I am using the free Oracle VPS offer until they block me, so far I have no issue. Alzernatively I wanted to check out IONOS, since you dont have a bandwidth limit there.

I use a VPS and a wiregusrd tunnel.

https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup

Yeah the link I posted does everything via docker and explains what should be mounted and how.

I get you and I know that there can be security issues (especially in Jellyfin) that might give you access. This is the reason I only mount the media and config folders, and nothing else into the docker container. The media folders are mounted as read only and don’t contain sensitive information. For the config folder I created a separate user. Plus I block non-German IP addresses which already blocks quite some bots. If your friends have fixed IP addresses you could also just whitelist them and block everything else.

You could also probably sniff the network and define more strict rules on ‘allowed’ requests in fail2ban but this is bridle because requests might change with different versions.

Hell I know what you mean, it was so much trial and error until it worked, hence this guide/template to help others. Plus at some point it feels more like work than a hobby 😅

This is how I do it: https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup