I run a full media server, as well do a few friends. Now we had the idea to share our media libraries. In a first quick attempt we, mounted each other’s library folder via an smb share and imported those in jellyfin (all servers connected by VPN) Works quite well, but is kind of cumbersome the more people get in. I had the following idea: distributed storage, not as in redundancy, but more like mergerfs. Each “node” allocates a certain amount of storage, say node A, B and C provide 1TB each, these get fused into a singe mount that shows up as 3TB volume. If one node goes offline, the volume will only be 2TB and all files on the offline node will of course be unavailable.
Did a bit of research and found stuff like ceph,.glusterfs or seeweedfs, all of which I guess have a lot more functionality and thus are quite complicated and a little over my head. Do you do something like that or have any good ideas how to do that easily?
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I use Plex instead of jellyfin, but there’s the ability to just add a friends library and it pulls in without mounting anything. I thought Jellydin had that as well?
I run Plex too, and indeed library sharing is built right in and ridiculously easy to set up.
I think OP is already doing things the best way possible in Jellyfin by mounting others’ servers remotely over VPN
plex uses a centralized service for this kinda of nonsense. most of us are using standalone server products.
this use case calls for either centralized storage (s3 bucket) or access mechanism(all them vpns) to distributed channels (ala plex)… but friends dont let friends use plex.
im curious about ipfs as distributed file systems sound like a new kink i should have
but friends dont let friends use plex.
I would love to get rid of Plex, but jellyfin failed the spouse test last summer and it never really liked my GDrive mount
Plus, Plex clients are everywhere, so it’s all but guaranteed that whoever I decide to onboard is going to have something compatible. I’ve even had early smart TV’s from like 2013 with that weird Yahoo app store thing that had a Plex app that still worked even when the Netflix app didn’t lolol
ha, i feel ya on the spouse. in the house i use local kodi on pis with a shared backend. that same source runs jellyin for the kids/outside the house
ive had the same interface for the wife on kodi/xbmc for probably 10 years
ive found kodi+jellyfin fits all my use cases
tell me why i shouldn’t use plex as I’m always tempted by it whenever these threads come up and everyone who uses it is so happy.
But free/libre is so much more delicious.
But don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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last time i checked plex required an account on their service. thats a big red flag for people who host their own shit.
Can you not just use a reverse proxy for your jeyllfin server and add multiple servers to the same client?
Another one to have a search for is IPFS.
All files stored on IPFS are public. It’s also incredibly slow and inefficient. You would be better off using BitTorrent.
Ceph, GlusterFS, and I suspect SeaweedFS (but I haven’t used it) expect high speed, low latency connections to their peers. So they won’t work well over the internet.
There’s some info floating around about using IPFS as the backend for Jellyfin, which in theory should allow you to share media between friends, but I haven’t tried it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=PHujBhq4J9A
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
What’s the cumbersome part?
VPN? Mesh overlay VPN like tailscale/nebula mesh can do easy node add.
IPFS nodes might do the trick as mentioned.
On each node, map all the other nodes as smb, and configure all in jellyfin.
It would be nicer to have one single mount.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code IP Internet Protocol Plex Brand of media server package VPN Virtual Private Network
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
[Thread #399 for this sub, first seen 4th Jan 2024, 03:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Why do you use SMB instead of just connecting to the different jellyfin servers directly via VPN?
One big shared media volume has multiple benefits, each server just have to deal with their own user management, no server switching or remembering if that one movie is of this or that Server…
Could you use symlinks? Not sure what the “gotchas” or downside to this approach is though.
Downside: it’s entirety manual and not scalable whatsoever.
Could you explain further? Wouldn’t this just need to be setup once per server that OP wants to connect?
