Over the past few years I have kept hearing how great it can be to run a Calibre server for your personal eBooks. Any time I have looked into it, Calibre's documentation has just never made sense to me as far what I actually need to do. Yesterday I stumbled upon a guide from Digital Ocean. And it makes sense what I am working with now, so I am going to give it a try.

Verify System Requirements

All the guide lists for requirements is the following:

A server running Ubuntu 20.04 with a sudo user and a firewall.

Well OK then. I'll start with 1vCPU and 2GB of memory, with a 30GB virtual disk. I will plan to mount the library of books from my fileserver.

Create Virtual Machine

Steps performed on HV-03 via Windows Admin Center

Navigate to Virtual Machines
Click on Add then New
- Name: CALIBRE-01
- Generation: Generation 2 (Recommended)
- Virtual Processors Count: 1
- Startup Memory: 2 GB
- Virtual Switch: Default External Switch
- Storage:
  - New Disk 1 Size (GB): 30
- Click on Create
Select Calibre-01
Click on Settings
- Navigate to Disks
  - Add my Ubuntu 22.04 ISO
  - Click Save disk settings
- Navigate to Boot order
  - DVD
  - Hard Disk
  - Network Adapter
  - Click Save boot order
- Navigate to Security
  - Enable Secure Boot: Yes
  - Template: Microsoft UEFI Certificate Authority
  - Click Save security settings
Power on CALIBRE-01

Install the Operating System

Steps performed on CALIBRE-01

I open the console
- Failed to Power on with Error 'General access denied error'. Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service Account does not have permission to open attachment 'c:\Images\Ubuntu\ubuntu-22.04-live-server-amd64-iso'

Well this is a new one for me. Looking online I came up with very little useful information that I haven't already tried. When I check the permissions on the folder and files themselves I found a whole bunch of permissions assigned to Account Unknown. This seems odd to me since I have not messed around much with permissions on HV-03. Maybe they were originally there when I copied the files to HV-03? To get this fixed I had to add the Domain Admins Group to a number of local groups on HV-03. Specifically:

Remote Management Users
Device Owners
Certificate Services DCOM Access
Access Control Assistance Operators

With the permission issue fixed I re-attach the Ubuntu ISO and it works just fine this time. The system boots without error and loads the Ubuntu 22.04 ISO.

I walk through the Ubuntu installation wizard on CALIBRE-01. While it is working I jump over to DC-02 in Windows Admin Center and create the A record CALIBRE.domain.local

Configure the Operating System

Configure SSH Key

Steps performed on my desktop via Windows Terminal

ssh-keygen -t ed25519
Move-Item -Path c:\Users\david\filename* -Destination c:\Users\david\.ssh -Force
I open Windows Terminal Settings
I open the JSON file and add the following:

            {
                "colorScheme": "Ubuntu-ColorScheme",
                "commandline": "ssh -i \"~/.ssh/example\" [email protected]",
                "experimental.retroTerminalEffect": false,
                "font": 
                {
                    "face": "Cascadia Code"
                },
                "guid": "{0caa0dad-35be-5f56-a8ff-XXXXXXXXXXXX}",
                "hidden": false,
                "name": "CALIBRE-01",
                "tabTitle": "CALIBRE-01"
            },

I verify the GUID is unique and save the JSON file

Configure SSH

Steps performed on CALIBRE-01

mkdir /home/david/.ssh
nano /home/david/.ssh/authorized_keys
- I paste in the public key and save the file
chmod 600 /home/david/.ssh/authorized_keys
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
- PermitRootLogin no
- PubkeyAuthentication yes
- PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes ssh-ed25519
- PasswordAuthentication no
- AuthorizedKeysFile /home/david/.ssh/authorized_keys
I save the file
sudo sshd -t
sudo systemctl restart ssh

Configure Firewall

Steps performed on CALIBRE-01

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status

Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

Install Calibre Server

Step 1 - Downloading and Installing the Calibre Content Server

Steps performed on CALIBRE-01

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y libfontconfig libgl1-mesa-glx
wget https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh
sudo sh linux-installer.sh
- Using python executable: /usr/bin/python3
- You are missing the system library libEGL.so.1. Try installing packages such as libegl1 and libopengl0
sudo apt install libegl1 libopengl0
sudo sh linux-installer.sh
- Downloading calibre-6.13-0-x86_64.txz
- Run "calbire" to start calibre

