I converted my home media server to use Docker, and documented the process and added the config and stuff on Github at https://github.com/chintogtokh/thepopcornstand! Disclaimer that this post is mostly a copy of the readme there.

Prerequisites

You need docker, docker-compose, and python3.

How to set-up

Do a cp env.example .env and edit the .env file with your details.
Run python3 setup.py. This generates the html page that serves as the front-end. Run this everytime you edit .env.
Now do a docker-compose up. This will get everything up and running. For daemon mode, use the -d option.
Do the manual setup.

After this, there are a few things to setup:

I find a hassle-free way to set up your local home network’s DNS is just not to bother with self-hosted DNS servers. I just have a real domain (really niche domains like .xyz are really cheap) and then configure a wildcard subdomain to point to the home server this will be hosted on. So, the A record for *.some.weird.domain.xyz will point to the home server’s internal IP. This is set up using the URL env.
Set up your Plex server, you might have an issue creating a new server if you connect directly to plex.some.weird.domain.xyz so see https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-plex/issues/110 - the gist is that you need to be connecting from the same subnet to set up a Plex server. You can try the ssh tunnel method that’s described on the Plex website. After that, map the SERIES_DIR and MOVIES_DIR directories to appropriate Plex libraries.
Set up Transmission to point to the DOWNLOADS_DIR directory. Ideally don’t use the incomplete directory setting.
Set up Jackett and add a few trackers/websites.
Set up Radarr and Sonarr:
- Point to the relevant directories: SERIES_DIR for TV series, MOVIES_DIR for movies, and DOWNLOADS_DIR for eh
- Point the download client to transmission (accessible via transmission, since Docker containers can talk to each other using their container names)
- Point to Jackett (the API endpoints are accessible from http://jackett:9117/***)
Set up Calibre. You need to have a pre-made Calibre library to do this. You need to have your library somewhere and map it to the BOOKS_DIR directory.
- Set up your email stuff. Since Kindles allow you to get your books by emailing stuff to a [email protected] email, you can set up the SMTP settings to allow you send stuff to your Kindle from the web interface. You can use Gmail’s SMTP thing, and don’t remember to set up Insecure mode.

Now, assuming your URL is set to, say, some.weird.domain.xyz, everything will be accessible from http://web.some.weird.domain.xyz.

What’s inside

It’s just a docker-compose file that includes all the basics you need for a media server at home:

An organiser program for your media - Radarr organises your movies and Sonarr does it for your TV series
A way to watch it - Plex is the way to go here. It’s like having a self-hosted instance of Netflix
Some degree of automation - Transmission is a media torrent downloader, and this can be connected to Radarr and Sonarr to download media automatically. Jackett allows you to download media from basically any tracker, public or private, so you need to point Radarr and Sonarr to it.
We need books as well - Calibre is an ebook manager, and this web front-end for it can help you organise ebooks, as well as send it to your Kindle directly.
Some degree of privacy - Transmission is set up to always use a proxy to download files
A front-end interface - There’s a bundled web server that just outputs a single html file with all links to the servers. Easily customisable.

A pseudo network diagram:

Network diagram

Can you explain the .env file options

This is an example:

URL=some.weird.domain.xyz
OPENVPN_PROVIDER=NORDVPN
OPENVPN_CONFIG=some.nord.vpn.location.thing.com
OPENVPN_USERNAME=username
OPENVPN_PASSWORD=password
TIMEZONE=Asia/Choibalsan
SERIES_DIR=/home/popcorn/data/series
MOVIES_DIR=/home/popcorn/data/movies
DOWNLOADS_DIR=/home/popcorn/downloads
BOOKS_DIR=/home/popcorn/calibre
CONFIG_DIR=./config
HTTP_PORT=80

Common problems and how to fix them

Plex can’t be set up - read the thing above.
My VPN login doesn’t work - It needs to use the OpenVPN standard username/password combos etc. Try getting a .ovpn file and match the settings variables.

Improvement Ideas

Have the configs done automatically.

Disclaimer

This is merely a mash-up of a bunch of freely-available software, all available on GitHub.