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Old 11-25-2012, 06:19 AM   #1
paul2463
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Lightbulb Network Shared Library

Hello
Now that a couple of members of my family have e-book devices, I have placed the library on a shared network drive with a copy of Calibre on each computer looking at the shared library on start-up. My question is:-

1. If user 1 found a new book and placed it from his device into the shared library, would user 2 and 3 automatically see that book in the library the next time they start Calibre?

2. Or would user 1 have to tell the other users that a new book was in the library and they would have to import it the next time they start Calibre?

many thanks in advance
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Old 11-25-2012, 09:38 AM   #2
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Originally Posted by paul2463 View Post
Hello
Now that a couple of members of my family have e-book devices, I have placed the library on a shared network drive with a copy of Calibre on each computer looking at the shared library on start-up. My question is:-

1. If user 1 found a new book and placed it from his device into the shared library, would user 2 and 3 automatically see that book in the library the next time they start Calibre?

2. Or would user 1 have to tell the other users that a new book was in the library and they would have to import it the next time they start Calibre?

many thanks in advance
Calibre is Single access.
If you ever have 2 users attached (at the same time) to the same library, bad things can happen.
Consider running the content server on a PC that is always available. The other users can then use a standard browser to get books without risking harm. The PC owner gets to do the work of adding the new books
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Old 11-25-2012, 10:04 AM   #3
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I have all of the four libraries on a shared network drive. But, I make sure that I am only accessing a specific library from one computer at a time. I have Calibre installed on my desktop and laptop and I know what I am doing.
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Old 11-25-2012, 01:12 PM   #4
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thanks guys

I will just keep the library on my own machine, they can use my machine if and when they need to update their device, and I will back up the library to the network drive ( just in case of drive failure)
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Old 11-30-2012, 06:54 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by theducks View Post
Calibre is Single access.
If you ever have 2 users attached (at the same time) to the same library, bad things can happen.
Consider running the content server on a PC that is always available. The other users can then use a standard browser to get books without risking harm. The PC owner gets to do the work of adding the new books
Ducky, my sweet:

Can you tell me--I want to be able to give my assistant, who runs a VM on a linux box, and has Calibre, a copy of our library, so she can update our author clients, etc., on our website. We keep our list of produced books in a Calibre catalog, which currently "lives" on my machine. Should I just copy it over...I don't want to simply give her a catalog; I need her to have my library, which I duplicate by using the "Save to Disk in a Single Directory," which gives me individually-named covers, all nicely-sized, that we then FTP to our webserver. That "Save to Disk in a Single Directory" library is on my dropbox. Can she use that Dropbox folder as her library, for ease of access?

Sorry--I did try all the FAQ's and Library and Catalog threads first, but didn't find what I was seeking. I need her to be able to see the meta, see the cover file names (so she can copy the complete filename.jpg from the properties), etc.

Do you think that will work? She links her Calibre to that dopbox dir? AS a library? I just don't use Calibre enough, for anything other than cataloging, to know how/if to make this work with the least amount of sturm-und-drang. ;-)

Thx,
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Old 11-30-2012, 08:25 PM   #6
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Ducky, my sweet:

Can you tell me--I want to be able to give my assistant, who runs a VM on a linux box, and has Calibre, a copy of our library, so she can update our author clients, etc., on our website. We keep our list of produced books in a Calibre catalog, which currently "lives" on my machine. Should I just copy it over...I don't want to simply give her a catalog; I need her to have my library, which I duplicate by using the "Save to Disk in a Single Directory," which gives me individually-named covers, all nicely-sized, that we then FTP to our webserver. That "Save to Disk in a Single Directory" library is on my dropbox. Can she use that Dropbox folder as her library, for ease of access?

Sorry--I did try all the FAQ's and Library and Catalog threads first, but didn't find what I was seeking. I need her to be able to see the meta, see the cover file names (so she can copy the complete filename.jpg from the properties), etc.

