I access my home server with Jellyfin exclusively via Tailscale. Until now, I thought I was safe, as I haven’t opened anything to “the open internet”. After reading your very nice guide, I feel like I forgot a lot. Supposed I trust Tailscale, is that enough?

I bought a Red Plus NAS 8TB a couple of weeks ago, because I didn’t know better. My mini PC is sitting a meter behind the monitors of my desktop PC and the noise is unbearable. So at the moment I just use the HDD as a backup, but it will be impossible for me to place it somewhere near where I live. Unfortunately I have no Ethernet in the kitchen.

I could have known this before but I didn’t know better. I had no idea those things run 24/7. You seem to be better informed than me, just wanted to warn you!

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.

I have an off site backup that runs every 24 hours with rustic, for my important documents I archive with paperless. That’s about it. If there is no energy anymore I give a shit on my Jellyfin collection but see how I can cook food. If I need to flee I may take an HDD with me, but only the important stuff.

Nah man, this is self hosted, your points are valid and should be discussed. It is true that tailscale may enshittify, however it is only one out of many solutions. Like the other comment said there is head scale, and in the end you still have the possibility to go the way of a reverse proxy server and pipe Jellyfin through the open internet, which will be hard for many in the sense of configuration and hardening. But the underlying software which is Jellyfin is FOSS, that is the most important aspect.

I use Tailscale and it is absolutely fine. The problem is with other non tech savy people - the setup process is not straightforward so you need to help them a bit. They can’t just “connect”. But after that, Tailscale is great.

I don’t know much about Plex but I guess because it is not easy for the average guy. Setting up a remote connection without a VPN is definitely not something I would recommend to someone who is just a media enthusiast.

Why not both?

Just use mailbox.org or posteo.de . Using one of those providers is so much better than a Google mail address but so easier than hosting your own mail server.

By that definition, no. But the Threadiverse is small enough, that I would allow it. Plex follows a similar spirit, but enshittified over the years.

I use Jellyfin btw.