Sharing the same library among multiple users : how to ?

[Sylvain Langlois]

Good morning. Ths question has probably been raised before but I couldn't find any thread in the forums.I have a ebook database of sevreal thousand entries on a NAS at home (Synology DS220+). I have installed Calibre on my PC : the NAS partition is "mounted" on the PC through a wifi access to the NAS. Everything works fine and I use it very often to add new books to the database, maintain it, enhance books with metadata, ... My wife and children would like to use Calibre as well, on the same PC from their own windows accounts. When I tried to launch Calibre from my wife's account, it says that the database did not exist (although she can see all the books with Windows File Explorer.
My question : am I missing a special configuration trick to have multiple access to the same books collection ? They could do it using the web interface (which I haven't tried yet) but they would like to use the standard Calibre application, so that they can add new books themselves.
Hints are welcome. Thanks in advance.
Have a good day.
Sylvain

[Quoth]

It will break.
Calibre needs local files, not remote. It's using SQLight, not an SQL server, and if was running an SQL server you'd connect to that, not files, and there would still be a problem because the actual ebooks are not inside the database, though logically part of it.

One option is to run Calibre on the NAS (if it can) and start the Calibre Content Server.

You can't do what you have tried, and even what is working will break.

A second option is a "main" calibre on your PC with local files and rsync (grsync) to the NAS when Calibre is closed. Then on the other laptop(s), rsync from NAS (regarding it as read-only) to the laptop when Calibre closed. Only add ebooks, edit metadata or ebooks on the main PC. This is very reliable. Use rsync (grsync) to only copy newer files or delete files not on source. The grsync simply is a GUI to generate the rsync arguments.

[JSWolf]

Remote access into your computer to run calibre on the other computers.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Remote access into your computer to run calibre on the other computers.

¡ There is only one PC Jon !

Originally Posted by Sylvain Langlois

. . .

I have a ebook database of sevreal thousand entries on a NAS at home (Synology DS220+). I have installed Calibre on my PC : the NAS partition is "mounted" on the PC through a wifi access to the NAS. Everything works fine and I use it very often to add new books to the database, maintain it, enhance books with metadata, ... My wife and children would like to use Calibre as well, on the same PC from their own windows accounts

. . .

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Sylvain Langlois

. . .

Hints are welcome.

Firstly, make sure you have backups of your library and calibre's configuration folder and you know how to restore them if something breaks.

Hint: see the following Environment variables

CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY - sets the folder where configuration files are stored/read.
CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR - sets the temporary folder used by calibre
CALIBRE_CACHE_DIRECTORY - sets the folder calibre uses to cache persistent data between sessions
CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH - allows you to specify the full path to metadata.db. Using this variable you can have metadata.db be in a location other than the library folder. Useful if your library folder is on a networked drive that does not support file locking.

You would set them as System Environment variables (in Settings search for 'env').

The locations referenced would not be within any User directory, I would use C:\ProgramData\MyCalibre (aka C:\Users\All Users - via a Windows installed junction) so you might have:

CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY=C:\ProgramData\MyCalibre\Configuration
CALIBRE_TEMP_DIR=C:\ProgramData\MyCalibre\Temp
CALIBRE_CACHE_DIRECTORY=C:\ProgramData\MyCalibre\Cache
CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH=C:\ProgramData\MyCalibre\Library\metadata.db

Downsides :
- would only work for one library (database)
- if a change is made to any of calibre's preferences it will apply to everyone.
- I do not know how well it would cope with multiple e-readers registered to different accounts at different suppliers.

BR

[JSWolf]

Make sure the NAS is exactly the same on their accounts as it is on your account. Any calibre/QT environment variables you use, you need to set the same on their accounts.

That should work.