Do you think that will work? She links her Calibre to that dopbox dir? AS a library? I just don't use Calibre enough, for anything other than cataloging, to know how/if to make this work with the least amount of sturm-und-drang. ;-)

Thx,
Hitch
Duck and Dropbox,, the only thing they have in common is they begin with "D" (Duck does not do Cloud storage)


Just give her the ENTIRE Library folder (quit Calibre before you copy)

If the objective is to allow clients to view the Calibre Catalog, Maybe the content server is the trick you need. (the CS does allow downloads, so that may not be what you want).

Other options are the Generate a 'Catalog' (EPUB or MOBI) (you know, the right click on the convert Icon)
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Old 12-01-2012, 02:12 AM   #7
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Duck and Dropbox,, the only thing they have in common is they begin with "D" (Duck does not do Cloud storage)


Just give her the ENTIRE Library folder (quit Calibre before you copy)

If the objective is to allow clients to view the Calibre Catalog, Maybe the content server is the trick you need. (the CS does allow downloads, so that may not be what you want).

Other options are the Generate a 'Catalog' (EPUB or MOBI) (you know, the right click on the convert Icon)
Ducky, bubbeleh:

I don't really want her to only have the catalog, that's the thing. I want her to be able to use Calibre as I do--open the specific ebook so she can copy and paste the metadata for the book into the appropriate field in our admin side on the webserver for our site. Also, I want her to have access to the covers file (single dir), so she can do what I do, particularly when I'm doing a bulk xml import, to my site, not in/out of Calibre, which is copy-and-paste the jpg filenames into an xml field. It's faster, for most of our books, to just open the named jpeg's properties and copy the filename directly and paste it than to retype it, and be sure that you got it right, so it matches what was FTP'd to the book entry. (Does that make sense? Did I explain it clearly?)

So...just copy my library, and send her a copy (however) so she can drop it on her VM and use it as HER library? Then she can just use the jpegs in the single dir which is already on dropbox? Is that what we're saying?

P.S.--how can you NOT use the Cloud? I use it for multiple backups, even though I run RAIDs here. I put backups on Dropbox and backups on the Amazon Cloud servers and I put backups on SkyDrive. Of course, my need not to lose data is pretty intense, but still...I screwed up backing up ONCE, about a decade ago, and I'm not going to make that mistake again. Not with bloody gigs of data. I gotta say, I've never had a problem with Dropbox, and I don't know how I lived without it. For data, it almost makes WAN/LAN redundant! ;-)

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Old 12-01-2012, 03:36 AM   #8
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Calibre still is a single user program. That means that the cloud is of limited use to give shared access. Instead of sharing just the Calibre library, also share the computer that is running calibre.

Dedicate a computer or a VM and give users remote access to it. Only one user at the same time.

If only read access is needed, then the content server may be used instead. Or a local backup copy of the main library. Not a shared copy!

Last edited by Adoby; 12-01-2012 at 03:38 AM.
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Old 12-01-2012, 04:12 AM   #9
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Calibre still is a single user program. That means that the cloud is of limited use to give shared access. Instead of sharing just the Calibre library, also share the computer that is running calibre.

Dedicate a computer or a VM and give users remote access to it. Only one user at the same time.

If only read access is needed, then the content server may be used instead. Or a local backup copy of the main library. Not a shared copy!
Adoby:

No--it was never my intent to have her share the actual library that's on my computer, as a multi-user environment. That's why I've been asking about best methods to achieve what I need. I also save a copy of the library to a single directory, which is on the dropbox. As far as I can tell, that is static--it's an output of a copy of the library, not the actual library. My understanding at this point is to simply copy the existing, entire library and ship her a copy via whatever means--over our WAN/LAN, dropbox, whatever--have her put it wherever on her computer she wants it, and run her own Calibre, simply using my library (copy). I don't see a way around that. The only other thing is the copy in the single directory, (on Dropbox) which I only want her to have access to, for the simple purpose of opening the cover images' properties, for a simple/fast method of copying the entire filenames, to populate the cover file field in our CMS. The name-matching is important, as I take all the covers created in the 'save file to a single directory" option in Calibre so that I end up with those hundreds of covers for that month with individually named jpegs,and then I FTP those covers to our webserver, to be used in the individual book entries. When the book entries are created on our CMS, the individual cover image filename is entered into the "cover" field--so what's typed has to match the filename that was FTP'ed, obviously.

