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Mordecai Kipng’etich

Self Hosted Media With Docker

·7 mins
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I originally built this media stack as a complete beginner to homelabbing. It started as a way to learn Docker while automating my setup and slowly turned into something I rely on daily. Over time I refined it to the point where it runs quietly and flawlessly in the background.

I’m planning to migrate everything to Proxmox soon, so I’m posting my internal documentation before I tear it down. This isn’t the only way to do it. It’s simply how I did mine.

Hardware

This runs on my old laptop with an Intel Core i5-7200U with 8 gigs of DDR4 RAM and no dedicated GPU on bare metal Linux. The distro doesn’t really matter since everything runs inside Docker but if you really need to know, I’ve used this setup with Arch Linux, Omarchy (which is basically pre-configured Arch) and CachyOS. Nothing fancy. No enterprise gear. Just hardware I had lying around.

Why This Stack

  • Jellyfin because it’s open source. No paid tiers. No “upgrade to unlock this feature”. No authentication that needs to phone home. I want my media server to be mine.
  • qBittorrent because it’s reliable and I’m used to it.
  • Prowlarr because managing indexers in one place is significantly cleaner.
  • Radarr / Sonarr / Bazarr because automation is the whole point.
  • Docker because I can tear this down and spin it back up anywhere.

Folder Mapping

At a high level, all the files live under /data on the host. This is my current structure:

data
├── torrents
│   ├── completed
│   └── incomplete
└── media
    ├── movies
    └── tv

Create your directories before proceeding. Here’s an easy command to run in your /data directory if you want a similar scheme:

mkdir -p torrents/{completed,incomplete} && mkdir -p media/{movies,tv}

Setup Process

The full docker-compose.yml files and .env.example templates live in my homelab repository: github.com/insidemordecai/homelab/tree/blog-media-stack-2026.

Clone it or download a zip of it.

Step 0

  • In the root directory, copy all .env.example templates as .env in each subdirectory:
find . -name '.env.example' -execdir cp .env.example .env \;
  • Navigate to the directory with the docker-compose.yml file.
  • Add your user to the docker group so you don’t need sudo for every command:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker
  • Change ownership of the data volume specified in the .env file so all services can access it:
chown -R 1000:1000 /data/volume/in/.env/file
  • Create a shared Docker network: (I prefer this approach with Cloudflare Tunnels)
docker network create stacknet
  • Lastly, use the appropriate commands with the containers:
docker compose up -d # to deploy containers
docker compose stop # to stop containers
docker compose rm # to remove containers (stop them first)
  • Now configure each application.
Caution

.env files in my repository are ignored by Git. Do not commit or push tokens or credentials.

qBittorrent

http://localhost:8080

Launch qBittorrent and log in. The username is admin while the password is randomly generated on first launch. To find the password:

docker logs qbittorrent

Change the credentials under Web UI → Authentication.

Configure qBittorrent to your liking. My preferences are:

  • Web UI → Authentication
    • Bypass authentication for clients on localhost
    • Set “Ban client after consecutive failures” to 0 (be careful if exposing qBittorrent)
  • Downloads → Saving Management
    • Default save path: /data/torrents/completed
    • Keep incomplete torrents in: /data/torrents/incomplete
    • Enable Automatic torrent management
  • Connections → Listening Port
    • Match whatever you forwarded on your router
  • BitTorrent
    • Configure queueing and seeding limits to your liking

Arr Apps

Prowlarr

http://localhost:9696

Go to Settings → Download Clients and add qBittorrent.

Match the Web UI port (default 8080) and enter credentials. Host can be qbittorrent, test and save.

Add your indexers, test and save.

Flaresolverr

No configuration required in the container itself.

In Prowlarr:

  • Settings → Indexers
  • Add Flaresolverr
  • Host: http://flaresolverr:8191/
  • Tag: flaresolverr

Attach the tag to any problematic indexer that needs to bypass Cloudflare Captcha.

Radarr

http://localhost:7878

Under Settings → Media Management, add Root Folder: /data/media/movies (match your docker-compose.yml)

Under Settings → Download Clients, add qBittorrent (similar process to Prowlarr above) and test.

