Media Server Update!

I’ve been running my media/backup/minecraft (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) server with Docker, ZFS and Plex for years now. Every once and a while it’s a good practice to look at what you are doing and validate it’s still a good thing to do. Reflection is a good thing and I’m doing that today!

So, with my infinite technical skill and less than 30 seconds I’m going to convert my server from Docker to Podman and from Plex to Jellyfin!

Ha! Well, not really 30 seconds, but it wasn’t a difficult task with a bunch of unknowns. Each problem I encountered had lots of documentation out there to help me resolve the issues.

From Docker to Podman

The conversion here was not completely one-to-one. Podman really takes on the task of container management. Docker can manage many aspects of running containers on a single server; network, storage, containers, firewall, etc. The latest versions of Podman (v2.0+) get closer to managing all those things.

Things that worked

The volumes, container configurations and firewalls translated really well. I’ve been using ansible to manage my server for some time and that really helped translate. The conversion from Docker tasks to podman tasks were one-to-one and thanks to the podman ansible collection maintained by the same folks who develop podman.

There was a minor issues with SeLinux contexts when mounting my previously Docker volumes as Podman volumes. These volumes were still backed by ZFS as to not loose my data! However, once I figured out the right SeLinux context for my volume data the conversion went smoothly after that.

Things that didn’t work

Network didn’t go so well, I get the issues with network management through Docker and the argument about overstepping bounds that Linux already was capable of managing these things. However, Docker did well defining what networking should look like from the container perspective. I don’t think Podman has gotten there yet.

So much of the network stack management (if at all complex) goes straight to Kubernetes. If you want to manage VLAN configurations with your containers on a server Kubernetes is the answer I hear most often.

However, I have a single server machine! Why should I put a software designed for scalable cluster management on a single machine just because I can? I want a better reason than that!

Podman’s own documentation for networking completely ignores VLAN configurations!

I did eventually figure out what podman is looking for. However, it was all about Kubernetes internals and specifically CNI configuration. I first had to use traditional bridge-utils, NetworkManager style configurations to create the VLAN interfaces and bridges. Next, there is a simple CNI configuration JSON file to tell Podman about the network defined.

{
    "cniVersion": "0.4.0",
    "name": "vlan1001",
    "plugins": [
        {
            "name": "net1001",
            "type": "macvlan",
            "master": "vnet1001",
            "ipam": {
                "type": "host-local",
                "ranges": [
                    [
                        {
                            "subnet": "10.0.0.0/24",
                            "rangeStart": "10.0.0.128",
                            "rangeEnd": "10.0.0.254",
                            "gateway": "10.0.0.1"
                        }
                    ]
                ]
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "portmap",
            "capabilities": {
                "portMappings": true
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "firewall"
        },
        {
            "type": "tuning"
        }
    ]
}

This configuration allowed me to run a container using Podman on the vlan1001 network.

podman run -it --rm --name=alpine --network=vlan1001 alpine:latest /bin/bash -l

Media Software

So, I’ve been thinking of alternatives to Plex for a while now. The things I’ve not liked about it have been well documented by the community.

  • Freemium services are lame!
  • They collect info from my usage!
  • Disconnected from the internet the software becomes useless!

There are a lot of alternatives out there. However, many of them are clones of Plex but less popular. So, I’ve been really reluctant to jump ship because I’m not getting a different ecosystem.

Until I came across Jellyfin!

Jellyfin!

Jellyfin is a GPL’d C# code that is gaining a lot of ground. They’ve got plugins for the backend and customizable themes framework they are supporting. I also wanted to thank Gardiner Bryant for a thorough video comparing both Plex and Jellyfin.

The conversion was really quick for three reasons.

  1. I initially deployed Plex using Docker
  2. The deployment of Jellyfin and Plex are identical with respect to Containers.
  3. Ansible captured the definition of the deployment and replacing was string replacement.

Conclusion

So, I’ve just installed it replacing Plex. As I’ve not lived with it for a while I’ll have to get back to folks on how it lasts. However, the conversion was a snap with the configuration I have. So, that was good!