Cannot Manually Create A New Emby Server

[cgcmgr 25]

Another update.  My Emby server backup is based off of a 13.1 Jail with Emby 4.8.11.0.  So, on the test NAS, I created a 13.1 Jail and was able to install Emby 4.8.11.0 on it.  It started and I was able to access it and it synced my 4 test movies, they play fine.   I then created a 13.5 Jail and installed Emby 4.8.11.0 on it, and it too installed, started and works.

My questions is, does the version of the Jail that Emby is installed in matter?  Like I said, I have Emby 4.8.11.0 in a 13.1 Jail and have a good backup of it.  My plan is to create a new Jail on my production NAS and install Emby 4.8.11.0, since I know it works.  Then I will manually transfer over the backup.  Does it matter if I create a 13.1 or 13.4 or 13.5 Jail on the production NAS to transfer my backup to?

 

Thanks,

Chris

[Baenwort 116]

I would create a 13.5 jail as the newer version will maintain pkg support for longer.

From Emby's perspective it doesn't matter and your backup will transfer since your Emby version is the same.

[cgcmgr 25]

Thanks for the reply Baenwort.  I'll give it a go tonight.

[cgcmgr 25]

So I created a 13.5 Jail on my production NAS and installed Emby 4.8.11.0, but the server wouldn't start.  I noticed the Jail release showed as 13.5-RELEASE, yet, on my test NAS, it showed as 13.5-RELEASE-p1

I deleted that Jail and created a 13.4-RELEASE Jail, installed Emby 4.8.11.0 and again, Emby did not start.  I deleted that Jail.

I then created a 13.1-RELEASE-p9 Jail (the same version Jail that my other 4.8.11.0 Emby server is in).  Emby started. I then copied over my backup and I'm all good and back up and running.

Just find it weird that I could get Emby to install and start in a 13.5 and 13.4 Jail on the test NAS, but not the production.

Anyway, I'm back and will play around with getting Emby running on a 13.5 Jail this weekend.

 

Just want to thank you all for helping me out and getting me back up and running.  I greatly appreciate it.  @nmalinosk, thanks for taking the time to provide the step by step instructions.  Now I have a process to follow in case this happens again.

 

Chris

[Luke 41265]

Thanks for the update !

[Baenwort 116]

I wish Emby would get another version out of beta to stable as it makes it harder in OSes that have rolling versions when we go this long between stable versions. I've had to switch to the beta channel again as packages for 4.8.11.0 have dropped out of support.

[Luke 41265]

1 hour ago, Baenwort said:

I wish Emby would get another version out of beta to stable as it makes it harder in OSes that have rolling versions when we go this long between stable versions. I've had to switch to the beta channel again as packages for 4.8.11.0 have dropped out of support.

Shouldn't be too long now.

[digilur 2]

Beta and stable channels are both uninstallable for current releases of FreeBSD 13 since the mbedtls2 port was removed on June 2. Any ETA for an emby release using mbedtls3?

https://www.freshports.org/security/mbedtls2/

Edited July 15 by digilur

[Luke 41265]

2 hours ago, digilur said:

Beta and stable channels are both uninstallable for current releases of FreeBSD 13 since the mbedtls2 port was removed on June 2. Any ETA for an emby release using mbedtls3?

https://www.freshports.org/security/mbedtls2/

Hi, how are you trying to install the beta?

[digilur 2]

root@emby:~ # pkg add -f https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/releases/download/4.9.1.7/emby-server-freebsd13_4.9.1.7_amd64.pkg
[emby] Fetching emby-server-freebsd13_4.9.1.7_amd64.pkg: 100%   98 MiB  17.1MB/s    00:06
[emby] Installing emby-server-4.9.1.7_1...
package emby-server is already installed, forced install
pkg: Missing dependency 'mbedtls2'

Based on this: https://emby.media/freebsd-server.html

If you look at the log messages in the commit history you'll see:

• 2025/01/02: security/mbedtls: Move to security/mbedtls2
• 2025/06/02: security/mbedtls2: Remove expired port

My last package upgrade was since before the rename of mbedtls to mbedtls2, and now that the package is removed my version of mbedtls2 is named mbedtls and I fail the dependency check when I try to install the beta. I have mbedtls3 installed as per the dependency provided on your Emby Server for FreeBSD installation guide, but obviously the beta and stable channels are depending on mbedtls2 so I'm stuck on 4.9.0.30 from my last upgrade in 2024.

