PHP+Apache web server for calibre ...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by ldolse

Looks like the simpler thing to do would be to figure out why Calbre isn't automatically opening/importing filetypes associated with it and leave things as is with the browser. I'll open a bug on this point.

If/when you want to build an import plugin for a container holding format(s), OPF, and cover, I will be happy to add that to my server.

[DiapDealer]

I wanted to say thanks for sharing this project. I've been wanting to experiment with it and finally got a chance to do so this morning. It's a pretty straightforward setup and it's working great.

For the record... I'm not using Apache at all. I'm using Nginx with PHP running as a FastCGI service (utilizing APC's opcode cache). It's blindingly fast on a very modest server. Thanks again.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

For the record... I'm not using Apache at all. I'm using Nginx with PHP running as a FastCGI service (utilizing APC's opcode cache). It's blindingly fast on a very modest server. Thanks again.

Thanks for the thanks, and even more thanks for confirming that it doesn't require Apache or IIS. I wasn't sure if it needed to run as a web server module, and you have answered that question.

[Gomez]

I installed it today and wanna thank too! Nice work!

I use it on my home server with apache/ssl. My libary is on this server and i share it with smb. Good setup for me, i am happy!

Now i browse on my kindle through my library and choose books for my vacation.

Thanks,
Gomez

[DiapDealer]

I have a problem downloading the books to my Kindle over 3G. I have a Kindle2 with the older browser so I'm wondering if that may have something to do with it? (Yet I have no trouble downloading books directly to my K2 from Calibre's content server over 3G)

Anyway... when using Chrome or Firefox on a Windows Vista PC and on an Ubuntu 10.10 PC, I have no trouble downloading the books. However, when I use the K2's browser, it only seems to download a 16Kb (or thereabouts) fragment that won't open properly. There's no error when downloading... only when trying to open the ebook after downloading.

I may have spoken too soon about my nginx + FastCGI setup. I'm seeing some php errors that are barking about undefined variables and undefined indexes (in files in the smarty_template_c folder). I am using the latest Smarty Templates 3.0.x... has that been tested or do I need to back-rev to an older version?

Everything seems to work fine on the front-end. Just the back-end errors and the Kindle download issue that I can see.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Anyway... when using Chrome or Firefox on a Windows Vista PC and on an Ubuntu 10.10 PC, I have no trouble downloading the books. However, when I use the K2's browser, it only seems to download a 16Kb (or thereabouts) fragment that won't open properly. There's no error when downloading... only when trying to open the ebook after downloading.

If you have sites that work, could you capture the HTTP headers and post them? It could be that I am not supplying all the headers that the K2 wants, or that the headers I am supplying aren't exactly in the format it wants.

It could also be that the K2 wants smaller packets. Today I read, then write, as much as PHP will let me. This could turn into very large logical packets at the TCP level. Perhaps the K2 prefers packets smaller than X, which is also something that I could arrange if I know what X is (16 KB?).

I may have spoken too soon about my nginx + FastCGI setup. I'm seeing some php errors that are barking about undefined variables and undefined indexes (in files in the smarty_template_c folder). I am using the latest Smarty Templates 3.0.x... has that been tested or do I need to back-rev to an older version?

I have tested and used only Smarty V2.6. I have no idea if Smarty V3 works.

If you can back-rev to a 2.X version and see if that fixes things, that would be helpful. If I get some time in the next days, I will upgrade to smarty V3 and see what breaks.

[DiapDealer]

If you have sites that work, could you capture the HTTP headers and post them?

Do you have a good way to capture headers on the Kindle? That's not something I've tried but it would definitely help the debugging process.

Anyway, I think I narrowed my problem down to the embedded session authentication. Once I disabled authentication (in the config_local.php file), I was able to download books to the Kindle just fine. So I just set up authentication in the web server conf and everything is golden.

That may be related to PHP being run as FastCGI vs Module. I was getting weird permission errors in my server logs until I turned off the embedded authentication. Now I'm not getting any errors.

On a side note... sometime in the twenty minutes or so that my website was wide open for testing purposes, google started crawling my library. I couldn't pay that spider to crawl my websites any other time.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Do you have a good way to capture headers on the Kindle? That's not something I've tried but it would definitely help the debugging process.

Absolutely no clue.

Anyway, I think I narrowed my problem down to the embedded session authentication. Once I disabled authentication (in the config_local.php file), I was able to download books to the Kindle just fine. So I just set up authentication in the web server conf and everything is golden.

That may be related to PHP being run as FastCGI vs Module. I was getting weird permission errors in my server logs until I turned off the embedded authentication. Now I'm not getting any errors.

Session management was one thing I was/am concerned about when running under flavors of CGI. That said, it must be working if you can search and sort, so I am confused.

I purposely didn't use HTTP authentication to avoid problems with devices that don't handle it well. As far as the kindle is concerned, login is just another page with some form elements on it.

