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Calibre web

Calibre web is a web application with a good interface that allows you to browse/read books using the existing calibre database.

How to

  • If you have Portainer running then just build a new stack and copy-paste the docker file attached below.

  • To see how to run portainer, read this(https://wiki.mzfr.me/self_hosting/portainer/)

  • If you don't want to use portainer, save the docker content in a file called docker-compose.yml

  • Run docker-compose up -d --build
  • Make sure the docker containers started with: docker ps -a
  • Use sudo prefix to the commands if needed
version: "3.1"
services:
  calibre-web:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:latest
    container_name: calibre-web
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Asia/kolkata
    volumes:
      - /home/mzfr/calibre/data:/config #change paths accordingly
      - /home/mzfr/calibre/library:/books #change paths accordingly
    ports:
      - 8083:8083
    restart: unless-stopped

Some Common issues

  • It's possible that when you try to access the application on port 8083 it gives the error DB location is not valid, please enter correct path

    • SOLUTION -> https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-calibre-web/issues/30#issuecomment-619478067

  • By default the web reader and the upload option aren't enabled

    • How to upload books - https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web/issues/463#issuecomment-723523859
    • How to enable web reader - https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web/issues/1231#issuecomment-592141528

  • It's also possible that uploading might not work, and in logs, it gives permission denied for the directories you mentioned in the docker-compose file.

    • In this case, make sure that the paths given have the right permissions i.e both the <YOUR_PATH>/calibre/data and <YOUR_PATH>/calibre/library directories have the permissions of the user with ID 1000
    • Ex: I'm running docker-compose with PUID and PGID 1000, which is for a user named mzfr. Now both my directories /home/mzfr/calibre/data and /home/mzfr/calibre/library should have mzfr:mzfr in the permissions.

Personal Opinion

I tried to host this just for fun and I didn't like it or it's not something that I want to keep hosted for myself. Things that I didn't like:

  • Web reader isn't that good.
  • If you want to do the conversion, etc you need to have calibre installed
    • I understand that this is obvious, but I expected it to have at least a basic small tool just for conversion.

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