That's my story, but anyone with a fresh FreeBSD 13 install would not be able to install Emby Server because the mbedtls2 port has been removed as of 06/02.

Edited July 17 by digilur

[Luke 41265]

OK we are looking into this. Thanks.

[nmalinoski 3]

At this point, I think it's reasonable for support for Emby on TrueNAS Core to be dropped:

• As far as I know, it was fine for TrueNAS 13.0 to run FreeBSD jails up to 13.2, but FreeBSD 13.3 introduced ABI-breaking changes, so it's not recommended to run jails with >=13.3. Even if you wanted to keep running a 13.2 jail, it was EoLed over a year ago, and the repositories have been removed.
• Assuming Emby does not rely on or can avoid those ABI changes that were introduced in 13.3, the only 13.x version left supported is 13.5, and it goes EoL in less than a year, along with FreeBSD 13 altogether.
• There is TrueNAS 13.1, which is based on FreeBSD 13.3, so 13.5 jails will probably be fine; however, we're still looking at less than a year of upstream support; plus, the fact that iXsystems didn't create a release channel for TrueNAS 13.1 (requires you to retrieve and upload patch files yourself), combined with the popularity and bulk of development applied to TrueNAS SCALE, tells me that iXsystems isn't serious about continuing to support a FreeBSD-based TrueNAS distro.

[Luke 41265]

@Baenwort  @digilur  @nmalinoski  @cgcmgr

The beta package has updated to mbedtls3 and should be good to go now.

[nmalinoski 3]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

@Baenwort  @digilur  @nmalinoski  @cgcmgr

The beta package has updated to mbedtls3 and should be good to go now.

Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any freebsd builds of 4.9.1.9 (not even for FreeBSD 14).

[Luke 41265]

On 7/22/2025 at 12:28 AM, nmalinoski said:

Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any freebsd builds of 4.9.1.9 (not even for FreeBSD 14).

Hi, they are on the way up. Thanks.

[Luke 41265]

Hi, have you been able to try it?

[digilur 2]

On 7/21/2025 at 2:25 PM, Luke said:

@Baenwort  @digilur  @nmalinoski  @cgcmgr

The beta package has updated to mbedtls3 and should be good to go now.

Hi Luke, I was able to successfully update to 4.9.1.11 now that the dependency is on mbedtls3, thanks!

[digilur 2]

On 7/20/2025 at 10:30 PM, nmalinoski said:

At this point, I think it's reasonable for support for Emby on TrueNAS Core to be dropped:

• As far as I know, it was fine for TrueNAS 13.0 to run FreeBSD jails up to 13.2, but FreeBSD 13.3 introduced ABI-breaking changes, so it's not recommended to run jails with >=13.3. Even if you wanted to keep running a 13.2 jail, it was EoLed over a year ago, and the repositories have been removed.
• Assuming Emby does not rely on or can avoid those ABI changes that were introduced in 13.3, the only 13.x version left supported is 13.5, and it goes EoL in less than a year, along with FreeBSD 13 altogether.
• There is TrueNAS 13.1, which is based on FreeBSD 13.3, so 13.5 jails will probably be fine; however, we're still looking at less than a year of upstream support; plus, the fact that iXsystems didn't create a release channel for TrueNAS 13.1 (requires you to retrieve and upload patch files yourself), combined with the popularity and bulk of development applied to TrueNAS SCALE, tells me that iXsystems isn't serious about continuing to support a FreeBSD-based TrueNAS distro.

