[PLUGIN] Jellyfin Server

[patrickkfkan]

Hi everyone,

I’ve made a plugin that installs a Jellyfin media server on Volumio.

Source / Readme:

GitHub - patrickkfkan/volumio-jellyfin-server

Do not confuse this with the Jellyfin plugin that doesn’t include the word “Server”. That plugin functions as a client and connects to a Jellyfin server. You can use the Jellyfin plugin to connect to the server installed by the Jellyfin Server plugin.

Check the Github Readme on how to setup the server after installing the plugin and how to connect to it with the Jellyfin plugin.

Hardware requirements

The Jellyfin Server plugin has been tested on a Raspberry Pi 3b with 1GB RAM and an x86 PC with 4GB RAM. I have not tested it on devices with lower specs, but I would strongly advise against it. Jellyfin does not pretend to be lightweight and I would actually recommend that you have at least 2GB RAM on your device.

Why this plugin?

To provide an alternative to Volumio users in managing and playing their music.

With media hosted on a Jellyfin server, you can easily access it through the server’s own web interface, or through one of the Jellyfin clients available, and play it locally from anywhere on your network (external network access is possible but will not be covered here as stated in the Readme, under FAQ).

Compared to Volumio, Jellyfin is also more versatile in managing libraries, playlists, favourites, etc., but I should leave this up to you to decide.

When used in conjunction with the client-side Jellyfin plugin, you will be able to browse music with pagination, sorting, filtering, etc. which you don’t get with Volumio’s Music Library.

Plugin status

Plugin has been submitted to the plugin store and pending acceptance.

Since I have only tested it on two physical devices (and in a VM), I would consider the plugin as beta until more testers can confirm its stability.

Manual installation

Plugin is still pending acceptance into the beta channel of the plugin store. In the meantime, brave testers can ssh into Volumio and install maually:

$ git clone https://github.com/patrickkfkan/volumio-jellyfin-server.git
$ cd volumio-jellyfin-server
$ volumio plugin install

Installation can take a while. When completed, you will see this message:

Progress: 100
Status :Jellyfin Server Successfully Installed, Do you want to enable the plugin now?

(If the process doesn’t exit, you can press Ctrl-C)

Enable the plugin in Volumio to start the server. You will get a notification when it has started. Follow the Github Readme for instructions on how to configure the server.

Reporting errors

If you encounter an error during installation, you can send me a log.

Have fun!

[ClaesM]

Hi Patrick! I tried Jellyfin server about a month ago but it didn´t work well for me. I have a pretty large library, 100k+ songs and jellyfin server had problems to scan library after the first 50K songs. I had to flash a new sd card since volumio went unresponsive. Today I installed it again but server will not run. Send you a log here:
http://logs.volumio.org/volumio/hkSxAWN.html

Best Regards/ Claes

[patrickkfkan]

I don’t see possibly related errors in the logs, so I suspect this to be a problem with the Jellyfin server itself, as opposed to the plugin. There have been reports of Jellyfin stalling during initial scanning of large libraries, but then again I cannot confirm if this is your situation here. Bottom line is, Jellyfin is not 100% mature but development is active. Perhaps one day it will reach the same level of maturity as Emby (from which it is forked)…

If you have a spare Pi, perhaps you could install Jellyfin on Raspberry OS and see if it handles your library well?

Also out of curiosity, how does LMS perform with a library of this size?

[ClaesM]

Ok, I understand. I´m going to uninstall Jellyfin for now.
LMS seems to work rather well so far but I have only tried it with a 1TB HD with about 26K songs on it. Thanks for your answer.
Best Regards C

[patrickkfkan]

The Jellyfin Server plugin is now available in the beta channel of the plugin store. Starting from v0.1.3, the plugin will not install and run Jellyfin through Docker. Previous versions are not considered to be “stable” and known to fail on rpi4. If you have a previous version installed, please uninstall it first before installing the current one, followed by restarting Volumio (note that you will lose any Jellyfin config, playlists and favorites in the process - sorry about that; future versions will keep them intact on update).

Thanks @balbuze for testing this plugin and putting it in the store. Same goes for my other plugin submissions.

[volumio]

Thanks @patrickkfkan and @balbuze for your efforts to make volumio environment so much richer!