Pointing Domain Name to Calibre Server

[centuryx476]

There has to be a step by step guide some where here on the forum that I cannot locate.
I have IIS 8 installed on my Windows 2012 server. I also have calibre installed and running the server to access my books from outside my network.

In addition I have bought my own domain name and hosting myself.

I want to be able that when I type for example www.mydomainname.com/Books it points directly to the calibre server.

I cannot seem to figure this out.
Is there any where I can read on how to do this or a place that can lead me to the right direction.

Thanks

[Adoby]

Make sure that the DNS server you use knows about your domain name. Typically, inside a local network, that means that you need to configure your DHCP server to use your own DNS server, and configure your DNS server with your domain name.

For this to work outside the local network you would have to register your domain name to make it official so any official DNS server can give the IP to your domain. This is the "real" way. The other methods here are ways to make it look like you have done this.

Also, you may need to configure your router to allow outside computers to access the servers inside your network.

Or just add your domain name to the hosts file on the computers you want to know about your domain name. This is much easier, but you need root access to the computers that you want to change the hosts file on. The hosts file is just a local translation list for domain names and IP. For this to work outside the local network you must have a static IP. Otherwise you need to use some dynamic DNS service.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by centuryx476

There has to be a step by step guide some where here on the forum that I cannot locate.
I have IIS 8 installed on my Windows 2012 server. I also have calibre installed and running the server to access my books from outside my network.

In addition I have bought my own domain name and hosting myself.

I want to be able that when I type for example www.mydomainname.com/Books it points directly to the calibre server.

I cannot seem to figure this out.
Is there any where I can read on how to do this or a place that can lead me to the right direction.

Thanks

The "/Books" part has nothing to do with DNS. That is part of your web server config. DNS is involved with (some of) the parts between the // and the first /.

You probably will need to configure a reverse proxy based on the file part. How one does this in IIS is a mystery for me, but google should help. You will also probably need to use calibre's --url-prefix option to tell it that the file part of the url begins with /Books.

Assuming that you have control of "mydomainname", it might be easier to use something like http://library.mydomainname.com/ to avoid the URL rewriting.

Another way to avoid url rewriting, reverse proxies, and new DNS records is to use something like http://www.mydomainname.com:9090/. This allows you to configure the calibre server to listen to that port and avoid IIS completely. Of course, you will need to do all appropriate port forwarding and firewall opening. I prefer to run a reverse proxy even in this case just to isolate the calibre server from the 'net, avoid open ports, and limit the paths the bad guys have into my machine, but you might not care about any of that.

You won't find a step-by-step guide anywhere. The process depends very heavily on too many local configuration details. The best you will get is discussion of particular cases, again found using google.

Finally, listen to @adoby. In the vast majority of cases an external domain name reference to a machine on the same internal network as the referencer will not work. The external reference will give the external IP. An internal reference requires the internal IP. He gives you several ways around this problem.

[Adoby]

"Adoby", not "Adobe".

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Adoby

"Adoby", not "Adobe".

Truly sorry about that.

Bit ironic, isn't it?

[Adoby]

One way that also might be helpful could be to use virtualisation.

I just did some testing on my desktop and I ran two virtual machines on it, using VirtualBox, along with the physical machine. Each with a different IP assigned from my DHCP server. I could have run the calibre gui on the physical computer, and calibre server on one of the VMs. And I could sync changes between the two. On the other VM I could perhaps run calibre to download news, and also sync that with the calibre server on the other VM. I don't actually have a need for this type of setup. I just tested the networking options in VirtualBox and I believe that this would be relatively easy to setup.

I used Ubuntu 13.04 and VirtualBox from the standard repositories. Everything free in other words. Preferably use a computer with plenty of memory, many processor cores and a SSD for the VM images.

[rickhan]

Are you using Server 2012 or 2012SE with Remote Web Access (as I am).
I'm researching the ARR/reverse proxy setup. I hope to figure it out to get it working with this setup.
Getting calibre.exe to run as a service is pretty important, too, so that I don't need to leave an active logon session to just host a Web server.

[centuryx476]

Originally Posted by rickhan

Are you using Server 2012 or 2012SE with Remote Web Access (as I am).
I'm researching the ARR/reverse proxy setup. I hope to figure it out to get it working with this setup.
Getting calibre.exe to run as a service is pretty important, too, so that I don't need to leave an active logon session to just host a Web server.

I am using Win Server 2012 R2.

I am currently trying to figure this out as well.
I have installed ARR/Reverse proxy but cannot figure out how to point my domain name to the content server.

Have you made any progress?

[rickhan]

We Got Served Web site has a good, cheap ebook on setting up the reverse proxy on 2012SE. I would think it would be the same for 2012 R2.
They also have instructions for setting up PhP on 2012.
I think the PhP route using one of the Calibre PhP sites might be the only way to go.

[rickhan]

I got it working on my Win8.1 Pro using IIS8 and PHP. Just local Intranet though. Works on my WP8 and Freda, though I need to use IP address instead of server name.

No progress on my 2012se server/ remote web access and reverse proxy.