audio bookshelf

Running audiobookshelf inside a FreeBSD jail.

I am using bastille for jail management but its not important. Setup a new jail and mount your audio files inside the jail, due to the way my disks are setup I am also mounting the config and metadata directories into the jail. So /mnt/audio /mnt/config and /mnt/metadata live outside the jail.

Once your jail is setup and the mounts exist, exec into the jail and run the following. At the time of writting this, I am running FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE. The port 3333 is being exposed outside the jail.

I am running a version that is ~9 months old, as it was the last version to not require nusqlite which is not available on FreeBSD. I think some have gotten newer versions to run, but I don't need the latest features right now and wanted to get this up. If someone gets a later version to build, please shout.

jailed

as root

pkg add npm-node18 git ffmpeg

adduser audiobookshelf

as audiobookshelf user

change to audiobook user and build audiobookshelf

su - audiobookshelf
git clone https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf
cd audiobookshelf
git checkout v2.13.4

npm run client
npm ci --omit=dev

as root

install pm2, this is a node pkg which ensures the app is running / restarts and starts at boot. It adds the relevant entries to your rc.conf to start itself as well.

npm install -g pm2
mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/rc.d/
pm2 startup

add the following to this file /mnt/config/ecosystem.config.js

module.exports = {
  apps : [{
    name   : "audiobookshelf",
    script : "/home/audiobookshelf/audiobookshelf/index.js",
    env: {
      "NODE_ENV": "production",
      "HOST": "0.0.0.0",
      "PORT": "3333",
      "CONFIG_PATH": "/mnt/config",
      "METADATA_PATH": "/mnt/metadata",
      "FFMPEG_PATH": "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg",
      "FFPROBE_PATH": "/usr/local/bin/ffprobe",
      "AUDIOBOOKSHELF_UID": "1001", 
      "AUDIOBOOKSHELF_GID": "1001", 
      "SOURCE": "FreeBSD"
    }
  }]
}

ensure all folders belong to audiobookshelf user

chown -R audiobookshelf:audiobookshelf /mnt/

start the app and check its status

pm2 start /mnt/config/ecosystem.config.js

pm2 status

end user

Open up a web browser and go to http://your-machine:3333. I am using HaProxy to be able to route https://audiobookshelf.mydomain.tld/ to this backend jail.