Step 2 - Creating a Library and Adding Your First Book

This step has you make a library directory and download a book to this directory. This is basically just a test. I want to just skip this and move straight into using my mount to my fileserver. First thing I do is create a copy of my book directory on my fileserver for testing.
Steps performed on DC-02 via Windows Admin Center

Navigate to Active Directory
Navigate to Browse
Navigate to Managed Service ACcounts
Create a basic service account named _service_calibre

Steps performed on Fileserver via Windows Admin Center

I give _service_calibre access to the books directory

Steps performed on CALIBRE-01

sudo apt install cifs-utils
nano /home/david/.calibrecredentials

username=_service_calibre
password=XXXXXXXXXXXX
domain=domain.local

I save the .calibrecredentials file
sudo nano /etc/fstab

//10.10.10.XXX/Data/Files/Books /mnt/calibre-library cifs credentials=/home/david.calibrecredentials,iocharset=utf8 0 0

sudo mount -a
- mount error(13): Permission denied

I corrected my typo but that changed it from dealing with a permission denied error to an Input/Output error. I was able to get the issue resolved with the following:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

//10.10.10.XXX/Data/Files/Books /mnt/calibre-library cifs credentials=/home/david/.calibrecredentials,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8 0 0

So next the guide tells me to add a book to my library with the command:

calibredb add .**.mobi --with-library /mnt/calibre-library
- /mnt/calibre-library/**.mobi not found

Well that's strange. I try with mobi and epub, both of which I have and they both give the same error. I wonder if Calibre doesn't like my folder structure? So I delete all the books and sub-folders. Then I copy in one mobi file to test.

calibredb add **.mobi --with-library /mnt/calibre-library
- apsw.BusyError: BusyError: database is locked

I try running the same command again and get:

PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'mnt/calibre-library/metadata.db'

Well I see it create the database inside the mount point? Hmmm....Seems like I may need to have two separate places? When trying to unmount I am unable to. It's acting like the mount is currently in use. Expect that I haven't started Calibre at this point, so what gives? I comment out the mount in /etc/fstab and reboot.

I'll take a step back and just follow along with the walkthrough until I get a better handle on things.

wget http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46.kindle.noimages -O christmascarol.mobi
mkdir /home/david/calibre
calibredb add .mobi --with-library calibre/

This throws out a bunch of errors about being unable to import and no such file or directory.

I run the command again and it throws out the same errors but this time it says the book already exists in the database. So when adding it does make a copy of the .mobi file and places it in a subfolder of /home/david/calibre. My reading points to Calibre not supporting networking locations. Because they put the database in the same folder as the actual Ebooks. That is a weird way to do it in my opinion but I'm no developer. Ok fine. Considering how small the book files are I can handle all of them living on the Calibre server and just backing up the books with a script back to the fileserver.

Step 3 - Running the Calibre Content Server and Viewing Your Library

Steps performed on CALIBRE-01

sudo ufw allow 8080
calibre-server calibre-library

Failed to import PyQt module: PyQt6.QtGui with error: libxkbcommon.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "runpy.py", line 196, in _run_module_as_main
  File "runpy.py", line 86, in _run_code
  File "site.py", line 47, in <module>
  File "site.py", line 43, in main
  File "calibre/srv/standalone.py", line 227, in main
  File "calibre/srv/standalone.py", line 69, in __init__
  File "calibre/srv/handler.py", line 200, in __init__
  File "importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1050, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1027, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 688, in _load_unlocked
  File "bypy-importer.py", line 279, in exec_module
  File "calibre/srv/ajax.py", line 15, in <module>
  File "bypy-importer.py", line 279, in exec_module
  File "calibre/srv/content.py", line 17, in <module>
  File "bypy-importer.py", line 279, in exec_module
  File "calibre/ebooks/covers.py", line 15, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name 'QBrush' from 'qt.core' (/opt/calibre/lib/calibre-extensions/python-lib.bypy.frozen/qt/core.pyc)

Reading to find a solution to this error. Calibre's own download page points to this link that you have to install additional packages. Maybe? Supposedly there is a list, but I see nothing of the sort, just instructions to install one package. Ok then.

sudo apt install libxcb-xinerama0
sudo sh linux-installer.sh

That still wasn't enough. I find on Calibre's site where it says I need xdg-utils as well.

sudo apt install xdg-utils

My alarm just rang, I'm out of time for today, so I'll have to come back and finish this up tomorrow.