What this is

In order for me to get Jellyfin working on a Mac Mini as an unattended service, without logging via the GUI, and accessing media from an external 4TB HDD, I had to do the following:

1. Create a dedicated jellyfin user account using the GUI interface (dscl neglected to create needed encryption keys).
2. Grant that account the ability to remotely log in (because I was using SSH to administer this machine and upload content. It may be a good idea security wise to remove this privilege.
3. Install Homebrew
4. I had to create a proper fstab file to consistently mount the Satechi HDD
5. I also installed:
   • A newer Bash (version 5)
   • GNU Awk (gawk)
   • yt-dlp
   • coreutils (for the timeout utility)
   • ffmpeg
   • handbrake
   • jq
   • The jc json conversion utility
6. Create the following Process List files, which can be maually loaded, inspected and controlled via the launchctl command:
   • /Library/LaunchDaemons/vip.a8545eff.jellyfin.plist
   • /Library/LaunchDaemons/vip.a8545eff.jellyfinmonitor.plist
   • /Library/LaunchDaemons/vip.a8545eff.mountexthdd.plist
7. These files control the following scripts
   • /usr/local/sbin/mount-uuid (given a UUID this conditionally mounts the needed hard drive at /Volumes/EXTHDD)
   • /Users/jellyfin/bin/jellyfin-monitor Uses curl to check the site and restart if unresponsive
   • /Users/jellyfin/bin/start-jellyfin Waits for the needed fileststem to be ready

Hint, run *.plist files through plutil -lint to test before loading.