Synology Drive not detecting changes in Calibre Library

[pk1966]

In my use case, I am running calibre as a docker container on my Synology DS920+ and access using bicbucstriim.

Synology no longer support many external USB devices, so to copy content to my Kindle I have to download a copy to my PC and transfer it from there.

Because calibre is so easy to sync books to the kindle, I set up a one-way sync from the NAS to my PC using Synology Drive to keep an up-to-date copy of the calibre library on my PC and allows me to fire up calibre on my PC when I want to transfer content to my kindle.

This works until new content is added to calibre on the NAS - Synology Drive doesn't detect the new/changed files. If I ssh to the NAs and use the "touch" command on any new files, Synology Drive immediately detects and syncs those files to my PC.

Any ideas why the changes calibre makes aren't detected?

[JSWolf]

The roblem is thatr Calibre and NAS do not work well together. Time to dump the NAS.

[pk1966]

That's not a great answer. I won't be dumping the NAS but don't want to dump calibre either.

I run multiple other apps in containers in the NAS and they don't exhibit the same problems, so there must be something unusual in the way calibre works.

[Wiggo]

Maybe using rsync instead of Synology Drive?

I do it the other way round and sync the DB from the PC to Synology.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The roblem is thatr Calibre and NAS do not work well together. Time to dump the NAS.

Jon
He is running Calibre (content Server?) ON the NAS, not as a networked/shared drive that is the fragile issue the FAQ warns about.

The question for the OP: How did you add books? The content server knows about the Add if it is done that way. You need to restart if you copy another LIBRARY to the NAS (and Calibre MUST NOT BE RUNNING at that procedure)

[pk1966]

What I read was that running multiple instances of calibre accessing the same library directly is not good (which is why I don't so that and am trying to use a one-way sync back to the PC), but I also read posts that said running calibre across a network share (say from a PC client to a NAS share) was also prone to difficulties. Is this not true?

Either way, I don't leave my PC running 24x7 whereas the NAS is running all the time. I only fire up my PC when I need it and wanted to just fire up a PC version of calibre using a replica copy of the library to enable quick syncing of books to my kindle.

Books are added either automatically via Readarr (which uses the calibre API) or manually by storing the book in a downloads share on the NAS and adding a book through the Calibre GUI using Remote Desktop. The version of the DB on the NAS is always the master and never updated by anything else.

Web access works fine via both Calibre Content Server and Bicbucstrrim running on the NAS. New books appear immediately in the content server/Bicbucstriim.

The NAS is basically a Linux server (with some "Synology-isms") so don't understand why standard functions don't appear to work.

Your suggestion of rsync made me think and, as a quick test, did a local rsync of the calibre library from one NAS folder to another and it does immediately pick up new content - suggesting the way Synology Drive and rsync spot changes is different. I may raise a ticket with Synology to see what they say.

[Wiggo]

May I ask which docker container you are using - I would like to try it too - and why you are running Calibre content server and bicbuc? What can bicbuc the content server can’t?

[pk1966]

Originally Posted by Wiggo

May I ask which docker container you are using - I would like to try it too - and why you are running Calibre content server and bicbuc? What can bicbuc the content server can’t?

I'm using LinuxServer's docker image (latest version)
https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/calibre


The reasons I use Bicbucstriim were 2-fold - it's a very simple interface with the option to give a nice view of all books in a series, and the other was that I went through a period where the container wouldn't successfully restart the content server until I logged on to the GUI through RDP. This has now been resolved, but habits stick

[Wiggo]

Thank you.

I had their calibre-web running on my Synology for some years, but now I’m using Calibre Sync for iOS.
How does Calibre run on Docker, is it very laggy? I have a DS918+

[pk1966]

Originally Posted by Wiggo

How does Calibre run on Docker, is it very laggy? I have a DS918+

It's OK - I tend to use the native Windows Remote Desktop app to access it, even though the docker image includes Avocado as a browser-based RDP.

I don't use it for reading though - only for Library management, but everything works quickly enough to be perfectly usable.

I originally had no cache installed, and it was VERY laggy then, but that applied to most apps that I ran on the NAS - adding 2x500GB M2 SSDs as a Read/Write cache transformed the performance for me.

[Wiggo]

Thx, I will give it a try.

[pk1966]

My workaround for this seems to be working (although it is less than ideal).

I have a scheduled job that runs every hour to rsync my calibre library to a copy on the NAS. I then use Synology Drive to sync this copy to my PC so I can use the PC version of Calibre on a fairly recent snapshot of the library to sync to my Kindle. I found several examples of where people have reported Synology Drive doesn't properly detect creation/modification of files but with no clear solution (other than using alternative tools), so it sounds like I need to get rsync working from NAS to PC - there's my next challenge

[Wiggo]

Or you take FreeFileSync on your PC just before starting Calibre there. It is fast and reliable
I use it vice versa to ensure the backup folder on my NAS is synced correctly, because Synology Drive isn’t reliable.

[Hobbygirl]

Would I be able to host my books on my Synology NAS and run Calibre on my computer? Is that an option yet? Right now, I have my books on an external hard drive, but I would like to move them to the NAS which has more storage. Thanks.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Hobbygirl

Would I be able to host my books on my Synology NAS and run Calibre on my computer? Is that an option yet? Right now, I have my books on an external hard drive, but I would like to move them to the NAS which has more storage. Thanks.

No! and I don't think that will ever be supported.
A true Client-Server app is a tricky beast. Calibre does a sleight of hand for performance. It uses the filesystem to store the book rather than a BLOB in the DB. The DB stays way smaller (and faster). The issue is with any networked filesystem is it is difficult to keep the DB (with file pointers) in lock step with remote storage.