RPi server with catalogue on FreeNAS?

[ChrisRM]

G'day!

I'm trying to set up a RPi Content Server to manage the pile of books on my FreeNAS server. Currently the family uses Calibre on macOS or Windows but I was hoping to have just a single content server to which all the family devices (Kindle, phones, Ipad, whatever) could get books from.
Having said that and started to install RPi Calibre, I'm now looking for a way to get Calibre to look outside the RPi for its 'new' database. I want it to use the one on the FreeNAS, so as not to duplicate the books and lose the resilience of the NAS, but I can't find a way to get RPi Calibre to use a symlink or to look outside the SD card. Have I missed an obvious post that says either how to do it or destroys my hopes?

thanks,

Chris M

[gbm]

Originally Posted by ChrisRM

G'day!

I'm trying to set up a RPi Content Server to manage the pile of books on my FreeNAS server. Currently the family uses Calibre on macOS or Windows but I was hoping to have just a single content server to which all the family devices (Kindle, phones, Ipad, whatever) could get books from.
Having said that and started to install RPi Calibre, I'm now looking for a way to get Calibre to look outside the RPi for its 'new' database. I want it to use the one on the FreeNAS, so as not to duplicate the books and lose the resilience of the NAS, but I can't find a way to get RPi Calibre to use a symlink or to look outside the SD card. Have I missed an obvious post that says either how to do it or destroys my hopes?

thanks,

Chris M

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq...rked-drive-nas


bernie

[ChrisRM]

Ah, yes, that's quite clear at first sight, and yet...

This is from the middle of that FAQ:
'Consider using the calibre Content server to make your books available on other computers. Run calibre on a single computer and access it via the Content server or a Remote Desktop solution.'

That's pretty much what I wanted to do, with the RPi Content Server managing the distribution and the NAS RAID-Z2 store keeping the books safe. I have no problem securing the drive share such that only the RPi can see it, but I don't see how to tell the RPi to look offboard at the symlink/share/whatever...

The comment re network filesystems seems unlikely to be relevant to FreeNAS (now TrueNAS) as it strives to be faithful to the RFCs rather than implementations. It still seems likea good idea, if only I could get the RPi to look elsewhere. Oh well.

[kovidgoyal]

not sure what you are asking. calibre libraries are just folders and as long as they are mounted on the filesystem read/write they can be used by calibre. And as gbm pointed out, putting your calibre library on a NAS is etremely perilous.

[ChrisRM]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

not sure what you are asking. calibre libraries are just folders and as long as they are mounted on the filesystem read/write they can be used by calibre. And as gbm pointed out, putting your calibre library on a NAS is etremely perilous.

As long as the library share is inaccessible to anything but Calibre, I'm likely to favour a RAID-Z2 setup for a library over a SD card. My problem is that I can't see how to get RPi Calibre to open anything other than the SD card for its library. On the initial setup screen, the file selecter popup is pre-loaded to look only for files of type 'Library' and a symlink pointing elsewhere is not visible. It may simply be that RPi Calibre is limited in this way but I can't see that documented anywhere...

[kovidgoyal]

You can type whatever path you like in the welcome wizard to choose a library and you can further change the library calibre points to after its first run as well.

[ChrisRM]

Apparently not on the RPi 3.39.1 version, which is what I got as the latest thing. It's odd, as the RPi file manager can get to the SMB share and display the files, including all the metadb files but Calibre can't. Taking the pacmanfm file path from the display and pasting it into Calibre 'Choose location for library' popup gets the 'Directory not found' error. Doesn't look like RPi as the manager for the library is a goer. TrueNAS is built on FreeBSD, so that's not going anywhere with Calibre. Mayhap a Windows VM running on the TrueNAS....

Thanks for your help, I'll give this one up.

