Submitted 3 hours ago by Vegan_Joe@anarchist.nexus to selfhosted@lemmy.world
Is they're an easy way to make my Jellyfin accessible outside of my home network for free?
I have docker installed, but only have a vague idea of how it works.
Back in the day, I would just port forward, but even then, I would need a static IP somehow.
I have heard a reverse proxy is an option, but that is an entirely new topic to me.
Surely there is an easy way to access Jellyfin outside of my home network that I’m just missing.
wilmo@programming.dev 2 hours ago Tailscale. It’s free. Insanely easy to set up.
Just install on your devices and connect via the given tailscale ip for the jellyfin server.
I would also propose going with Tailscale instead If a VPN + DynDNS solution. Imho it is a lot easier to Setup compared to VPN + DynDNS If you are a beginner and just starting out.
If at some point you need more and then is available in the free Tier of Tailscale and you do not want to pay for it (and you have built up some knowledge!) you can switch to something like Headscale or Netbird.
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 1 minute ago I forgot to mention that one because I kinda thought it belongs with radmin and hamachi, but it’s my choice as well currently.
I am using it with my own Headscale though, so add a domain to that as well.
And I finally need to switch my vaultwarden to work over tailscale & LAN finally, it’s a huge security risk to expose that one.
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 3 hours ago That’s the whole point of a domain. Your IP changes every now and again you need people to know where to reach you. You give them a domain, and you configure the name records so that the domain always points to the right IP address.
Your options:
Domain is the cleanest option.
I am telling you how annoying it is because that’s how likely your friends are to adopt it and how secure it is because depending on your country you are doing something illegal and you really don’t want anyone to find out and you gotta keep it updated more often if you don’t want people to exploit it. There’s an endless supply of very smart people out there who use known bugs to target public services.
You left out DDNS. It’s free, easy to set up with lots of detailed guides online, and works as well as a static IP.
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 4 minutes ago I added a reference to your comment
yeah I forgot that one. I had to rush the comment a bit.
I appreciate your response!
It looks like a VPN is the option I’m leaning towards, but I’ll definitely put the idea of buying a domain in my back pocket for a while.
Some .xyz domains cost less than 1$. Mine is 0,85$/year
A VPN such as Tailscale.
It’s my go to method super easy to set up and use on both the device hosting your JellyFinn server and whatever your steaming on
That is a new concept to me, but I’ll definitely look into it.
it’s actually the recommended way if you use jellyfin, theres a few security/privacy vulnerabilities with publicly exposing the jellyfin server anyway, they are being worked on but, the safest way to do it is just use a vpn regardless.
awelo@tuiter.rocks 1 hour ago @Vegan_Joe
try tailscale
I second this, if it’s only you that needs access then Tailscale will be all that you need. You can use Tailscale funnel if you want it to be available to the wider web, but then you have to manage SSL certificates and it is slightly less secure.
I would caution against port forwarding and leaving your server open to the wider web.
Yes, a VPN. And dynamic DNS if you don’t have a static IP address.
To be clear, your suggesting I set up my home computer as a virtual private Network server that I would connect to from the TV or device outside of my home network?
Yeh, exactly.
And the “dynamic DNS” part handles your public IP address changing with 0 pain.
You either buy a domain (like example.com), or there are free domain name providers that give you a subdomain (like mycooldomain.example.com) of one of their domains.
You then run an additional service on your home server that checks what the current public IP address is. If it changes, it notifies the DNS responsible for your domain/subdomain, which then points to your new public IP.
To connect to your VPN, you only ever care about “mycooldomain.example.com” and never the underlying IP address.
…
As long as your ISP isn’t running CG-NAT of course 😵💫
Yes, it works great for me. Probably not for a TV though, for that you’d probably need some travel router VPN client. But I don’t know how often you’d be at a random TV and need to get to jellyfin.
An easy way? I guess the term ‘easy’ depends on your expertise with networking, firewalls, etc. Sounds like you and I are at about the same level there. In which case the answer is: no, there’s no easy way from what I can tell. I’ve looked into it and it’s a lot more involved than, say, Plex (because Plex does a bunch of the routing and stuff for you, but at a cost).
Tailscale is incredibly easy. Install, start, sign in on both devices. Boom. Jellyfin from anywhere
I’m sold! Setting it up now!
consider zerotier or tailscale
That is the answer my intuition was leading me to, but I hoped I was wrong. It looks like this is an opportunity to learn something outside of my comfort zone.
Personally I purchased a domain, and use Caddy for a reverse proxy. My ISP gives me a static IP for free, but I don’t think that makes a difference in this situation. Tailscale would be safer but requires more setup from friends.
Morgikan@fedia.io 1 hour ago If the goal is doing this in a simple fashion, then use Tailscale funnels (https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-funnel).
Funnels automate the process and act as a reverse proxy into specific servers within your tailnet.
The downside is there is no authentication to funnels, so whatever you running (Jellyfin in this case so that's not an issue) needs it's own authentication setup. You might consider running fail2ban on that machine and have it watch for login attempts, but otherwise that is the simplest setup I think you could do.
This is how I started.
I have a dynamic IP and a router provided by my ISP. IP assignations, DHCP, are managed by the router.
I went with DuckDNS for a free DNS service. Select a name and you get a myname.duckdns.org that you need to assign to your dynamic IP. duckdns has instructions to create a cronjob to update your dynamic IP on duckdns.org.
