Has anyone got camoufox working on calibre Nixos?

[cranetoad]

As the title: has any of you an idea how to get Calibre's camoufox to work on Nixos? Mine complains that there is no browserforge, which is probably some nix store weirdness, but wanted to see if anyone has resolved this already. Is it possible to provide local version of camoufox to Calibre?

[JSWolf]

Why is it some run such obscure odd versions of Linux and then wonder why things break?

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why is it some run such obscure odd versions of Linux and then wonder why things break?

Their problem is not Calibre. Camoufox is something to use to avoid bot-detection for browsers.

[kovidgoyal]

Yes it's to use a local camoufox, the nixos package of calibre has to be modified to build with ./setup.py resources --system-camoufox

[cranetoad]

Thank you kovidgoyal, now I know what todo. Just as an aside, I love all your work, I've been using calibre and kitty for years!

[kovidgoyal]

You are welcome!

[cranetoad]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why is it some run such obscure odd versions of Linux and then wonder why things break?

Nixos isn't exactly obscure, but more in use with developers. My intent was to ask whether someone had already patched Calibre so I wouldn't do the same work someone has already done. Kovidgoyal was kind enough to point me in the right direction, and just in case someone else comes looking, here is what I did:

A system installation of camoufox and injecting browserforge to Calibre PYTHON_PATH does the trick, and is easily achievable by using an overlay. For Camoufox, I used the flake from here and installed system-wide: https://github.com/maximoffua/camoufox-nix. Just pick and choose what you need from there.

Then I created the overlay:

(final: prev: {
      calibre = prev.calibre.overrideAttrs (old:
      {
        buildInputs = old.buildInputs ++ [final.camoufox final.python314Packages.browserforge];

        postPatch =
          (old.postPatch or "")
          + ''
            unwrapped=$(grep -o '/nix/store/[^/"]*camoufox-unwrapped[^/"]*' ${final.camoufox}/bin/camoufox | head -n1)
            test -n "$unwrapped" || { echo "could not find unwrapped camoufox"; exit 1; }

            substituteInPlace setup/resources.py \
              --replace-fail "if not opts.system_camoufox:" "if False:" \
              --replace-fail "parts = opts.system_camoufox.split(os.pathsep)" "parts = '$unwrapped/bin/camoufox:$unwrapped/lib/camoufox'.split(os.pathsep)"
          '';
        preFixup =
          ''
            qtWrapperArgs+=(
              --set-default FONTCONFIG_FILE ${final.camoufox}/bin/fonts.conf
              --prefix PYTHONPATH : ${final.python314Packages.makePythonPath [final.python314Packages.browserforge]}
              --prefix LD_LIBRARY_PATH : ${final.lib.makeLibraryPath [
              final.gtk3
              final.glib
              final.dbus-glib
              final.libGL
              final.libxkbcommon
              final.alsa-lib
              final.libpulseaudio
              final.pciutils
              final.xorg.libX11
              final.xorg.libXtst
              final.xorg.libXrandr
              final.xorg.libXcomposite
              final.xorg.libXdamage
              final.xorg.libXfixes
              final.xorg.libXcursor
              final.xorg.libXi
              final.xorg.libxcb
              final.wayland
            ]}
            )
          ''
          + old.preFixup;
      });
    })

I'm not entirely sure if Calibre needs camoufox and browserforge as buildInputs, but I started by adding them, and never got to testing without, they are harmless if not used.

The hacky grep-based substitution is because I had problems with python whitespace inside nix and my formatter destroying the whitespace, so instead of elegant, you get hacky. It works 😅.

qtWrapper adds the run-time dependencies to calibre. e.g. browserforge and camoufox fonts, and also the libraries that camoufox might need. The libraries probably could be whittled down, if you are inclined to test.

If someone has done something prettier, feel free to share!

[cranetoad]

 --set-default FONTCONFIG_FILE ${final.camoufox}/bin/fonts.conf

is actually unnecessary, and messes up calibre fonts for no gain. I'm not sure whether omitting camoufox fonts from the environment causes problems with fingerprinting resistance, but my eyes are not bleeding anymore, so I take what I can get ��

[buellie]

calibre is adding spyware

[cranetoad]

Originally Posted by buellie

calibre is adding spyware

I'm pretty sure it's not. What do you mean?

[buellie]

why is it adding a start menu item to windows 11?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by buellie

why is it adding a start menu item to windows 11?

Because you did not tell it not to at install time

When you do the install, after agreeing to the License terms, there's an Advanced button, in there you'll see options regarding Start menu, desktop shortcuts etc.

BR

[buellie]

there was no install, i have been using the portable version since version 4.
when the update in the corner shows up i update.
i click on the download and it just runs
when its finished it asks if i want to start calibre.

spyware

[BetterRed]

What do the Start menu shortcuts target?

If its anything like the following you must have installed the regular Windows version at some time.



If nothing like, then tell us what it is.

BR

[DNSB]

For what it may add to the confusion, after calibre installed camoufox, I did get a Start Menu shortcut. See attached image.

OTOH, there was a message from @buellie in a thread started by another person in the Introduce Yourself subforum complaining about notificationserver.dll located in the calibre-dbin/camoufox/158.0.1-beta.41 directory as being malware despite no tools that I used showing any indication of such. Hmmm... Just noticed that message has been either deleted or moved without a redirect.