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Calibre - Cross Platform Open Source eBook Suite

A cross-platform free and open-source suite of e-book software

Henry

• 4 min read
Calibre - Cross Platform Open Source eBook Suite

1. Background

Calibre is a cross-platform free and open-source suite of e-book software. Calibre supports organizing existing e-books into virtual libraries, displaying, editing, creating and converting e-books, as well as syncing e-books with a variety of e-readers. Editing books is supported for EPUB and AZW3 formats.
In this article, I will introduce the deployment of Calibre and CalibreWeb via Docker.

  • Calibre will serve as backend ebook management, including import books
  • CalibreWeb will serve as web UI, to read or download ebooks

2. Calibre

  • Prerequisites
apt -y update
apt -y install curl nginx python3-certbot-nginx
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sh get-docker.sh
  • Calibre compose file
cd /your/path
mkdir calibre && cd calibre
nano docker-compose.yml

version: "3.8"
services:
  calibre:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre:latest
    container_name: calibre
    security_opt:
      - seccomp:unconfined #optional
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - PASSWORD=your_calibre_password #optional
      - CLI_ARGS= #optional
    volumes:
      - ./data:/config
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:40001:8080
#      - 8181:8181
#      - 8081:8081
    restart: unless-stopped
  • Bring up the container
docker compose up -d

Note: The ebooks library is now located in /your/path/calibre/data/Calibre Library/ on your server.

3. CalibreWeb

cd /your/path
mkdir calibreweb && cd calibreweb
nano docker-compose.yml

version: "3.8"
services:
  calibre-web:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre-web:latest
    container_name: calibre-web
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - DOCKER_MODS=linuxserver/mods:universal-calibre #optional
      - OAUTHLIB_RELAX_TOKEN_SCOPE=1 #optional
    volumes:
      - ./data:/config
      - /your/path/calibre/data/Calibre Library:/books
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:40002:8083
    restart: unless-stopped

Note: Make sure that you match the volume /your/path/calibre/data/Calibre Library:/books to the previous path.

  • Bring up the container
docker compose up -d

Now Calibre service is on localhost:40001, and CalibreWeb service is on localhost:40002

4. Nginx Setup

Since we have both Calibre (to upload ebooks) and CalibreWeb (to view them) and need to access them via web, Nginx SNI is needed.

  • Edit nginx.conf
nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Add a block at the bottom

stream {
        map $ssl_preread_server_name $example_sni {
                calibre.example.com calibre;
                calibreweb.example.com calibreweb;
        }
        upstream calibre {
                server 127.0.0.1:40003;
        }
        upstream calibreweb {
                server 127.0.0.1:40004;
        }
        server {
                listen 443      reuseport;
                listen [::]:443 reuseport;
                proxy_pass      $henry_xray;
                ssl_preread     on;
        }
}
  • Create port 80 https redirect
nano /etc/nging/conf.d/httpsredirect.conf

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name calibre.example.com;
        if ($host = calibre.example.com) {
                return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
        }
        server_name calibreweb.example.com;
        if ($host = calibreweb.example.com) {
                return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
        }
}
  • Issue SSL cert for both calibre.example.com and calibreweb.example.com
certbot --nginx
  • Create calibre.conf
server {
  listen 127.0.0.1:40003 ssl http2;

  ssl_certificate       /your/cert/path/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key   /your/cert/path/privkey.pem;
  ssl_session_timeout 1d;
  ssl_session_cache shared:MozSSL:10m;
  ssl_session_tickets off;

  ssl_protocols         TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
  ssl_ciphers           ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384;
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off;

  server_name           calibre.example.com;

  client_max_body_size 2G;

  location / {
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:40001;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  }
}
  • Create calibreweb.conf
server {
  listen 127.0.0.1:40004 ssl http2;

  ssl_certificate       /your/cert/path/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key   /your/cert/path/privkey.pem;
  ssl_session_timeout 1d;
  ssl_session_cache shared:MozSSL:10m;
  ssl_session_tickets off;

  ssl_protocols         TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
  ssl_ciphers           ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384;
  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off;

  server_name           calibreweb.example.com;

  client_max_body_size 2G;

  location / {
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:40002;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  }
}
  • Restart Nginx
nginx -t
systemctl restart nginx

5. Post Configuration

  • Now you can visit calibre.example.com to upload ebooks. Remember to upload them to the correct directory, which in the web is /config/Calibre Library/.
  • Also, go to calibreweb.example.com and set the Calibre Database Directory to /books
    Note: Please pay attention to copyright, and support genuine.
calibre 1
calibre2
calibre3

Copyright statement: Unless otherwise stated, all articles on this blog adopt the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license agreement. For non-commercial reprints and citations, please indicate the author: Henry, and original article URL. For commercial reprints, please contact the author for authorization.