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+--- Thread: Recommendations for flipping between instances (/t-recommendations-for-flipping-between-instances)
Recommendations for flipping between instances - Jamie Chapman - 2025-10-21
I've been happily using Jellyfin for a couple of years. Maybe a little too happily, given how much time (and fun) I had building out my media collection and working with Jellyfin to make it JUST RIGHT.
My question is regarding best practices for flipping between two Jellyfin versions without causing conflicts with metadata, since my understanding of how Jellyfin manages metadata is minimal, and I'm quite sure, with all of the major recent changes from 10.10 to 10.11, that Jellyfin's management of this data has changed as well. So perhaps it is better that I never understood it thoroughly, since forgetting old known things for the new can be difficult.
Anyway, I use docker desktop on Windows with WSL2, and learned how to, somewhat properly, flip between my working 10.10.7 to the 10.11.0 RCs by doing the following:
1. Down the container.
2. Move cache and config folders for current container version to properly labeled backup folder
3. Move backed up cache and config folders for the opposing version to the proper location for the container.
4. Adjust docker compose to pull the desired image and fire up the container.
5. Rinse and repeat as needed.
I learned to do the above as I wanted to kick the tires on 10.11 during the RC phase but be able to easily go back to a working 10.10.7 at will. This process functions pretty well, but I have noticed that there are sometimes odd listings on some of the media when .nfo files in the media folders were written by the opposing version. Or, at least I think the nfo files are the reason, which is where my knowledge is lacking and why I'm requesting some help.
Does anyone know the best way to go about doing this? I know how to script, and moving files around is a cinch once things are scripted out.
Would it make sense to have a repository for .nfo, images in the media folders, including the locally stored trickplays, and xml files that get moved to the backup location when flipping versions, followed by a full, separate set of these files for the other version getting injected back into the media folders? Or is that more than I need to do? Would just moving the nfo files out of the way be enough?
Any guidance would be much appreciated! Thank you!
RE: Recommendations for flipping between instances - Jamie Chapman - 2025-11-10
I was going to write a bunch of scripting to enable flipping between two instances but decided to cancel this after doing a clean install of 10.11.2. The latest production release is working really well compared to some of my previous attempts with the 10.11 RCs.
If anyone knows off the top of their head if it is necessary to clear out metadata located with the media when flipping between versions, I would greatly appreciate it.
I've seen that some others run two concurrent instances of Jellyfin at times, and although they did not mention whether they were running two unique sets of media, my guess is that they were not, and that both instances were using the same metadata in the media folders.
In my experience, when I have left the metadata with the media, and swapped in different Jellyfin versions, media naming (show names) gets out of whack, even after successive library scans, which is why I *think* it makes sense to keep unique metadata per instance, which is what led me to think of writing scripting that can automate the moving of these many thousands of files to and from backup/media folders.