Saturday 16 Dec 2023

Migrate Jellyfin Server (Linux to Linux)

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I needed to move my Jellyfin server to a new server. I documented the process for future reference and to help others in the same situation. There are scripts to change the file paths within the database files, but I did not use these as was able to reproduce the same path on the server.

You will need to copy over the following directories:

/var/lib/jellyfin
/usr/share/jellyfin/
/etc/jellyfin

Probably not necessary, but I copied by cache folder too:

Also, for extra measure, I copied these files too:

/etc/default/jellyfin
/etc/systemd/system/jellyfin.service.d/jellyfin.service.conf

I copied the above paths to the new server then installed Jellyfin server.

# apt install jellyfin

This would not work for me. The problem was with permissions. I made sure the user of the paths was set to:

# chown jellyfin:jellyfin /path/as/above

If this does not work, try:

# chmod 777 -R /on/each/path

Service commands for Jellyfin server:

service jellyfin stop
service jellyfin restart
service jellyfin start

I used the Jellyfin documentation as a reference: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/migrate/

Now I can enjoy Jellyfin-goodness from a new machine.