Install Emby Server Inside Docker Container in Linux

Ember Server is a home media server for managing and streaming digital media to various devices. It provides a centralized media platform to store, organize, and access movies, TV shows, music, photos, and other media.

This tutorial explains how to install Emby Server inside a Docker container in the Linux. Commands have been tested on Ubuntu.

Prepare environment

Make sure you have installed Docker in your system. If you are using Ubuntu, installation instructions can be found in the post.

Install Emby Server

• Host network

Run the following command to create a container for Emby Server that uses host network:

docker run -d --name=emby --restart=always --network=host \
    -v /opt/emby/config:/config \
    -v /opt/emby/tvshows:/mnt/share1 \
    -v /opt/emby/movies:/mnt/share2 \
    emby/embyserver

• User-defined bridge network

User-defined bridge network can be used for listening on different port. By default, Emby service is listening on port 8096. It can be changed with -p option.

docker network create app-net

docker run -d --name=emby --restart=always --network=app-net \
    -p 8080:8096 \
    -v /opt/emby/config:/config \
    -v /opt/emby/tvshows:/mnt/share1 \
    -v /opt/emby/movies:/mnt/share2 \
    emby/embyserver

Testing Emby Server

Place TV shows to /opt/emby/tvshows directory and movies to /opt/emby/movies. For testing purpose, the following video file can be downloaded:

sudo wget -qO /opt/emby/movies/bunny.mp4 http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4

Open a web browser and go to http://<IP_ADDRESS>:8096, where <IP_ADDRESS> is the IP address of the system. Follow the on-screen instructions to prepare Ember Server. Select display language, create administrator account, set up media libraries for TV shows (use /mnt/share1 folder) and movies (use /mnt/share2 folder). After that, you will be redirected to a page to log in to the dashboard.

Uninstall Emby Server

To completely remove the Emby Server, remove its container:

docker rm --force emby

Remove Emby Server image:

docker rmi emby/embyserver

You can also remove Emby Server data:

sudo rm -rf /opt/emby

If a user-defined bridge network was created, you can delete it as follows:

docker network rm app-net