New setting, ten by default, zero for no limit. Single-use links are unaffected,
they are one viewer by definition.
The catch is what happens at the ceiling. Jellyfin throws SecurityException once a
user is at MaxActiveSessions, and that was landing in the generic handler, which
marks the record failed and runs cleanup, which deletes the guest account. So
without care, adding a ceiling would mean the eleventh person to open a link kicks
out the ten already watching and destroys the link. Capacity is caught separately
now: the record goes back to the state it was in, nothing is torn down, and the
new arrival gets a 503 page inviting them to try again.
Worth being honest that this caps how many people can start watching at once, not
how many ever get in: each redemption issues its own session token that keeps
working until the link is revoked or expires. Revoke is still the hard stop.
README picks up the multi-use option, the new setting, and a section on what a
multi-use link does and does not protect, plus the known limits around the token
in the query string, the unthrottled redeem endpoint, and the tag being hidden in
the web UI only.
The create popup now has a "Let several people use this link" box next to the
expiry controls. Tick it and the link stays redeemable by everyone you send it to
until it expires; leave it and you get the old behaviour, where the first person
to open it is the only one who gets in. The plugin setting that used to be the
only control is now just what the box starts out as, and its label on the config
page says so, because "Default one-use links" explained nothing.
Multi-use did not actually work before this. Two things in Jellyfin stopped it,
and both had to change:
Guests were given MaxActiveSessions = 1, and AuthenticateNewSessionInternal throws
SecurityException once a user is at that limit. The second viewer's redemption
would fail, the record would go to Failed, and cleanup would then delete the guest
account, kicking the first viewer out too. Multi-use links now get 0, which is how
Jellyfin spells "no limit" in that check.
The device id was generated once and reused for every redemption, and
GetAuthorizationToken logs out every existing session for the same user and device
before issuing a token. So even under a raised session cap, each new viewer would
have revoked the previous one's token. Multi-use links now mint a device id per
redemption.
Both viewers of a multi-use link share one temporary account, so they also share
playback position and watched state on the shared title.
JellyfinGuestUserService looked up IUserManager methods by reflection, trying
eight candidate signatures for ChangePassword alone, and ItemTagService did the
same for UpdateItemAsync. That fails at runtime on any API drift and only logs a
warning, which is exactly how the DbUpdateConcurrencyException hunt started. We
already pin Jellyfin.Controller 10.11, so these are now plain typed calls and any
future drift is a compile error. 427 lines of shim gone, behaviour unchanged
(UpdateItemAsync still gets ItemUpdateType.None, password still set before the
policy update).
Guest accounts also get their own authentication provider now, which refuses every
interactive sign-in. Redemption is unaffected: AuthenticateDirect passes
enforcePassword false and never consults a provider. If the plugin is disabled the
provider id stops resolving and Jellyfin assigns the account to its own
InvalidAuthProvider, which refuses too, so this fails closed. A random password is
still set as a second line of defence.
Findings from a pass over the plugin, smallest first:
Redemptions now run one at a time behind a gate. The status checks and the status
write that follows them were not atomic, so two requests arriving together with
the same one-use token could both mint a guest session. The spent-link check also
moved above the tagging step, so hammering an already-used link no longer re-tags
a whole series on every hit.
The configured maximum expiry is actually respected. Both the API and the picker
did Math.max(configured, 720), so setting the ceiling to anything under 30 days
was silently ignored. The picker now also hides the quick-pick durations that sit
above the ceiling.
The share URL, which carries the raw token, is dropped from the record when the
link is revoked or expires. Records are never deleted, so dead tokens were
accumulating in the store forever. Live links keep it so the dashboard can still
copy them, and the README claim that no token is ever written to disk is corrected
to say what the code actually does.
The HMAC key file is created 0600 instead of inheriting the default mask.
Sharing a series or season now tags the entire tree (series, seasons,
episodes) so the guest can browse and play everything inside it, and
strips it all again at cleanup. Redeeming re-tags the tree, so episodes
added after the link was created show up on the next redemption. The
guest lockdown in the web client now asks the server whether a page's
item is visible to the guest instead of hard-coding the single shared
id, so guests can navigate inside the shared tree but nowhere else.
Libraries and collections are still rejected.
Bumps the version to 1.0.1.0.
The old flow encrypted the guest password on disk next to its own key,
then sent it to the guest in the bootstrap HTML anyway. Now redemption
mints the session with ISessionManager.AuthenticateDirect and the page
only ever carries the session token. The guest account still gets a
random password nobody knows, so blank login stays impossible, but no
password is stored or sent anywhere anymore. Cleanup now defaults to
every 30 minutes instead of daily at 4am so expired guests die fast.
The sign-in bootstrap sent the auth request body as a JS object, so it
was coerced to [object Object] and AuthenticateByName returned 400. Send
JSON.stringify(...) instead.
Guest credentials were written to localStorage as a flat object under
made-up keys. jellyfin-web reads jellyfin_credentials as
{Servers:[{Id,AccessToken,UserId,...}]}, so the guest was treated as
logged out. Write that shape, pulling server Id/name from
System/Info/Public, and redirect with the 10.11 hash route
(#/details?id=...&serverId=...) instead of the legacy #!/ form that
rendered a blank page.
Creating a link now rejects folders and libraries (only movies and
episodes are shareable) so a guest cannot land on an empty tag-filtered
library. Item ids from the menu action are validated as GUIDs client
side, rejected creates are logged server side, malformed redeem tokens
return 404 instead of 500, and the admin table shows the item name and a
copyable link instead of the raw item id.
Includes fix for redemption failing with DbUpdateConcurrencyException:
change the guest password before applying the user policy, since
UpdatePolicyAsync bumps the user's EF concurrency token and a stale
instance then breaks ChangePassword.
Franciskid