calibre-server no longer installs on Raspberry Pi - Page 2

unleashkids · 08-29-2018, 11:13 PM

Progress, if only 1 data point: pulling calibre and calibre-bin 3.30 from raspbian/testing (as seen at raspbian.raspberrypi.org and archive.raspbian.org) suddenly today works, when installing onto the latest Raspbian Lite on RPi3, as follows:

echo "deb http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ testing main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rpi-testing.list
apt update
apt -y install calibre calibre-bin

I don't have high confidence this will continue to work with Calibre 3.31 later in September (as more than half of all versions since Calibre 3.22 have failed to install from raspbian/testing since May 2018, very sadly) but still let's celebrate today's positive news!

eschwartz · 08-30-2018, 12:30 AM

Uhhh.

I'm going to be a bit out of the box here and recommend you consider using Arch Linux ARM instead. Obviously as a member of the Arch Linux project and maintainer of the calibre package I'm a bit biased, but Arch really is much easier with regard to this sort of dependency kerfuffle. And we provide always-up-to-date packages more or less immediately.

As long as you have someone pay attention to what happens when you update the system, it should be more or less painless. I've found Arch to be extremely stable actually.

From quickly glancing at your Github, it looks like you deploy these rpis using ansible anyway, so it should be fairly simple to test an update then roll the deployment out to all the various installations.

norbusan · 08-30-2018, 04:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I'm going to be a bit out of the box here and recommend you consider using Arch Linux ARM instead. Obviously as a member of the Arch Linux project and maintainer of the calibre package I'm a bit biased, but Arch really is much easier with regard to this sort of dependency kerfuffle. And we provide always-up-to-date packages more or less immediately.

Not wanting to go into a discussion about distributions, but of course, Arch has rolling releases which means that they can ship whatever is latest at the moment. This has advantages, but also disadvantages.

Debian has no rolling releases, thus packages transition into testing and sometimes there is a squeeze between packages in unstable and in testing due to API changes.

It is the user's pick, rolling release and being on the bleeding edge, or stable release management with security updates. I for myself on my development machine I use Debian/unstable = rolling release, but on my server, or a handheld device I would not want to have that - because I don't want to updated every day just to make sure that security bugs are fixed by new versions, and hopefully my applications still run with the new versions.

Makurosu · 10-14-2018, 01:02 PM

I hope I'm not out of line for posting this here, but is anyone having problems with the 3.32 release? I'm running a headless calibre server with apache2 and reverse proxy on Raspbian, and when I upgraded from 3.31 to 3.32, I started getting this when hitting my library:

Quote:

Failed to load books from calibre library, with error:
Failed to communicate with "/calibre/interface-data/books-init?library_id=calibre&sort=timestamp.desc&153953 5741702", with status: [503] Service Unavailable

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> 503 Service Unavailable
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your re

I know 503 is typically some kind of network problem or related to reverse proxy, but I don't want to spend too much time on this if it's a problem with the build.

Thank you.

Makurosu · 10-15-2018, 04:42 PM

More information.

"sudo service calibre-server status" returns this:

Quote:

● calibre-server.service - calibre content server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/calibre-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: signal) since Mon 2018-10-15 16:25:55 EDT; 9s ago
Process: 1437 ExecStart=/usr/bin/calibre-server /var/www/calibre --url-prefix /calibre --port 8080 --userdb /srv/calibre/users.sqlite --enable-auth --auth-mode=basic
Main PID: 1437 (code=killed, signal=ABRT)

Oct 15 16:25:52 teetui systemd[1]: Started calibre content server.
Oct 15 16:25:55 teetui calibre-server[1437]: qt.qpa.plugin: Could not find the Qt platform plugin "headless" in "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/plugins"
Oct 15 16:25:55 teetui calibre-server[1437]: This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Oct 15 16:25:55 teetui calibre-server[1437]: Available platform plugins are: headless (from /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/plugins), eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, xcb.
Oct 15 16:25:55 teetui systemd[1]: calibre-server.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=6/ABRT
Oct 15 16:25:55 teetui systemd[1]: calibre-server.service: Unit entered failed state.
Oct 15 16:25:55 teetui systemd[1]: calibre-server.service: Failed with result 'signal'.

If I turn the Raspbian desktop back on and run the Content Server from the calibre desktop application and reverse proxy that through my apache2 server, it works.

In the following bug report...

https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1627494

...Kovid suggests recompiling the headless plugin. Perhaps that needs to be done for the Raspbian build.

Any suggestions?

kovidgoyal · 10-17-2018, 11:18 PM

the headless plugin is required for the server, as far as I know, there were no changes to it in the last release.