Yeah I mean I upgraded to TrueNAS Core 13.1 so I could get my jails up to 13.5 because of those ABI-breaking changes you mention. I fully intend to move to Scale once the dust settles on virtualization (Q3 2025) and containers (Q1 2026). Glad I was slow to adopt because of all the 'experimental feature' shenanigans. My theory is the TrueNAS Core 13.1 release was goodwill for all of that, gives us up to date packages in our jails until container support no longer experimental. I look forward to Scale for a few reasons, getting away from the short half-life of port availability in my jails being very high on that list.

I think maybe there's an emby plugin and that's what you mean by dropping TrueNAS core support, but I've always just spun up my own jails and relied on emby's FreeBSD support.

[NYPD54 1]

Was having issues when I thought it was a good idea to blindly update emby in my TrueNAS 13.2 jail and saw that everything broke. Could not get to official instruction working from https://emby.media/truenas-server.html.

 

However with a few adjustments to several posts in this thread here is what worked for me (which is very similar to https://emby.media/freebsd-server.html)

Create 13.5-RELEASE-p5 jail and name it "emby-server" (This is if you are on the latest TrueNAS-13.0-U6.8 version)

Make sure the following are checked: 
  - Auto-start 
  - DHCP Autoconfigure IPv4
  - allow_mlock

Set up your mount points
  - Source is where you want your stuff to go to
  - Destination I would suggest /mnt/xxxxxx/iocage/jails/emby-server/media

Start the jail and  shell into into it

Run these commands in order and type in "y" when prompted:

pkg update
pkg upgrade
pkg install dotnet8 libass fontconfig freetype2 mbedtls3 fribidi gnutls iconv opus sqlite3 libtheora libva ocl-icd libvorbis webp libzvbi libraw ImageMagick6 tesseract intel-media-sdk libunwind libinotify openssl icu krb5 libexif libjxl libheif libimagequant openexr openjpeg orc pango tiff
pkg add -f https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/releases/download/4.9.1.80/emby-server-freebsd13_4.9.1.80_amd64.pkg
sysrc emby_server_enable="YES"
service emby-server start

 

if you then run the "top" command you should see emby server as one of the processes.

Now just go to whatever IP address assigned you jail and type in ":8096" at the end e.g. 192.168.1.142:8096

 

Hopefully these random instructions will help someone out as I got stuck for a bit. The above commands uses the latest stable 4.9.1.80 emby release. these instructions might not work for future releases.

 

[nmalinoski 3]

Can confirm NYPD54's approach results in an Emby instance that stays running.

[cgcmgr 25]

That's good to know.  My issue right now is I have my Emby server, version 4.8.1.0 on a 12.3-RELEASE-p12.  I'd like to update to 4.9.1.80 while not touch the Jail as I don't want anything to break.  Does anyone know if updating Emby from 4.8.1.0 to 4.9.1.80 on a 12.3-RELEASE-p12 Jail will work?  I don't want to kill the Emby server.

If worse come to worse, I can always follow NYPD54's steps, but I'd have to start all over with syncing and fixing all my metadata.  I have made a lot of custom changes.  I don't think I'd be able to just copy my 4.8.1.0 backup over as that would be a mismatch on the Emby servers, 4.8.1.0 vs 4.9.1.80.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Chris

[nmalinoski 3]

On 10/26/2025 at 3:10 PM, cgcmgr said:

Does anyone know if updating Emby from 4.8.1.0 to 4.9.1.80 on a 12.3-RELEASE-p12 Jail will work?  I don't want to kill the Emby server.

If worse come to worse, I can always follow NYPD54's steps, but I'd have to start all over with syncing and fixing all my metadata.  I have made a lot of custom changes.  I don't think I'd be able to just copy my 4.8.1.0 backup over as that would be a mismatch on the Emby servers, 4.8.1.0 vs 4.9.1.80.

Since 4.9.x effectively relies on packages/package versions that are in 13.5-RELEASE, I imagine you're simply not going to be able to install 4.9.x in the first place (The installation command will just refuse to start installing the new version because it relies on packages that don't exist in 13.2).

