Mounting Kindle on PC, Calibre in Docker

[Brynnan]

I've done a lot of searching, but can't find anything that states that I'm not doing something right, but obviously, I'm missing something.

I have calibre running on Docker on my Synology DSM7 NAS. Everything is current versions. It works, I can add books, read, pretty much everything server-related. The first time I installed it, I did it the way I have successfully installed other Dockers and it worked. When I couldn't get it to attach to my Kindle, I cleaned it out, and reinstalled it using Marius' instructions. Still not connecting.

I access calibre via IP/port on Google Chrome, it spins up the KasmVNC, and I can access everything.

When I plug in my Kindle Paperwhite 10 gen into my PC (after buying a data cable), the Kindle does not show up in calibre. It mounts on my PC as a USB drive as it should, so the operating system is recognizing it.

I'm assuming that the VNC inside the browser cannot see my local drives. But I haven't found any special instructions saying I need to do something to make that happen. I also haven't found any indications that it's not possible.

I'm not familiar with KasmVNC and it was a while before I found a workaround for the clipboard, so there may be something I need to do to make this work, or am I mistaken that this should work?

The connection troubleshooter just says No Kindle found.

[theducks]

Your VLC PC is a client. The few times I have used VLC it (optional) extends the Host drives to the Client.

I think you just want to run the Calibre Content server on the docker and run the 'experimental' browser on your device to download a book.

[Quoth]

VNC won't make local devices appear on the remote server. It's essentially terminal.
if you cast your android tablet to TV set, it's like expecting the tablet to see a device connected to the TV USB port.

What theducks writes.

[_kind_le]

Docker desktop for Windows or Mac has a tiny virtual machine with a linux kernel to support containers tasks.

As usual container is running a piece of software which can be accessible (if there is such need) over exposed port so IP/port - is the only way you should use for that access.

Docker wasn't built to provide host's local drives, installed programs or connected peripheral devices to software running on it but rather to be a secure, identical, scalable and complete environment to run “containerized" code which uses host’s kernel (in case of linux host OS - its own kernel, for Windows/MAC VMed kernel), resources like CPU, RAM, FS (file system) and do not depend on host itself, software or hardware configuration.

If you have container which has a virtual screen and VNC server binded to it - sure you can access container’s environment using VNC client and IP/port but nothing more. Any connected device like e-reader or usb memstick to host OS will not magically appear in any container.

For that I would suggest you to use a real “Virtual Machine” approach since it’s relatively easy to forward device being connected to host to a particular VM instance (basically just using device hardware ID obtained form host OS). You can take a look on Virtual Box, QEMU or VMware player (not sure about it but think that feature is pretty standard). Running VM in “headless mode” and using VNC or RDP client will give you the same “container” feeling.

Technically you can use docker features called "volumes" or “bind mounts” and:

i. connect e-reader device;
ii. wait for usb device/folder to appear on host OS;
iii. start container with mapping option to map already local device’ folder/path to some mount point inside a container.

The only problem would be to force Calibre inside container to recognize and treat that mount point as actually a device’ folder.

Also you can open host’ ssh port to container and use something like sshfs for that mount option but anyway problem #3 will persist.

Hope this info will help you somehow.