Safely restart Emby from command line

[SteveFintel 29]

I have Emby running in a TrueNAS 13.1 jail. I need to periodically reboot emby-server for it to pick up an updated SSL certificate. I have been using the command line:

service emby-server restart

but I'm afraid that doesn't safely shut down and restart the process. Is there a safer way to accomplish this?

[Luke 40126]

Hi, we don’t have a way from the command line at this time. I would suggest using the button in the web interface to shutdown. If you want to be able to script it then I would suggest using the Emby server api. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[SteveFintel 29]

It does, a little. That leads to more programming that I think I can do - I first have to authenticate a user and then send the command. Is what I'm doing now (service emby-server restart) dangerous?

[Luke 40126]

I’d probably suggest regular backups of the server data folder so that if you do run into a corrupted database you can easily restore from that.

[SteveFintel 29]

I've already been doing the daily full backups. But perhaps I'm doing this wrong. Here's what I mean: the certificate that I use to authenticate Emby over https is a Let's Encrypt certificate that is updated randomly. Every night, I run a script that builds a new .pfx file and deposit that file in /var/db/emby-server/config. The only way I know to force emby-server to 'ingest' that certificate is by rebooting it. Is there another method that would be safer?

[Luke 40126]

Currently the pfx is loaded on server startup, so yes that means you have to restart. We should look at adding another way to refresh it though.

[SteveFintel 29]

OK. Reboot it is (for now).

[SteveFintel 29]

I just realized I can authenticate from a script with an API key. Problem solved.

[FrogMaster 27]

Personally, I regularly use the following:

service emby-server stop 

Then I tend to do updates, ETC, and I will restart the service with

service emby-server start

I've never encountered any form of database, or data corruption while performing these actions and I've managed my server like this for years. I am doubtful you would encounter any issues by using what you've mentioned:

service emby-server restart

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by FrogMaster

[SteveFintel 29]

Thanks for this. I was doing the same thing for a while but was worried because using the shutdown link within the UI is not nearly as quick as using the command line 'service stop...' I was always wondering if it was safely shutting down processes before actually stopping. So I feel better running: 

curl -X POST http://[emby_IP_address]:8096/emby/System/Restart\?api_key=[API Key]

I believe that runs the same command that gets triggered by the UI and it just feels 'safer' to me.

[starfury 3]

The command I run is this:

iocage exec emby /usr/local/bin/curl -X POST "http://[emby_server_ip]:8096/emby/System/Restart?api_key=[API_key]" -d ""
  

The "iocage exec emby" part is because I run a script in TrueNAS to update the SSL certs on several jails plus the system itself, so that commands TrueNAS to run the command inside the jail.

It's worked for 1+ years without a hitch.   Hope this helps.

[SteveFintel 29]

Updating the cert in a TrueNas jail is exactly the reason I'm rebooting Emby server. It's good to know we landed on the same solution.