIO internet era, buying subscriptions became a common thing… everyone was on the bandwagon… I came in late but I did try the subscription things before I went with this approach, I knew there were alternatives and I could still pirate stuff. But if I paid the subscription, it is accessible with a click of a button. While writing this I am reminded of something..that it has made us lazy.