[haertig]

I know that Calibre does not tolerate it's database being on a remote server, accessed via a network.

Does this apply to ALL of the files that Calibre touches, or just "it's own" files? e.g. metadata.db and metadata_db_prefs_backup.json found at the top level of the book library. There are also all the metadata.opf files in each individual books directory.

It would be nice if we could put all the actual book files - the .epub's, .azw3's, cover.jpg, etc. on a remote server that uses NFS, Samba, or whatever to mount that to our "primary Calibre computer", and leave the metadata* files as the only local ones.

I have been working for years with all of Calibre's library on my primary desktop. Works fine. But when your primary desktop goes wonky (I have some kind of motherboard issue going on at the moment I think) it's a pain to switch your Calibre instance over to a secondary computer. Doable, and I also have solid backups I could restore from, ... but still a pain.

It would sure be handy if we only really have to worry about metadata.db and the json file being local, with the actual book files being a remote mount. Can this be done, safely, or does Calibre really require everything to be local? My particular situation is only one Calibre user at a time (me!), and only using it from one computer at a time. I imagine this is the case for most Calibre installations.