Yeah I'll have to look through them and play with the firewall and router. Project zomboid did something very similar but I was able to find a way to make it work with my two custom ports.
Absolute worst case scenario, I create my own MITM to replace the 8888 for the client response lol
I host my server behind a VPN, which cannot have 8888 open.
Will setting the external port mapping settings let me continue and let my friends connect like usual?
I was seriously just finally starting to become interested in using them a lot more for gaming since I got some success getting it to work on my Linux install. This would make me do a full 180 though...
My personal advice, secure it down to only permitting what needs it, regardless of your trust to the network.
Treat each device as if they've been compromised and the attacker on the compromised device is now trying to move laterally. Example scenario: had you blocked all devices except your laptop or phone to your server, your server wouldn't have been hacked because someone went through a hacked cloud-connected HVAC panel.
I lock down everything and grant access only to devices that should have access. Then on top of that, I enable passwords and 2FA on everything as if it were public... Nothing I self host is public. It's all behind my network firewall and router firewall, and can only be accessed externally by a VPN.
If you're into self hosting, traccar is an option, which also has its own mobile app of course. Not the best thing ever but when it works, it's nice. Connects to home assistant nicely, too.
Yeah, in my example, I have various genres of music I listen to and some days I'm in the mood for one and not another. Some of those might have subgenres I am in the mood to listen to. For example: Metal might break into subfolders called black metal, thrash metal, melodic metal, etc. Based on where I feel they belong the most. If I'm in the mood for some melodic metal today, I'll go there. Or EDM, I'll have a folder for Psytrance, another for House, etc...
Rather than trying to edit the metadata on thousands and thousands of files every time I change media systems as I've done over these years, it's 100x simpler for me to just navigate to the folders directly and not care about how the system "wants" to organize it. Every media system wants to organize differently and I'm kind of tired of having to spend hours editing all my music just to get it to organize the way that works for me, so that's where I've gotten to the point of just using folder structures.
I could never get Plex to work the way I wanted it to, so I'm actually someone who moved to Kodi and then to Emby. Once I got into Emby, I've yet to leave it. My biggest problem now is that I want to leave it for Jellyfin, but the lack of many things I love about Emby have never been moved to Jellyfin.
For example, I have a very specific organization of my music libraries I use to navigate what I want to listen to much quicker, since I'm into all kinds of genres of music. Emby allows me to navigate by folder structure, so if I'm in the mood for heavy metal one day, go to that folder. If classical another day, go there. Jellyfin on the other hand didn't have folder structure view and even though it's one of the top requested features for the past few years when I last checked, it's never been added...
I think the day Jellyfin does fill in these gaps, assuming new ones aren't introduced due to Emby also improving, I'll finally jump over.
I guess to the original topic, I do think Jellyfin exceeds Plex though lol.
As of today it's actually 0.28% now. So most likely going to continue hitting those lower decimal values from here.
Plus 1 to Venstar. Got myself the T7900 and even though it offers internet access, I just blocked it at my router and connected it to the network, controlling it through home assistant. No need for third party access and whatnot with it since it's completely local.
Also hard to relate. Got my Gentoo server running full auto updates every morning and then send an ntfy alert on success or failure. Haven't seen a failed update in so long (other than the occasional package that had a bad build or something once in a while).
Back when I was fresh in the Gentoo and Linux world (Gentoo is where I started) and updating once a month, I can definitely say I ran into issues.. dunno if it's that big of an issue these days though.
"Texas Data Privacy and Security Act"... This is a thing? lol
I also wouldn't consider this a secret....
I found years ago that if you block ubi.com and ubisoft.com (if you have a self hosted DNS or a way to block domains on a network), and any other sub domains you might spot, the games work fine. They just take like a full minute to load while they try their best to hit the servers. So yeah I've never agreed to the TOS for a few games as a result.
Needles to say, you'll need these domains unblocked to play multiplayer.