As for whether or not you'll be able to upgrade your jail to 13.5, that will depend on 1) it was created as a base jail, not a clone jail, and 2) you installed it from scratch and not from the plugin.

I think the reason I haven't been able to upgrade my jail from 13.2 to 13.5 is precisely that--it's based on the plugin, and I haven't quite figured out how to update the plugin to use 13.5-RELEASE. I just did a `git pull` in the repo I checked out, and it's on the freebsd13 branch, but its target is still 13.4-RELEASE. If it's going for 14.1, that's probably the target in the `master` branch, and I have no idea how to get the plugin upgrader to specifically use the freebsd13 branch.

The way I intend to work around this is to rename my existing jail to something like `emby-old`, create a fresh `emby-server` jail using NYPD54's instructions, and then copy over `/var/db/emby-server` (I think) from the old jail to the new one (Will have to `chown -R emby:emby /var/db/emby-server` in the new jail before starting Emby). That way, I can eliminate the need for the plugin, too.

Still doesn't obviate the need to migrate to SCALE, though.

[cgcmgr 25]

Yeah, I was afraid of that.  Going to pretty much do what you're going to do until I migrate to Scale.

[nmalinoski 3]

Updated migration instructions for Emby 4.9.x on TrueNAS 13.1, integrating the instructions from NYPD54's post:

• Stop and rename your existing Emby jail, so that we can safely access its data directory later on, and so we can reuse its existing IP address.

  iocage stop emby-server
  iocage rename emby-server emby-old

• Create a new base jail with mlock enabled (name will assumed to be "emby-server") using the host shell: (You can safely reuse the same IP as your old jail.)

  iocage create -r 13.5-RELEASE -n emby-server allow_mlock="on" vnet=1 ip6="inherit" ip4_addr="10.2.3.4/24"

• Set up your mounts: (Adjust first path for your media dataset. Adjust ro to rw if you want Emby to be able to write to your media dataset.)

  iocage fstab -a emby-server /mnt/[pool]/[dataset] /media nullfs ro 0 0

• Start the jail and connect to its console:

  iocage start emby-server
  iocage console emby-server

• Install packages and configure Emby

  pkg update -f
  pkg install dotnet8 libass fontconfig freetype2 mbedtls3 fribidi gnutls iconv opus sqlite3 libtheora libva ocl-icd libvorbis webp libzvbi libraw ImageMagick6 tesseract intel-media-sdk libunwind libinotify openssl icu krb5 libexif libjxl libheif libimagequant openexr openjpeg orc pango tiff
  pkg add -f https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/releases/download/4.9.1.80/emby-server-freebsd13_4.9.1.80_amd64.pkg
  sysrc emby_server_enable="YES"

• Before starting Emby, if you have existing Emby data in another jail or in a backup, copy it to /mnt/[pool]/iocage/jails/emby-server/root/var/db/emby-server now, and it should get picked up by Emby when it starts: (Outside the jail)

  cp -R /mnt/[pool]/iocage/jails/emby-old/root/var/db/emby-server /mnt/[pool]/iocage/jails/emby-server/root/var/db/

   
  • If you do this, remember to reset the ownership of this directory. (Inside the jail)

    chown -R emby:emby /var/db/emby-server

• Start Emby and make sure it's accessible:

  service emby-server start

• Finally, if you had any snapshot tasks set up for your emby-server jail, make sure they haven't all been renamed to emby-old, otherwise you will need to configure new ones for the new emby-server jail.

Notes:

• Make sure VNET is enabled, otherwise Emby will think your LAN clients are remote clients.
• I haven't figured out the commandline arguments for setting IPv6 to auto, nor for enabling/disabling auto-start, so I needed to adjust those manually by stopping and then editing the jails in the TrueNAS UI.

 

I'm not going to delete my old jail just yet, but it looks like 4.9.x is running fine for me so far.

Edited November 2 by nmalinoski

[cgcmgr 25]

Very cool and thank you for this.  I have a lot going on this week, but look forward to trying it this upcoming weekend.  I'll report my findings.