4 ms·

Does this still insist on making a copy of all my books on my local hard drive? I have about 10,000+ books on a network share. It would be nice to be able to se

Does this still insist on making a copy of all my books on my local hard drive? I have about 10,000+ books on a network share. It would be nice to be able to search through them and download just the ones I'm interested in, but past versions of Calibre require the book to be downloaded to your local HDD before it pulls any metadata.

virtualritz 7y ago
Just mount the network share where Calibre expects its library and be ok with the way it organizes the books in there. No local copy happening then.
- ratherbefuddled 7y ago
  Calibre 3 advised very strongly in the docs not to put libraries on network shares.
  - konart 7y ago
    Well, I would imagine this being a blocker for many people who have their ssd only big enough to host the OS an apps + some space for 'just in case'.
    - kungtotte 7y ago
      Or people who have let's say an ebook reader, a phone, a laptop, and maybe a desktop that they want to share books between and don't want to eat up multiple GB of storage on each device by duplicating their library everywhere.
      - MagnumOpus 7y ago
        That's what the http content server is for?
- ivanb 7y ago
  This is a bad advice. Calibre (as of version 3) doesn't support this mode of operation. If the network disconnects you will most likely corrupt your library database.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    This is bad advice. Using Calibre while knowing that certain circumstances surrounding a network disconnect might corrupt your library database is better than rejecting Calibre out of hand since it doesn't support network libraries well. Best of all would be in Calibre's library handling weren't so finicky, but in the absence of that, I use Calibre with a remote share and I'm just very careful about library backups, how long I leave it running, and am patient with the slowness.
  - peterloron 7y ago
    How often does your network disconnect? Sure, it would be great if the backend storage system was better at handling atomic operations, but I don't think this is really a huge problem assuming you're not using a really crappy network. I run Calibre with the library mounted from a NAS. Works fine for my ~2000 book collection. Not as speedy as local SSD, but it is ok.
    - nirvdrum 7y ago
      Does that work okay with multiple machines connected at the same time? I've been worried about what happens when there's a write conflict to the DB. I'd really like a way to easily share and manage my eBook library from both my laptop and desktop.
      - xbmcuser 7y ago
        You can now at least manage the library through the web interface because of the new server.
    - xbmcuser 7y ago
      If I recall correctly you can have the actual database file on the ssd while the books on the network share that would probably improve the speed a bit.
_coeus 7y ago
Could you tell calibre to open the network share as a library? Not quite the same, I'm currently using calibre with a library on a remote server (albeit samba share over VPN) and it doesn't download the books to my local device, unless i choose to save them from my library to it.
Hitton 7y ago
I don't think so, but there is inbuilt calibre-server which should suffice for most of your needs and apparently it was improved in last version. There is also calibre-web[0] project. And on Calibre's wikipedia page it lists quite a few Calibre related applications which could do what you want. [0]: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
rexpop 7y ago
I have had plenty of success running Calibre over sshfs.

virtualritz 7y ago

Just mount the network share where Calibre expects its library and be ok with the way it organizes the books in there. No local copy happening then.

ratherbefuddled 7y ago
Calibre 3 advised very strongly in the docs not to put libraries on network shares.
- konart 7y ago
  Well, I would imagine this being a blocker for many people who have their ssd only big enough to host the OS an apps + some space for 'just in case'.
  - kungtotte 7y ago
    Or people who have let's say an ebook reader, a phone, a laptop, and maybe a desktop that they want to share books between and don't want to eat up multiple GB of storage on each device by duplicating their library everywhere.
    - MagnumOpus 7y ago
      That's what the http content server is for?
ivanb 7y ago
This is a bad advice. Calibre (as of version 3) doesn't support this mode of operation. If the network disconnects you will most likely corrupt your library database.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  This is bad advice. Using Calibre while knowing that certain circumstances surrounding a network disconnect might corrupt your library database is better than rejecting Calibre out of hand since it doesn't support network libraries well. Best of all would be in Calibre's library handling weren't so finicky, but in the absence of that, I use Calibre with a remote share and I'm just very careful about library backups, how long I leave it running, and am patient with the slowness.
- peterloron 7y ago
  How often does your network disconnect? Sure, it would be great if the backend storage system was better at handling atomic operations, but I don't think this is really a huge problem assuming you're not using a really crappy network. I run Calibre with the library mounted from a NAS. Works fine for my ~2000 book collection. Not as speedy as local SSD, but it is ok.
  - nirvdrum 7y ago
    Does that work okay with multiple machines connected at the same time? I've been worried about what happens when there's a write conflict to the DB. I'd really like a way to easily share and manage my eBook library from both my laptop and desktop.
    - xbmcuser 7y ago
      You can now at least manage the library through the web interface because of the new server.
  - xbmcuser 7y ago
    If I recall correctly you can have the actual database file on the ssd while the books on the network share that would probably improve the speed a bit.

_coeus 7y ago

Could you tell calibre to open the network share as a library? Not quite the same, I'm currently using calibre with a library on a remote server (albeit samba share over VPN) and it doesn't download the books to my local device, unless i choose to save them from my library to it.

Hitton 7y ago

I don't think so, but there is inbuilt calibre-server which should suffice for most of your needs and apparently it was improved in last version. There is also calibre-web[0] project. And on Calibre's wikipedia page it lists quite a few Calibre related applications which could do what you want. [0]: https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

rexpop 7y ago

I have had plenty of success running Calibre over sshfs.