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Jellyfin unattended configuration - Printable Version

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Jellyfin unattended configuration - coy - 2026-07-10

Hello forum,

In my attempt to steer away from the non-reproducible click-ops approach for many containers, I gave Jellyfin a try.

First task was a look around for what is available for unattended configuration, since platform was docker the install/deployment itself wasn't a problem.
All tools I found were either not up to date, abandoned, did nasty unsupported things or were difficult to deal with.

So now I am with a docker platform, and a few wishes: 
  1. Create a secure container setup for Jellyfin.
  2. Place the Jellyfin container behing Traefik proxy, that takes care of https termination and certificates. Jellyfin may be shared with family at some point.
  3. Integrate Jellyfin with LDAP, also running in Docker.
  4. Integrate Jellyfin with Crowdsec (yes, I'm paranoid)
  5. Create a portable setup, deployable on other docker systems without touching the content, just changing some variables/secrets.
  6. No touch deployment and configuration, preserving what is already configured (not a complete wipe on container restart).

First I create the compose.yaml for Jellyfin (see attached). Some highlights from it
  • It uses docker secrets, .env and environment sect.. Goal was to be portability with the compose file
  • It only has the capabilities needed
  • It uses labels for Traefik, Crowdsec and Homepage. Easy to turn those off if not needed.
  • It uses 2 networks: one for traefik and one it shares with ldap server
  • The configuration script is mounted as a volume and is started in the post_start section

The configuration script starts with sleeping a bit, then, in order, on an new Jellyfin:
  • Sets variables (some by cat'ting from mounted docker secrets)
  • It wait for Jellyfin process to be ready.
  • Check if JF is already configured, if so it skips the initial config.
  • Set language settings, adds StartupUser, assign admin/pass to the startup user
  • Marks startup as complete
  • Generate an API-key if it does'n already exists
  • Configures the network setting (nasty bit of file replacement, can't be done though API), I don't need it now, but might later.
  • If it doesn't exist, installs LDAP plugin, and restart Jellyfin (required to configure LDAP)
  • Configures LDAP plugin 
  • Create 2 libraries with options.
As a bonus, the script is quite chatty, telling you where it is in the docker log. In yellow to stand out.


With help of ${JellyfinURL}/api-docs/swagger and postman. And Gemini for syntax things.
Maybe good to add: All done in Ubuntu or Debian, do not know if/how anything works in Windows.

Was a fun endeavor, maybe benefitting others.