Does your PHP setup use cookies for session management, or does it use query strings and URL rewriting to pass the session token? If the latter, then there might be a problem with the kindle not passing the query string back when doing a download. This would cause the server to go into a login cycle, certainly preventing the download. I can see this happening if the kindle is being smart, noticing the extension on the URL, and doing something special.

Another thought, and one that is embarrassing. When someone logs in, the utility function dprint is called to log the event. This is the only place that dprint is used for a non-exceptional condition. For historical reasons (my debugging), dprint does a check on PHP_OS, and if it isn't "linux", it writes the log line to C:/php_errors.txt. I can imagine this causing some errors and, even worse, write something to the HTTP stream. The latter would prevent writing the headers needed for downloads to succeed, explaining the problem you see. Try commenting out the body of dprint (utilities.php, at the end) and see if the weird errors and/or the kindle problem go away.

On a side note... sometime in the twenty minutes or so that my website was wide open for testing purposes, google started crawling my library. I couldn't pay that spider to crawl my websites any other time.

The street view van was also just outside...

[auskento]

I have got this up and running, but I can't get the filtering to work quite the way I want.

On the home page, i only want to see Titles, Authors, Series

I am using the following fields_not_to_dispaly

$config['fields_not_to_display'] = array('formats', 'identifiers', 'publisher', 'rating', 'tags');

But when I do, i get the following error

Notice: Undefined index: rating in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372
Notice: Undefined index: rating in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372

And the following shows up in the list

Titles, Authors, Series, Formats (even with formats listed, it gets shunted to the end)

I am also using a search filter to only display a particular type of file format from the library.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by auskento

I have got this up and running, but I can't get the filtering to work quite the way I want.

On the home page, i only want to see Titles, Authors, Series

I am using the following fields_not_to_dispaly

$config['fields_not_to_display'] = array('formats', 'identifiers', 'publisher', 'rating', 'tags');

But when I do, i get the following error

Notice: Undefined index: rating in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372
Notice: Undefined index: rating in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /websites/calibre/db.php on line 372

And the following shows up in the list

Titles, Authors, Series, Formats (even with formats listed, it gets shunted to the end)

I am also using a search filter to only display a particular type of file format from the library.

Ooops.

Ratings and formats use special code outside the main category loop, and I forgot to apply the display check. I will releae a fixed version this weekend.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by chaley

Does your PHP setup use cookies for session management, or does it use query strings and URL rewriting to pass the session token? If the latter, then there might be a problem with the kindle not passing the query string back when doing a download. This would cause the server to go into a login cycle, certainly preventing the download. I can see this happening if the kindle is being smart, noticing the extension on the URL, and doing something special.

My PHP is set up to use cookies.

Originally Posted by chaley

Another thought, and one that is embarrassing. When someone logs in, the utility function dprint is called to log the event. This is the only place that dprint is used for a non-exceptional condition. For historical reasons (my debugging), dprint does a check on PHP_OS, and if it isn't "linux", it writes the log line to C:/php_errors.txt. I can imagine this causing some errors and, even worse, write something to the HTTP stream. The latter would prevent writing the headers needed for downloads to succeed, explaining the problem you see. Try commenting out the body of dprint (utilities.php, at the end) and see if the weird errors and/or the kindle problem go away.

Commenting out the body of the dprint function made no noticeable difference.

However, after tweaking some of the FastCGI parameters for my Nginx server... I seem to have everything working fine, now. Including the internal authentication and file downloads (with the dprint function). Bumping up various fastcgi timeouts, buffers, busy buffers, and adjusting the temp file write size seemed to do the trick.

I'll let you know what else I run into.

[chaley]

Release 0.2.6 is available at http://charles.the-haleys.org/calibre/

Note: if you are using fields_to_display or fields_not_to_display, you must ensure that the values in the list are all lower case.

Change log:

Spoiler:

78 charles <> 2011-07-10 {REL 0.2.6}
Release 0.2.6

77 charles <> 2011-07-10
Update version number

76 charles <> 2011-07-10
Fix user categories not showing their name

75 charles <> 2011-07-10
Fix problem with case matching when specifying the fields to/not to display. Force them to be lowercase.

74 charles <> 2011-07-10
Fix problems arising when either rating or formats is not shown

[eVrajka]

Thanks for you work, it's very important project.
I tried to customize the web interface , but unfortunately I can not find opportunities to do so. I did some sketches, tell me please how I can implement it.

Spoiler:

Thank you.

[Pope Viper]

I'd appreciate some help, if someone who is running this under a IIS 7.5 would be willing to post their config_local.php, I would appreciate it, I seem to be having difficulties getting it figured out.

Thanks!

[chaley]

Originally Posted by eVrajka

Thanks for you work, it's very important project.
I tried to customize the web interface , but unfortunately I can not find opportunities to do so. I did some sketches, tell me please how I can implement it.

You would change the smarty template for the category or categories that you want to appear as a table.

Getting the information for the currently selected book is probably best done using AJAX, but that will be a significant change. AJAX isn't used anywhere in the server. To add it, you will need to add a new module that supplies metadata for specific books, and then write the javascript that uses the module.

Good luck with your development.