[CC] Can the Start Wireless Device Connection be Started on a Headless Server?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by tychothecat

I'm not interested in using the GUI to interact with my device - I just want to use an android app (Calibre Sync in my case) to discover the server, navigate and download books.

The wireless device connection protocol contains no ability to navigate in the library. It is "push" only, sending metadata to the device for books already there and sending new books that calibre says to send (GUI, news, reading list, smart eject, etc).

The content server connection provides navigation capability.

I can do this when firing the server up as a GUI instance, after enabling with wireless device connection element (again noting that I don't need to use ANY element of the GUI. No need to push to the device, etc.)

As I said above, the wireless device connection provides no navigation ability (I know because I wrote it), so I don't understand what you are doing. My suspicion is that you are using the content server without realizing it. If calibre sync cannot connect to the content server without also being connected to the wireless driver then you are out of luck.

I know that this question has come up multiple times in the past few years, but is this something that can now be considered, please?

The calibre device subsystem is embedded in calibre's GUI, so no, starting the wireless device driver as a headless service won't happen. You can of course run the calibre GUI on a headless server using xvfb, but I suspect that would be a lot of trouble for almost no benefit.

[tychothecat]

Thanks for the response, Chaley.

I've done a tcpdump on my connection in to my server, and you are very much correct - Calibre Sync is talking to the content server to do the navigation within the android app.

I'd not done any googling on running Calibre headless, your mention of xvfb helps a lot, getting me to threads like

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...t=97841&page=2

It sounds like my use case is fairly niche for the general user population of Calibre, so I'll pursue the xvfb option, as I do very much want to be able to run Calibre headless (I'll be killing the process and firing it up in the GUI if/when I need to do some advanced library management).

As an FYI - the benefit of all of this: I'm running this on a VM on a small home microserver, along with a variety of other headless services. I want to be able to drop and restart this VM without having to worry about logging into a GUI to fire up various apps.

[tychothecat]

OK, after a bit of mucking around I'm giving up on Calibre Sync in favour of Calibre Library, as it a) connects via IP, not zeroconf/bonjour/avahi and as such will be able to be seen from the Internet once I configure my firewall, and b) it works with the calibre-server component (ie: as it doesn't rely on the wireless device connection component I don't have to do anything funky like using xvfb).

As an aside - I couldn't quickly figure out how to fire up Calibre via xvfb and also start the connection server. As such, that is possibly a dead-end anyway.

I haven't tried Calibre Companion, but from the description on the Play Store it appears to also rely on bonjour and as such doesn't appear a good option for headless, nor for general purpose access via the Internet.

Finishing off, if anyone is reading this without having seen the various pages out there for headless Calibre implementations, check out something like

http://alt236.blogspot.com.au/2010/0...t-boot-in.html

...and note that as chaley mentions, you can't daemonize the wireless device connection protocol, so don't attempt to use client apps that don't support hard-coding in the configuration of the Calibre server (IP : port and optionally user/pass)

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by tychothecat

I haven't tried Calibre Companion, but from the description on the Play Store it appears to also rely on bonjour and as such doesn't appear a good option for headless, nor for general purpose access via the Internet.

Calibre Companion does not require bonjour and is one of the more advanced clients for accessing the Calibre Content Server from anywhere on the internet. The big plus that it has over many other OPDS clients is the ability to queue up multiple books for download from the content server.

Chaley is the developer of Calibre Companion and I'm sure he will correct me if I misspoke.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by tychothecat

OK, after a bit of mucking around I'm giving up on Calibre Sync in favour of Calibre Library, as it a) connects via IP, not zeroconf/bonjour/avahi and as such will be able to be seen from the Internet once I configure my firewall, and b) it works with the calibre-server component (ie: as it doesn't rely on the wireless device connection component I don't have to do anything funky like using xvfb).

As an aside - I couldn't quickly figure out how to fire up Calibre via xvfb and also start the connection server. As such, that is possibly a dead-end anyway.

I haven't tried Calibre Companion, but from the description on the Play Store it appears to also rely on bonjour and as such doesn't appear a good option for headless, nor for general purpose access via the Internet.

Some misconceptions here.

First, although Calibre Companion (CC) can use bonjour and other discovery mechanisms, neither CC's wireless device connection nor its content server connection require their use. Both allow specification of an IP address and port.

CC's content server connection setup goes beyond IP/port, supporting connection using arbitrary URLS. A URL is most useful when calibre's content server is behind a reverse proxy, often meaning that there are file path components in addition to the address/port specification. In addition, you can supply a second connection specification that would be used when the content server is on a LAN behind a port-forwarding router that does not support port loopback (the vast majority do not). In this case the content server has two "addresses", one when inside the LAN and one when outside the LAN (on the 'net). I don't think that any other client gives you this level of flexibility.

Second: xvfb is required to run calibre's headless content server. It satisfies a calibre dependency for an output x-server. It is true that the headless server does no input, avoiding a passel of problems, and it is also true that starting the content server from the command line avoids a lot of complexity.

Finally, no matter which client you use, be sure that you handle the case where calibre's database changes underneath the content server. In some cases, especially when a delete-then-add file scheme is used (dropbox appears to do this), the content server does not see changes and therefore does not refresh. I solve this problem on my VPS by copying the database to /tmp (only the database) and using monit to watch the "real" database's timestamp.

Finishing off, if anyone is reading this without having seen the various pages out there for headless Calibre implementations, check out something like

http://alt236.blogspot.com.au/2010/0...t-boot-in.html

There are many threads here on mobileread about how to set up a headless calibre content server on many different architectures. Searching for "headless" gave me four pages of threads.

...and note that as chaley mentions, you can't daemonize the wireless device connection protocol, so don't attempt to use client apps that don't support hard-coding in the configuration of the Calibre server (IP : port and optionally user/pass)

Unless the client uses MDNS (bonjour), which (for example) Stanza does.

Two final notes:

1) DoctorOhh's comment about CC's multiple book download from the content server, such as "download all books in series X" or "download all books by author Y" is very pertinent. I know of no other client that supports this capability.

2) Although one can use CC uniquely with the content server, doing so gives up a lot of useful functionality. For example, the wireless device connection supports:

• Automatic updating of metadata of the books in CC's library. Incredibly useful if you edit metadata frequently or forget what metadata you have changed.
• Visibility and control of CC's library from within calibre.
• Auto-sync of books when coupled with the reading list and/or smart eject plugins.
• Auto-transfer of news.

[tychothecat]

Hi Chaley,

Sounds like I need to drop a few dollars to check out CC as well At the moment I'm fine with the app I'm using - and has high WAF as well, but I haven't gotten to the point of setting up my Internet access to it yet, so we'll see.

WRT xvfb, we may be talking at cross purposes at this point. I'm able to fire up calibre-server as my linux box starts up. I don't use xvfb, and I'm then able to connect to calibre-server via my android app. Now if I wanted to make metadata changes I'd need to shut down calibre-server and fire up the GUI, but I can live with this for the benefit of the server auto-starting without me having to log in when the box fires up.

.

Unless the client uses MDNS (bonjour), which (for example) Stanza does.

This is interesting. So the MDNS option is separate from the wireless device connection protocol. That makes me happier, from a logic point of view.