Calibre-server reverse proxy issues

[dom134]

Hello there

I am running owncloud on my Ubuntu server and I also want to run calibre. I only want to port-forward 443 (https) and so am trying to reverse proxy into calibre through 443. I have calibre-server running as a daemon on systemd. At the moment I can access calibre quite happily within my LAN when I use 192.168.1.37:8080; however when I go externally I can only access the calibre front page (albeit without css) and I get a 404 not found from cherrypi when I navigate around the pages.

My /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf file is:

<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName www.dom134.com
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; preload"
</IfModule>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerAlias dom134.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile <location>
SSLCertificateKeyFile <location>
SSLCACertificateFile <location>
SetEnv force-proxy-request-1.0 1
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
ProxyPass /calibre/ http://192.168.1.37:8080/
ProxyPassReverse /calibre/ http://192.168.1.37:8080/
ProxyPreserveHost On
</VirtualHost>

My /lib/systemd/system/calibre.service is:

[Unit]
Description=Calibre Service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/calibre-server.pid
ExecStart=/usr/bin/calibre-server \
--daemonize \
--max-cover=600x800 \
--max-opds-items=30 \
--max-opds-ungrouped-items=100 \
--url-prefix /calibre \
--username=dom134_reading \
--password=Password1 \
--port=8080 \
--pidfile=/var/run/calibre-server.pid \
--with-library=/Calibre/

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[eschwartz]

As per https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/server.html

If you are using ProxyPass, you should set up a dedicated VirtualHost and NOT tell calibre to use an --url-prefix
Or use an --url-prefix and RewriteRule, to serve calibre in a subdirectory of the hosted website.

You seem to be mixing the two together.

[eschwartz]

Also, for your systemd unit you can skip --pidfile and --daemonize, and use Type=simple

[dom134]

Thank you eschwartz,

I have amended my calibre.service file, but I think I am being an ignoramus when it comes to the virtualhost bit. I have created an additional virtualhost as follows, but still to no avail.

<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName www.dom134.com/calibre
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; $
</IfModule>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerAlias dom134.com/calibre
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile /location
SSLCertificateKeyFile /location
SSLCACertificateFile /location
SetEnv force-proxy-request-1.0 1
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
ProxyPass / http://192.168.1.37:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://192.168.1.37:8080/
ProxyPreserveHost On
</VirtualHost>

Would I be better off loading proxy modules rather than using virtualhosts?

[eschwartz]

Again: if you have a dedicated VirtualHost (which you do ) then:

• use ProxyPass (which you are, so good )

but do NOT use:

• http://www.dom134.com/calibre ( )
• do NOT tell calibre-server to use `--url-prefix /calibre` ( )

...

--url-prefix means calibre-server expects all internal urls to appear in http://www.dom134.com/calibre, which is useful in the event that the same server is serving something else in another directory.
Using it means you need to use a RewriteRule to redirect only those subdirectory urls to calibre-server on port 8080.

Since you are using a VirtualHost, you don't need that and can use ProxyPass instead, to forward everything as-is.
You can use an --url-prefix, but it is silly and unnecessary.

An apache ServerName expects to see the servername, not an url. An url is a ServerName followed by an optional directory/filename...

tl;dr Why does your ServerName have a "/calibre" at the end?

[dom134]

So, I have removed the --url-prefix from the calibre-server, but I still do not understand the virtualhost part.

I would like to have https://www.dom134.com/owncloud go to my owncloud (which it does) and then have https://www.dom134.com/calibre be redirected to my calibre-server running on :8080.

Thank you for your patience!

[eschwartz]

VirtualHost and ProxyPass is if you want to use https://calibre.dom134.com
RewriteRule and --url-prefix is if you want to use https://www.dom134.com/calibre

So:

• add back --url-prefix to the calibre-server systemd unit.
• Put your apache conf back to the way it was before you involved calibre.
• Make sure your calibre-server is fully functional at http://localhost:8080/calibre.
• Enable the proxy modules in apache, if they aren't already.
• As per the calibre manual, add the following to your apache conf:
  

  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^/calibre/(.*) http://localhost:8080/calibre/$1 [proxy]
  RewriteRule ^/calibre http://localhost:8080 [proxy]
  SetEnv force-proxy-request-1.0 1
  SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1

[dom134]

Hello eschwartz

You must be pulling your hair out! Thank you, I'm currently getting a 503 Service Unavailable so I will check to see if my proxy modules are enabled. Will let you know how it goes.

[dom134]

Having a few issues getting calibre to work now! I'll get back to you soonest.
Anyway

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/calibre/(.*) http://localhost:8080/calibre/$1 [proxy]
RewriteRule ^/calibre http://localhost:8080 [proxy]
SetEnv force-proxy-request-1.0 1
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1

added to the 443 virtualhost

sudo a2enmod proxy.load
sudo a2enmod proxy.http

proxy modules started

Unfortunately I am unable to access http://localhost:8080/calibre and I still get a 503 when accessing through url.

I will grow some and try and work it out!

Thanks!

[dom134]

eschwartz, thank you for your perseverance and patience with me - it all works!

On my calibre-service I had to change the Type from simple back to forking and then it all works. Just for completeness, my calibre-service is:

[Unit]
Description=Calibre Service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/calibre-server.pid
ExecStart=/usr/bin/calibre-server \
# --daemonize \
--max-cover=600x800 \
--max-opds-items=30 \
--max-opds-ungrouped-items=100 \
--url-prefix /calibre \
--username=dom134_reading \
--password=Password1 \
--port=8080 \
--pidfile=/var/run/calibre-server.pid \
--with-library=/Calibre/

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Next time I will try and RTFM.

Regards dom134

[eschwartz]

Weird. This is my unit file (it is templated with a per-server configuration file) and it works fine:

[eschwartz@arch ~]$ cat ~/.config/systemd/user/calibre-server@.service
[Unit]
Description=Main calibre server
After=network.target

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/%h/.config/calibre/servers/%i.conf
ExecStart=/usr/bin/calibre-server \
    --port="${port}" \
    --with-library "${path}" \
    --restriction "${restriction}" \
    --user "${user}" \
    --pass "${pass}"

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

But the problem did appear to be in the initial calibre server if localhost:8080 didn't work, and making it fork caused it to work???
I cannot think why a forked and daemonized /usr/bin/calibre-server would be any more likely to start than one which represents the main process of the service.

EDIT: Maybe you forgot to remove PIDFile= when you switched to Type=simple and systemd nuked the process out of confusion?

...

Really, it doesn't make a difference whether your daemonize and fork it, or not. It works either way, but Type=simple doesn't make systemctl wait while the server forks before returning. Since systemd natively knows how to track it. Or something.

[dom134]

Still cannot get it to work without using 'forking'

I notice with your:

--user "${user}" \

that you are probably not running calibre as root. At the moment I am and I would like to have a different user so that I can get to the logfiles more easily. At the moment I cannot get PID permissions when running other than root. Any suggestions?

[eschwartz]

--user is one of the arguments to `calibre-server` and refers to the webserver login username/pasword.
Systemd per-user services are better done with `systemctl --user`. Although you can also run the service as root and tell it to invoke the "Exec=" command as a specific "User="

You can use the above systemd service file I posted, with the command

systemctl start --user calibre-server@LibraryName.service

It uses a configuration file at ~/.config/calibre/servers/LibraryName.conf:

port="8080"
path="/home/eschwartz/Calibre Libraries/LibraryName"
restriction="optional Virtual Library restriction"
user="some_username"
pass="some_password"