DunnPenny · 10-18-2018, 02:20 PM

Hello...as per my knowledge raspbian has to port the Qt/PyQt packages first, only then will the updated calibre packages work.
If you want touse up-to-date software, avoid debian. I believe Arch Linux ARM has up-to-date calibre packages.

Makurosu · 10-18-2018, 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DunnPenny

Hello...as per my knowledge raspbian has to port the Qt/PyQt packages first, only then will the updated calibre packages work.
If you want touse up-to-date software, avoid debian. I believe Arch Linux ARM has up-to-date calibre packages.

Arch Linux isn't going to work for me. My headless calibre server is part of a larger server that works quite well in its current environment. I would have to rebuild everything from scratch if I were to migrate to Arch Linux.

I should not have upgraded from 3.31 to 3.32. I cannot roll back, because the calibre-bin 3.31 package is no longer in the repository, though oddly calibre 3.31 is. I'll just wait for 3.33 and hope that works. Then, no more blind upgrades.

Makurosu · 10-24-2018, 12:36 PM

3.33 headless still doesn't work, but it gets a little farther than 3.32. When I first start the service, it's active (running), but as soon as I access a library page it's back to this:

Quote:

● calibre-server.service - calibre content server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/calibre-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: signal) since Wed 2018-10-24 12:21:47 EDT; 2min 9s ago
Process: 14712 ExecStart=/usr/bin/calibre-server /var/www/calibre --url-prefix /calibre --port 8080 --userdb /srv/calibre/users.sqlite --enable-auth --auth-mode=basic
Main PID: 14712 (code=killed, signal=ABRT)

Oct 24 12:21:39 teetui systemd[1]: Started calibre content server.
Oct 24 12:21:47 teetui calibre-server[14712]: qt.qpa.plugin: Could not find the Qt platform plugin "headless" in "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/plugins"
Oct 24 12:21:47 teetui calibre-server[14712]: This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Oct 24 12:21:47 teetui calibre-server[14712]: Available platform plugins are: headless (from /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/plugins), eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, xcb.
Oct 24 12:21:47 teetui systemd[1]: calibre-server.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=6/ABRT
Oct 24 12:21:47 teetui systemd[1]: calibre-server.service: Unit entered failed state.
Oct 24 12:21:47 teetui systemd[1]: calibre-server.service: Failed with result 'signal'.

Isn't anyone else suffering from this? I can work around it by turning the desktop back on and leaving the desktop app running with the content server, but I'd much rather have the headless server that I can start and stop from the command line. Is there anything I could be doing wrong?

kovidgoyal · 10-24-2018, 09:39 PM

waiting for calibre upgrades is not going to help, since the problem is not in calibre code, but in the distro package you are using.

Makurosu · 10-24-2018, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

waiting for calibre upgrades is not going to help, since the problem is not in calibre code, but in the distro package you are using.

I see. Re-reading norbusan's post, I understand the dilemma now.

Thanks.

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08-29-2018, 11:13 PM	#16
unleashkids Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2018 Device: none	Progress, if only 1 data point: pulling calibre and calibre-bin 3.30 from raspbian/testing (as seen at raspbian.raspberrypi.org and archive.raspbian.org) suddenly today works, when installing onto the latest Raspbian Lite on RPi3, as follows: echo "deb http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ testing main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rpi-testing.list apt update apt -y install calibre calibre-bin I don't have high confidence this will continue to work with Calibre 3.31 later in September (as more than half of all versions since Calibre 3.22 have failed to install from raspbian/testing since May 2018, very sadly) but still let's celebrate today's positive news!

08-30-2018, 12:30 AM	#17
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,422 Karma: 85397180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	Uhhh. I'm going to be a bit out of the box here and recommend you consider using Arch Linux ARM instead. Obviously as a member of the Arch Linux project and maintainer of the calibre package I'm a bit biased, but Arch really is much easier with regard to this sort of dependency kerfuffle. And we provide always-up-to-date packages more or less immediately. As long as you have someone pay attention to what happens when you update the system, it should be more or less painless. I've found Arch to be extremely stable actually. From quickly glancing at your Github, it looks like you deploy these rpis using ansible anyway, so it should be fairly simple to test an update then roll the deployment out to all the various installations.

10-17-2018, 11:18 PM	#21
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,843 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	the headless plugin is required for the server, as far as I know, there were no changes to it in the last release.

10-18-2018, 02:20 PM	#22
DunnPenny Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2018 Device: none	Hello...as per my knowledge raspbian has to port the Qt/PyQt packages first, only then will the updated calibre packages work. If you want touse up-to-date software, avoid debian. I believe Arch Linux ARM has up-to-date calibre packages.

10-24-2018, 09:39 PM	#25
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,843 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	waiting for calibre upgrades is not going to help, since the problem is not in calibre code, but in the distro package you are using.