Configure Remote Path Mapping:

  • Host: localhost
  • Remote path: /WHERE_YOUR_DATA_VOLUME_IS/data/torrents/completed
  • Local path: /data/torrents/completed

Copy the API key from Settings → General.

In Prowlarr:

  • Settings → Apps
  • Add Radarr
  • Use http://container-name:port format in the Prowlarr/Radarr server field
  • Paste the API key

My tweaks:

  • Media Management
    • Check “Unmonitor Delete Movies”
    • Set “Proper and Repacks” to “Do Not Prefer”
    • Adjust Movie Folder Format (I include IMDb ID inline with Jellyfin’s naming scheme)
  • Custom Formats
    • Medium File Size - set your minimum and max file size for media downloaded and check ‘Required’. You can create another for Small and Large file sizes if desired.
    • x264 - use preset under Release Title and check Required to find files encoded with H.264.
    • x265 - use preset under Release Title and check Required to find files encoded with H.265.
    • Repack/Proper from TRaSH Guide’s Collection to allow Radarr to still pick repacks/proper files.
  • Profiles
    • Disable Remux, they tend to be large files.
    • Score the custom formats according to preference e.g 1000 for Medium File Size, 100 for Repack/Proper and another score x264 and x265.

Sonarr

http://localhost:8989

Same process as Radarr, but Root Folder: /data/media/tv.

Configure Download Client and Remote Path Mapping the same way. Link Sonarr to Prowlarr the same way using the API key.

In Media Management:

Bazarr

http://localhost:6767

Under Settings → Sonarr, enable and configure connection. Set the minimum score in Options to 90 (TRaSH-Guide recommendation).

Under Settings → Radarr, enable and configure the connection. Minimum score: 80

Under Settings → Languages, pick your desired language under Languages Filter. Create a Language Profile under Languages Profile and assign it as default for Series and Movies under Default Language Profiles For Newly Added Shows.

Add subtitle providers under Settings → Providers. Create an account with a provider such as opensubtitles.com first.

Under Settings → Subtitles:

  • Enable ‘Ignore Embedded PGS Subtitles’ and ‘Ignore Embedded ASS Subtitles’ under Embedded Subtitles Handling. This is important if your media player has issues with these type of subtitles e.g Jellyfin for Samsung TV (check out Jellyfin 2 Samsung and Install Jellyfin Tizen for how to sideload the app)
  • Enable ‘Automatic Subtitles Audio Synchronization’ under Audio Synchronization / Alignment.
  • Score Threshold:
    • Series: 96
    • Movies: 86

Jellyfin

http://localhost:8096

Complete initial setup in browser and map your libraries:

  • Movies: /data/media/movies
  • TV: /data/media/tv

That’s it. Tweak the settings to your liking.

Jellyseerr

Note

And wouldn’t you know it, just after posting this article I learned that the Seerr team announced they’ll be merging Overseerr and Jellyseerr. You can find the migration guide here. Also, you can find my Seerr implementation on my GitHub repo.

http://localhost:5055

Follow the on-screen guide.

  • Jellyfin hostname: jellyfin
  • Leave the port as is unless you had changed this
  • Test and save, the API keys will auto-configure
  • Add Radarr and Sonarr

Firewall

You may need to allow certain ports, but only if necessary.

For example, if using ufw:

sudo ufw allow 6881/tcp #default qBittorrent listening port
sudo ufw allow 6881/udp

Be deliberate. Don’t open ports blindly.

A Note on Exposing Services

If you decide to expose any of these services outside your local network, understand the risks first.

Do not just forward ports and hope for the best. Use proper authentication, reverse proxies, or secure tunnels. Know what you’re exposing and why.

This stack runs perfectly fine entirely within a local network. The next post will show how to use Cloudflare Tunnels to securely expose some services.

The full compose files and configuration templates are available here: github.com/insidemordecai/homelab/tree/blog-media-stack-2026

This setup has been stable for me for a long time. If I ever need to rebuild it on another machine, it’s just a matter of cloning the repo and running docker compose up -d.

Next step: rebuilding this properly under Proxmox.

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