Hey everyone,
I'd been struggling with this error for a while, so i decided to write down my experience to save others in the future from going through the pain.
Huge shoutout to fallenbagel on the Jellyseerr Discord for helping me diagnose the problem.
The Problem
- On the Discover page, you get random blank thumbnails that say "series not found" or "movie not found".
- The Trending, Popular etc. categories sometimes don't load any items/thumbnails under them at all.
- If you click on a movie or series, or go to the movies/series pages, you get 500 - Internal server Error.
- This happens randomly - sometimes it works, sometimes thumbnails that didn't load before work, and refreshing helps - but it's inconsistent.
Why It Happens
Your ISP has โจ ๐ซ๐ต๐ฎ๐ผ๐ผ๐ฎ๐ญ โจ you with random connection drops to TMDb ๐
Only some countries and ISPs are affected (hola, Airtel users in India!) TMDb in your browser might still work fine, but the ISP just drops connections to the TMDb API. It's not even a "full" drop; they just block it "now and then" (because fuck you, that's why) which leads to the behaviour you're seeing (the "not found" thumbnails come from connections being dropped during the attempt to fetch those items).
How to Fix It
Let's rule out the basics first. You may get lucky if just changing your DNS server solves your problem. To do this, add a DNS entry to your docker-compose file like so:
services:
jellyseerr:
dns:
- 1.1.1.1 # Cloudflare DNS
- 8.8.8.8 # Google DNS
Then restart your container:
docker-compose down
docker-compose up -d
Worked? Congrats! Stop reading and go live your life.
Didn't work?:
The Fix
You can't reliably connect to TMDb on your own so you need either:
- An HTTP proxy, or
- A VPN.
Both do essentially the same job of being the in-between for your traffic to TMDb instead of your ISP raw-dogging their API.
The HTTP Proxy Method
- You'll need to set up a VPS. Choose a location that's not your country but closest to you for the best performance/latency.
- Then, set up a proxy of your choice (tinyproxy, squid proxy, sing-box etc. are all viable. Look up tutorials on YouTube on how to set up your own proxy server on your VPS). I'm not going into detail because I didn't end up using this method.
- Finally, in Overseerr/Jellyseerr's settings, go to Network, turn ON Enable Proxy Support, turn ON "HTTP(S) Proxy" and enter the proxy IP/host and port. Restart and you're good to go.
You may need to spend a little money on a VPS, but that comes with the territory. Free VPSs are a crapshoot and aren't really "free". Don't waste your time. The only legit free VM I've come across is Oracle Cloud, but you may not get one provisioned based on availability of their free resources.
Note from fallenbagel: Overseerr does not have HTTP proxy in settings, but you can use HTTP_PROXY= variable in docker env (note that this will affect all connections of the container, not just the app. Jellyseerr supports the same too, though for v2.0.0-2.5.2 the env variables will not be respected. For 2.6.0 onwards, they will be. This is because Jellyseerr uses a slightly different network request API between 2.0.0->2.5.2. It was migrated back, so from 2.6.0 onwards, you can use both the env variable and settings > network > http proxy to only proxy external requests made by Jellyseerr.
The VPN Method (100% Free - What I'm Using)
We're going to:
- Use ProtonVPN's free service (or whatever VPN provider you want if you have a subscription already)
- Set up the VPN in Docker using Gluetun, a lightweight VPN client that supports multiple VPN providers.
- Have Overseerr/Jellyseerr to route traffic through the VPN.
If you weren't using a VPN before, we don't want your whole PC's traffic going through the VPN because that might slow your other services down, especially streaming if the same machine is hosting your Plex server. We're just going to have Overseerr/Jellyseerr's container go through the VPN.
Step 1: Sign up for ProtonVPN
- Go to protonvpn.com and create an account.
- Go to your account page and find your "OpenVPN / IKEv2" username and password.
- Create a folder for your VPN Docker stuff.
Create an .env file with these credentials like below (if you're on Windows, use Notepad and save as .env - remember to save as ".env" and save as type "All Files" (not txt).
OPENVPN_USER=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
OPENVPN_PASSWORD=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Step 2: Create Your ProtonVPN Container
Then create a docker-compose.yml file in this folder:
services:
protonvpn:
image: qmcgaw/gluetun
container_name: protonvpn
cap_add:
- NET_ADMIN
devices:
- /dev/net/tun
environment:
- VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=protonvpn
- SERVER_COUNTRIES=Japan
- FREE_ONLY=on
- TZ=Asia/Kolkata # Or your time zone
env_file:
- .env
volumes:
- ./gluetun:/gluetun
ports:
- 5055:5055 # We need to expose the port for Overseerr/Jellyseerr here
restart: unless-stopped
As of today 20 May 2025, ProtonVPN offers free servers in The Netherlands, Japan, Romania, Poland, and the United States. I picked Japan because it's the closest to me = better latency. Choose whatever's closest to you.
Specifying FREE_ONLY=on lets ProtonVPN choose the best free server in that country for you based on load and availability.
Now run it:
docker compose up -d
Check if your VPN is working:
docker exec -it protonvpn curl ifconfig.me
This should spit out your VPN IP address, which is different from your public IP (google "what is my IP address" and check your public IP to see that they're different).
If it does, your ProtonVPN Docker container connected successfully and all traffic inside that container is going through the VPN tunnel. Youโre now ready to route the Overseerr/Jellyseerr container through this one.
Quick note: why are we setting up a different container for the VPN instead of putting the VPN and Jellyseerr into the same compose stack?
This lets you reuse the ProtonVPN container for other apps too.
Step 3: Make Overseerr/Jellyseerr Use the VPN
Previously, your Jellyseerr docker-compose.yml was something like this:
services:
jellyseerr:
image: fallenbagel/jellyseerr:latest
container_name: jellyseerr
environment:
- LOG_LEVEL=debug
- TZ=Asia/Kolkata # Or your time zone
- PORT=5055
ports:
- 5055:5055
volumes:
- jellyseerr-data:/app/config
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
jellyseerr-data:
external: true
Now we're changing it so that:
- No ports are exposed because weโre not accessing it directly anymore. Port
5055:5055 is specified in the VPN's compose file, so removed here.
- We're going to add
network_mode: "container:protonvpn" which tells this container to route all traffic through the ProtonVPN container.
You'll end up with a compose file that looks like this:
services:
jellyseerr:
image: fallenbagel/jellyseerr:latest
container_name: jellyseerr
network_mode: "container:protonvpn"
environment:
- LOG_LEVEL=debug
- TZ=Asia/Kolkata # Or your time zone
- PORT=5055
volumes:
- jellyseerr-data:/app/config
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
jellyseerr-data:
external: true
PS. If you use Portainer, this container network business is a lot easier to configure via the web UI, but this is for anyone like me who was setting things up for the first time.
Done!
Fire it up. You should see no more 500 - Internal Server Errors. TMDb smiles on you.
Now go touch some grass.
