Subscribe

Docker Day #5: Calibre

Today's Docker Day shows you how to install and setup Calibre - your very own all-in-one solution for e-book management.

Docker Day #5: Calibre
Photo by ByteLanguage.net

 Welcome back to our series on self-hosted applications. Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Calibre, an open-source e-book management software that provides you with a complete solution for managing and organizing your digital library. Whether you have a small collection of e-books or a massive library of thousands of books, Calibre has everything you need to keep your collection organized, accessible, and up-to-date.

What is Calibre?

 Calibre is an all-in-one e-book management software that enables you to manage, organize, and store your digital library. It provides a wide range of features for managing your e-books, including conversion, library management, and reading capabilities. Calibre supports all popular e-book formats and provides a clean, user-friendly interface that makes it easy to organize your collection and find the books you need, when you need them.

Some of the key features of Calibre include:

  • Library Management: Calibre provides a complete solution for managing your e-book library. It allows you to add, edit, and delete books from your library, as well as categorize them by author, title, series, and other metadata.
  • E-book Conversion: Calibre supports a wide range of e-book formats, including EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and many others. It also provides a built-in conversion engine that enables you to convert e-books between different formats with just a few clicks.
  • Reading Capabilities: Calibre includes a built-in e-book reader that enables you to read your books directly from the software. It supports all popular e-book formats and provides a clean, user-friendly interface that makes reading your e-books a breeze.
  • Customization: Calibre provides a wide range of customization options that enable you to tailor the software to your needs. You can choose from a variety of themes, fonts, and styles, as well as add your own custom styles.
  • Remote Access: Calibre allows you to access your e-book library from any device, anywhere in the world. With its built-in web server, you can access your library from a web browser on any device that has internet access.

Overall, Calibre is an excellent solution for managing and organizing your e-book library. Its powerful features, easy-to-use interface, and robust customization options make it a popular choice among e-book enthusiasts and anyone who wants to keep their digital library organized and accessible.

How to install Calibre

^   back to top   ^

There are two ways to install Calibre on your Synology NAS. The first and easy method is to use Portainer (see Docker Day #1 for how you install Portainer) and the second and advanced way is to use the terminal. As usual, I do not recommend using the terminal for beginners.

Using Portainer and docker compose

^   back to top   ^

  • Create a folder for Calibre named "calibre" within our Docker folder environment. This is where all Calibre files will be stored. This includes all your books and other documents.
  • Now, navigate to your Portainer app and in your environment (e.g. "local"), click on "Stacks" and then "Add stack".
  • In the Stack window, give the Stack a name (e.g. "calibre") and copy & paste the Docker compose file from below into the web editor window.
  • Make sure to change the path in the volumes section to the "calibre" folder that you've created in the first step. Moreover, substitute the YOUR-PUID and YOUR-PGID in the environment with your own (see my other post on how you can find out your PUID and PGID) and your time zone TZ, if need be. You can also change the ports mapping in case they are already in use or if you prefer others. Finally, click on "Deploy stack".
  • Open a web browser and navigate to your new landing page under http://your-nas-ip:7080 or https://your-nas-ip:7081 (Note the ports defined in the docker compose file for this example).
version: "3.3"
services:
  calibre:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre
    container_name: calibre
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: bridge
    ports:
      - 7080:8080
      - 7081:8081
    environment:
      - PUID=YOUR-PUID
      - PGID=YOUR-PGID
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin
    volumes:
      - /your/local/calibre-folder:/config

Using the terminal

^   back to top   ^

Step 1: Install Docker on your Synology NAS

 Before you can install Calibre, you'll need to have Docker installed on your Synology NAS. If you don't already have Docker installed, you can follow these steps:

  1. Open the Package Center on your Synology NAS.
  2. In the search field, enter "Docker" and press Enter.
  3. Click on the "Docker" package in the search results and then click the "Install" button.
  4. Follow the prompts to complete the installation.
Step 2: Pull the Calibre Docker image

 Now that Docker is installed, you can pull the Calibre Docker image from the Docker Hub registry. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open the terminal on your Synology NAS. You can do this by going to Main Menu > Terminal.
  2. Type the following command and press Enter: docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre
  3. Wait for the image to be downloaded. This may take a few minutes.
Step 3: Create a folder for the Calibre assets

 Next, you'll need to create a folder on your Synology NAS to store the Calibre assets.

  1. Open the File Station on your Synology NAS.
  2. Create a new folder in the location of your choice, and name it "Calibre".
Step 4: Run the Calibre Docker container

 Now that you have the Calibre Docker image and a folder for the data, you're ready to run the Calibre Docker container. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open the terminal on your Synology NAS.
  2. Type the following command and press Enter:
docker run -d --name=calibre \
	-p 7080:8080 \
	-p 7081:8081 \
	-e PUID=YOUR-PUID \
	-e PGID=YOUR-PGID \
	-e TZ=Europe/Berlin \
	-v /your/local/calibre-folder:/config \
	--restart always \
	lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre
The Docker command to run in the terminal

Replace "/your/local/calibre-folder" with the paths to the "Calibre" folder.

 This command will start the Calibre Docker container in detached mode, which means it will run in the background. It will also map ports 8080 to 7081 and 8081 to 7081 on the host to the same ports on the container, and mount the "calibre" to the container.

Step 5: Access the Calibre landing page

 Now that the Calibre Docker container is running, you can access the landing page. You simply need to open a web browser and navigate to http://your-nas-ip:7080 or https://your-nas-ip:7081.

That's it, you are done!

^   back to top   ^

 Now you have your very own e-book management platform. Next week, we gonna look at better e-reader interfaces than Calibre since it has a quite outdated interface. Nonetheless, many of the good-looking options out there rely on Calibre to the management for them in the background.

I hope this helped! Let me know if you have any other questions.