(Routers come in all shapes and configs, chances are that this won’t work for most people)
On the router, I assigned a static IP to the server hosting Jellyfin, in case of a reboot Jellyfin would always have the same IP. On the Ports page I opened up the default port for Jellyfin at that IP. I could then access Jellyfin outside of my local network using myname.duckdns.org:1234
This is not what I have right now, but it helped my get started.
As others have said, Tailscale is the most pragmatic solution. It’s a mesh VPN based on Wireguard. It’s implemented in such a way that you don’t need a static IP and don’t need to open any ports on your firewall. The caveat is that you either need to register an account on tailscale.com (it’s free for small-scale use) or set up a self-hosted alternative like Headscale. Then you have to install the Tailscale client on each of the hosts you want to access and log into your account.
Tailscale nodes will be accessible using an internal, private address in the 100.64.0.0/8 address space. You can also set up a split DNS that allows you to access your hosts using a DNS name like hostname.your-tailnet-name.ts.net.
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago You don’t need a static IP, you just have to keep track of what your current dynamic IP is.
You can do this with either a free or a paid DNS service.
There are a few different ‘free dns’ services that will delegate a subdomain of theirs to you at no cost. Admittedly, I’ve never actually used one of these so their names escape me. Hopefully someone else can point one of those out if that’s what you really want.
I purchased a domain via google domains, when they existed. It’s now transferred to squarespace, because they bought out google domains a few years ago.
It was around $13/year when I first got it a decade ago. It’s now around $28/year.
This allows me full control over the domain: I can use as many subdomains as I want to give each service I use it’s own unique name. (Instead of using their own separate ports that you’ve gotta remember) My domain will also forward all inbound email to my gmail account; this lets me use email addresses like <servicename>@mydomain.example. This way, I don’t share my real email and can immediately tell who sold my info to the highest bidder when I get spam. (I could also host my own email service if I really wanted, but I haven’t bothered)
Add Cloudflare ontop (for free); and it can filter out known attacks, ddos attempts, geofence your services to regions you’ll actually be in, provide/autorenew ssl certs for https, show you usage analytics, cache static data reducing server/network load, etc.
Ultimately, the paid option is well worth it IMO.
As averse as I am to spending money on subscription services, having my own domain for less than 30 bucks a year might be worth it.
I think I’m going to try out the tailscale VPN route first before I fully warm up to buying a domain.
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago Glad I could help. I’m not always immediately available, but I don’t mind answering questions if you run into troubles. Just send me a DM and I’ll do what I can. :)
What you want is Tailscale. The downside of Tailscale is that you have to connect to a VPN to access your services, the advantage - it is so easy to set up on the server it feels like magic.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| ISP | Internet Service Provider |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
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Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 hours ago Used to have a tool specifically to route my dynamic IP to something static, without buying a domain name, back when I first hosted a website on my own regular home PC as a teen called “No-IP.”
Not sure if it’s still a thing.
Free ones are less common now (no-ip went paid.) Afraiddns is still free but requires regular account logins.
I forward my port to my bastion host, and reverse tunnel to it when I want to access my stuff.
My router allows you to set a device in the DMZ zone which will let you use your routers IP as its address.
There are things like duckdns if you cannot get a static IP, but there are also things like wireguard.
since you’re a jellyfin user I’ll give you the best solution.
expose ports 80, 22, and 3306 of your server to the internet.
better yet, just make a DMZ to your server from the internet.
then you can stream, ssh, and query your database from anywhere in the world.
This is how I would have done it in 2001.
It is my understanding that the only reason to go this route in this day and age is if you prefer to survive off the tears of cybersecurity professionals.
who needs cybersecurity? nothing bad should happen.
Protip: Don’t fucking do this
protip protip:
I’m tired of this same exact question being asked over and over and over again. so every time it’s asked I’m going to tell them to expose everything to the internet.
if you can’t learn to search and solve your own problems you kind of deserve the obtusely wrong answers.
kokesh@lemmy.world 2 hours ago Domain and vps pointed to your ip. Or if behind cgnat reverse proxy to vps
I mean not for free, but I did it for cheap. A good domain can cost you $5 a year, and you simply route your jellyfin to a sublevel like watch.mydomain.com
Fun part is you can also route your sonarr like sonarr.mydomain.com
Any suggestions on where to start when looking into buying and setting up a domain?
A cheap way to start is noip.com. You can get a domain name for free, you just need to check in every 3 months to say you are still using it. It’s big enough that many routers support it.
After 2 years of checking in every 3 months I paid for their next tier of service where you don’t have to check in and get multiple domains etc. So their free service marketing worked.
I’ve been with NameCheap for over a decade. They’re a relatively quiet company that’s been around a while.
They’ve never done anything to make me want to change providers. Have my email through them as well. Good uptime. Ok-ish prices. Good customer service the one time I’ve needed it. Web site takes some getting used to, but it’s also never changed since I started using them.
I’d recommend buying a domain through Cloudflare. Once you have one, you can create subdomains and point them to services running on your home server. Cloudflare’s dashboard makes the DNS side pretty straightforward.
I mean I cheated and used chatgpt to help figure it out. But it’s more or less 3 programs max running on whatever server you’re using and using the cloudflare UI to redirect the traffic to the right place
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 minutes ago
Personally I didn’t want to have to hand out VPN credentials to everyone, so I went with a cloudflare tunnel with Authelia as the method of authentication.