Calibre server in a container

This is a fancy system around calibre-server to allow both authenticated users for content management and an anonymous endpoint for mobile users.

Some "hacks" are needed in order for this:

• Mobile users are detected using the Agent string. See nginx/conf.d/default.conf.
• Two backends: one calibre-server for authenticated users and one for anonymous users.
• The backend for anonymous users is reloaded using superfsmon and supervisord as a process manager.
• The environment variable CALIBRE_LIBRARIES is initialized on container entry by /docker-entrypoint.sh.

A better solution might appear, follow discussion on reddit.

TODO(provisioning):

• Library management
• Automatic certbot certificate renewal

Setup Docker Compose

Be sure to set the following variables, either by placing them in the .env file together with the docker-compose.yml file and be sure to run docker-compose from the same directory, -OR-, by exporting the environment variables into the shell.

build=production
COMPOSE_FILE=docker-compose.yml:production.yml
HOSTNAME=calibre.example.com

For local development, without SSL certificate, use the following environment:

build=development
COMPOSE_FILE=docker-compose.yml:development.yml

Setup Calibre users

Run the interactive manage-users admin service.

# docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f admin.yml \
                 run --rm manage-users

Setup SSL

Obtain a SSL certificate using the certbot admin service. The certificates will be stored in a docker volume mapped to /etc/letsencrypt in the certbot container.

# docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f admin.yml \
                 run --rm --service-ports           \
                 certbot certonly

Add the --dry-run option to certbot to test out the configuration before executing the command live.

Management

Library organization

See Universal Decimal Classification.

File formats

Prefer EPUB over other formats, see EPUB.

Other resources

COPS could potentially be relevant to look at in detail at some point.