As the title states I am wondering what would be a good machine to build for my piracy. I am open to buying a used machine on eBay and expanding over time.

The last time I was sailing I had a Dell R610 Server Rack but I don’t have the space for this now. So something that can sit behind a tv stand in the corner next to the router.

  • I would be running Plex / Jellyfin
  • Some kind of torrent software
  • Something for NZBs if still viable
  • then the usual SONARR, RADARR, etc

I would like to be able to let friends connect from outside my house to stream media and allow them access so they can add films and the server goes off and finds them, extracts them, and adds them to the media server.

Thanks.

  • potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fishEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I want to give you some advice: Use Jellyfin, not plex. It has far deviated to a “hub” for other streaming services and unless you want to have built-in streaming platforms on your home media server, or have plex’s own “live tv” service shoved up your rear, I would steer clear.

    Jellyfin is pretty lightweight if you’re just streaming 1-2 connections at a time, I ran it on a raspberry pi 4 for a while and it was near flawless, only recently have I made a proper VM setup for it.

    • bktheman@awful.systems
      English
      0·
      4 months ago

      The only problem is properly exposing jellyfin to the Internet. How do you do it?

      I’m not planning on leaving Plex anytime soon. But I did plan on setting up jellyfin in parallel to play with it and learn about it. But this stopped me in my tracks.

      I don’t want my family to need to VPN into my network. Plex, for as frustrating as it is in many ways, just works. And it works on so much stuff.

        • bktheman@awful.systems
          English
          1·
          4 days ago

          This is what everyone always says, and yeah, for most people this is probably the most secure and easiest option. But for me it’s too much hassle for my family, too restrictive, and not at all what I’m looking for.

          However in this thread I’ve learned that JF supports https, so if done carefully and properly, I can expose it to the Internet directly, which is what I plan to do. Eventually. Plex is still easier for now.

      • themoken@startrek.websiteEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        Sorry, why would Jellyfin be different from Plex for exposing to the Internet? Dynamic DNS service / static IP and router port forwarding just like any other self hosted thing. It requires a user/pass to login as usual. VPN is nice but not required.

        • bktheman@awful.systems
          English
          1·
          4 days ago

          Thanks, you and others in this thread are the first people to ever tell me about this.

          Everyone is always saying tailscale, but that’s too complicated and restrictive for my family.

          I’m not afraid of port forwarding and dynamic DNS, I’ve played with it before. My main concern is just doing it safely, not exposing something to the Internet that wasn’t designed to be exposed. Security risk, and all that.

          Obviously a VPN is the safest way. But as long as JF is reasonably robust and designed to be exposed, I’m happy with that. I just literally didn’t know it was designed that way.

          Thanks!

        • bktheman@awful.systems
          English
          1·
          4 days ago

          Thanks, you and others in this thread are the first people to ever tell me about this.

          Everyone is always saying tailscale, but that’s too complicated and restrictive for my family.

          I’m not afraid of port forwarding and dynamic DNS, I’ve played with it before. My main concern is just doing it safely, not exposing something to the Internet that wasn’t designed to be exposed. Security risk, and all that.

          Obviously a VPN is the safest way. But as long as JF is reasonably robust and designed to be exposed, I’m happy with that. I just literally didn’t know it was designed that way.

          Thanks!

          • potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fishEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Jellyfin is not designed to be exposed directly. It can be but I wouldn’t recommend it. If you are insistent on doing it, I would absolutely recommend engine X reverse proxying with a rate limit to prevent any brute force attacks as well as hiding your family’s account on the login screen so not just anyone can see them. Also remember you need an SSL certificate which you can either self-sign or get from a free CA like let’s encrypt.

            Tail scale works quite well but can be limiting in speed. Your family does not need any technical knowledge. They just sign in on the app and you can add their account to your tail scale domain. Keep in mind you may need to pay if you add more than three, I believe, users.

            The third and best option for you in my opinion would be a VPN. It doesn’t suffer from the same speed issues that tailscale does. Technical setup would be a bit more difficult than tail scale, but you can do it on your family’s device once and it should just always work. Youll need port forwarding, but that’s really easy. One thing though, your internet service provider might change your IP address periodically. So you might want a domain name and dynamic DNS, which I would suggest you get from a service called FreeDNS. Like in the name, everything is free, unless you choose to donate , of course. They have it very intuitively laid out where you can use CRON to run a script periodically that just sends a curl ping to their servers so that they know what your new IP address is if it changes. It’s a pretty simple setup.

              • potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fishEnglish
                1·
                24 hours ago

                cloudflare would, but you dont even need it if you are comfortable with port forwarding. a reverse proxy just forwards traffic to and from a device through a device. nginx is a popular platform for reverse proxies because it’s easy to set up and configure.

                • bktheman@awful.systems
                  English
                  1·
                  10 hours ago

                  Thanks! Someone else said video streaming is against their TOS, so I may have shot myself in the foot

      • liliumstar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        Jellyfin offers HTTPS, you just need to specify a certificate. It’s going to be a lot easier to just setup a web server like nginx and expose that to the internet, probably via port forwarding on your gateway/router. In that case, you can get a free certificate from letsencrypt.

        So, the basic steps are:

        1. Get a domain name
        2. Setup JF server, ensure it works locally
        3. Install a web server and set it up to proxy traffic to JF
        4. Expose the web server ports 80 and 443 to the internet
        5. Setup letsencrypt with automatic renewal

        This might sound like a lot of work, but at least you own your data and service. Plex can and will block accounts, rendering servers basically useless.

        • bktheman@awful.systems
          English
          1·
          4 days ago

          Thanks, you and others in this thread are the first people to ever tell me about this.

          Everyone is always saying tailscale, but that’s too complicated and restrictive for my family.

          I’m not afraid of port forwarding and dynamic DNS, I’ve played with it before. My main concern is just doing it safely, not exposing something to the Internet that wasn’t designed to be exposed. Security risk, and all that.

          Obviously a VPN is the safest way. But as long as JF is reasonably robust and designed to be exposed, I’m happy with that. I just literally didn’t know it was designed that way.

          Thanks!