[gbm]

Originally Posted by ChrisRM

Apparently not on the RPi 3.39.1 version, which is what I got as the latest thing. It's odd, as the RPi file manager can get to the SMB share and display the files, including all the metadb files but Calibre can't. Taking the pacmanfm file path from the display and pasting it into Calibre 'Choose location for library' popup gets the 'Directory not found' error. Doesn't look like RPi as the manager for the library is a goer. TrueNAS is built on FreeBSD, so that's not going anywhere with Calibre. Mayhap a Windows VM running on the TrueNAS....

Thanks for your help, I'll give this one up.

You need to mount the share then calibre should be able to access it--at least that worked with my setup just now.

Take a look at this thread the Calibre-Portable.sh:

Shell script File to start a Calibre configuration on Linux
# giving explicit control of the location of:
# - Calibre Program Files
# - Calibre Library Files
# - Calibre Config Files
# - Calibre Metadata database
# - Calibre Source files
# - Calibre Temp Files
# By setting the paths correctly it can be used to run:
# - A "portable calibre" off a USB stick.
# - A network installation with local metadata database
# (for performance) and books stored on a network share
# - A local installation using customised settings
#

You can find the file in /opt/calibre/resources

YMMV

Good luck
bernie

[ChrisRM]

Originally Posted by gbm

You need to mount the share then calibre should be able to access it--at least that worked with my setup just now.

Take a look at this thread the Calibre-Portable.sh:


You can find the file in /opt/calibre/resources

YMMV

Good luck
bernie

Regrettably, not on RPi 3.39.1, that file does not exist and nor does that path. <sigh>

[gbm]

Originally Posted by ChrisRM

Regrettably, not on RPi 3.39.1, that file does not exist and nor does that path. <sigh>

So what version of calibre are you using? You should be able to do a search for it. That is assuming that the person who built calibre for RPI ARM did just a standard build.

bernie

If you are using calibre on a window pc then you can find Calibre-Portable.sh in:
C:\Program Files\Calibre2\app\resources

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by gbm

So what version of calibre are you using? You should be able to do a search for it. That is assuming that the person who built calibre for RPI ARM did just a standard build.

From the posts, the OP is running calibre 3.39.1 (a rather old version) on a Raspberry Pi (so needs an ARM port of calibre). If he wants an up to date version of calibre, he is likely going to need to install Arch Linux.

[hobnail]

Is it safe to put the calibre libraries on a NAS if it's only accessed from, in my case, my one and only Windows computer? I was thinking that a raid 5 setup with 3 or more drives would be safer than my random once a month backups to a USB drive. And I'm hoping that a NAS will do all of the SMB things that Windows needs.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by hobnail

Is it safe to put the calibre libraries on a NAS if it's only accessed from, in my case, my one and only Windows computer? I was thinking that a raid 5 setup with 3 or more drives would be safer than my random once a month backups to a USB drive. And I'm hoping that a NAS will do all of the SMB things that Windows needs.

It all depends on the implementation on the NAS. For the units that I tested a few years back, none passed the Microsoft File Server Family Test Suite which is designed to test implementations of file server protocol family including MS-SMB2, MS-DFSC, MS-SWN, MS-FSRVP, MS-FSA, MS-FSCC, MS-RSVD and MS-SQOS with any consistency. Admittedly some of those are a bit obscure but something that should be essential such as file locking failed on several of the NAS units I got to test. Admittedly, the final solution we went with was a Nimble all-SSD SAN.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It all depends on the implementation on the NAS. For the units that I tested a few years back, none passed the Microsoft File Server Family Test Suite which is designed to test implementations of file server protocol family including MS-SMB2, MS-DFSC, MS-SWN, MS-FSRVP, MS-FSA, MS-FSCC, MS-RSVD and MS-SQOS with any consistency. Admittedly some of those are a bit obscure but something that should be essential such as file locking failed on several of the NAS units I got to test. Admittedly, the final solution we went with was a Nimble all-SSD SAN.

Did also you run the tests against a Windows Server?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by hobnail

Did also you run the tests against a Windows Server?

Yes. Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016 pre-release.