Calibre (& Calibre web?)
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Calibre is a popular self-hosted ebook manager. Github page.
Now, Calibre is a desktop application, not a web application. But there is also Calibre-web, which is a web front end for the Calibre backend.
Should Calibre and Calibre-web be hosted through a single Cloudron application, or 2 separate applications?
Either way, I think these 2 applications could be very powerful on Cloudron.
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Agreed, would love to see
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A Cloudron app hosting a desktop app? I don’t understand.
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@yusf Calibre itself is quite a lot of things as I understand it. The important part here would be the server component. With Calibre installed locally, then Calibre-web would be the web interface to the server.
I've done some research on open source ebook software out there, and Calibre is the one that always comes up with the most community support. Open to other suggestions!
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@thetomester13 I see. So is it possible to isolate the server component and bundle it with Calibre Web without involving the desktop app?
I’ve tried to look into this before but I’ve always come up short because of confusion around dependency on the desktop app, which I don’t want to involve in my setup.
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@yusf Unfortunately, I believe the installation will include the many different components of Calibre, but you can start only the server component.
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Hi all,
I have packaged this for Cloudron. I could use some more people to test functionality, conversion of books etc. You can clone, build and install from this repo.EDIT: I should mention it is quite a hefty build it may take some time to build the image. I may need to tidy up any installs too but would like to get some feedback from the community first.
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@ultraviolet Wow! If this works and packages both Calibre and Calibre-web then I will be one happy camper! I'm installing it now and will give it a whirl. I'm not a super active user of these services but I do have a bit of a library and use it every so often to download some books to my reader. I'll leave any notes. Thanks for tackling this!
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@ultraviolet unfortunately I didn't get very far yet... I'm not able to login on my fresh install of your Cloudron package. It looks as if you're trying to set up LDAP, however, I'm not able to login with my main Cloudron user and not sure if there's another default login to get past the original Calibre-web login form.
Another question for you: Is the Calibre server port exposed as well as the calibre-web application? For example, I like having access to Calibre-web as a GUI for managing the Calibre library, but I have an e-reader that can plug into Calibre's OPDS catalog in order to download books.
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@thetomester13 LDAP can't be done during install because there is no API or config file. It may need to be thrown in via a SQL import but I will get to that later. you can login with admin and admin123. If you want to configure LDAP I have pushed a new commit to the repo that fixed a few bugs in creating a script to add the LDAP and email envs to a text file in the /app/data dir.
The connection to Calibre desktop app is not something I am sure I can do. The database file (metadata.db) is empty but I am not sure how Calibre can talk to the DB on the backend in Cloudron. If you have any info how it interacts I can have a look.
There is an e-reader build into the web app too.
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On the desktop app side, I cannot find an option to connect its library to a remote server
I don't think it's possible.
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@ultraviolet Ok, I'm starting to find my way here.
Theadmin:admin123credentials worked great! Eventually it'd be cool to tie into Cloudron's LDAP, but I know I'm asking for a lot
Also, it turns out that Calibre-web offers its own OPDS catalog atcalibre.cloudron.com/opds, so I was able to connect my e-reader to that endpoint and download a book, meaning that exposing the real Calibre's endpoint to the www might not be necessary after all!
Very good work, thanks again! I'll be migrating my exiting Calibre library over during the next few days!
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@ultraviolet This is super! I thought I saw a few lines of how to clone, build and install this app. Was it here on this forum, or was it in the README.md at Github? Could you post those again please?
Do you ever get teased about Star Wars or trainspotting or riding a motorbike across Central Asia (if you are the own of the gh repository)?
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@thetomester13 awesome glad it is of use to you I will look at the LDAP integration soon just finishing off a few other packages just now.
@scooke you will need to install the cloudron cli there is stuff in the docs telling you how. Login to your instance using cloudron login then cloudron build then cloudron install. You will docker either installed locally or using the build service app from the store. Also need a repo on docker hub . Failing that you can use my build which I can get the tag for you.
Also how do you know I am not the one in those movies?
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@thetomester13 @ultraviolet So is the conclusion that we don't actually need the calibre server and that calibre-web can be used standalone? @mehdi 's comment led me to believe that it's not possible to connect but I think @thetomester13 is saying this is possible.
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@girish I may not have come across well (I tend to do that
). As far as I know, Calibre-web uses the Calibre application as a database/backend. I thought that Calibre proper was also the only way to get an OPDS catalog available to e-readers, but it turns out that Calibre-web offers this as well. What this means is that Calibre doesn't need to be accessible to the www, but still needs to be part of the package as that is the actual book database behind Calibre-web. Hope that helps!
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Calibre web operates completely standalone. It just uses the calibre database to store and order the books.
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@ultraviolet Do you think you can add a license to https://github.com/euanmcgregor/calibre-web-cloudron as well? Thanks
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@girish all done!
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Oh! Gonna take it for a spin.