I think, if I understand the toots and the comments here, that should achieve what I want; she has a full-blown copy of Calibre with our library running on her computer, so she can access the book details for each; and she can access the individually-named cover files on the dropbox, which has the "save to a single directory" copy of our library. The only inconvenience is that I have to send her a new copy of the library whenever I update it--correct?

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Old 12-01-2012, 04:35 AM   #10
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Yes. A local copy would work fine. But she will not be able to change or update anything in the library. All changes will be overwritten when her copy is updated.

One way to automate updates could be for you to start calibre from a script. When you shut down calibre the script makes a backup to a network share, using some sync software. When she starts calibre, using another script, a local copy of the library is first updated from the backup copy on the network, also using some sync utility.
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Old 12-01-2012, 05:18 AM   #11
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Another way to handle the problem using a script is to use the environment variables CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH and CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY. Put the library on dropbox or what-have-you. Have the script that your assistant uses to start calibre copy the metadata.db file from the library to some tmp file. Put the name of that tmp file into the CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH variable. Set up a calibre configuration folder somewhere and point at it with CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY.

The reason for CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY: to prevent opening the library if calibre is started without using the script. The default config would point at an empty library somewhere.

The reason for CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH: calibre opens the database read/write. If it opens the "real" db then the transport you are using (dropbox etc) will attempt to copy the db back to the cloud, probably creating conflicts. Opening a copy of the DB elsewhere prevents that, and also minimizes problems if you make changes while your assistant has calibre open.

Whether or not the library in dropbox (or whatever) is the master is up to you. In your case I might consider making a copy from the master from time to time just to avoid having your assistant accidentally modify or delete books from the library. These operations operate on the file system and thus will be reflected back to the "master" copy.

I use CALIBRE_OVERRIDE_DATABASE_PATH to keep a headless server up to date. A monitor (monit on linux) watches the timestamp of metadata.db in the dropbox library copy. If it changes, then the monitor restarts the calibre server. The server startup script makes a copy of metadata.db in /tmp and uses that to serve books. No collisions. Changes in the library are reflected on the web within minutes of the change.

I use CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY on my library computer to permit me to have different configurations for different libraries (production, development, test, etc).
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Old 12-01-2012, 06:20 AM   #12
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Yes. A local copy would work fine. But she will not be able to change or update anything in the library. All changes will be overwritten when her copy is updated.

One way to automate updates could be for you to start calibre from a script. When you shut down calibre the script makes a backup to a network share, using some sync software. When she starts calibre, using another script, a local copy of the library is first updated from the backup copy on the network, also using some sync utility.
Hi, @adoby, thanks:

The constant updating is not required; I only update the catalog weekly when things are going swimmingly and that's unusual. I usually end up doing updates monthly or even quarterly, so that's fine. At this time, I don't want her able to make changes to the library, yet.

@chaley:

That's some excellent info. At the moment, since I want to control the permissions on the data--just providing it to her for the time being, to be used to simplify her data entry at the website. But I like this idea for a bit down the road, when she has this down, and feels more comfortable with it. Thank you!

Thanks to you both; I think I know what I need to do to make this go as smoothly as possible. (And you too, Ducks).

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Old 12-01-2012, 06:34 AM   #13
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Hi, @adoby, thanks:

The constant updating is not required; I only update the catalog weekly when things are going swimmingly and that's unusual. I usually end up doing updates monthly or even quarterly, so that's fine. At this time, I don't want her able to make changes to the library, yet.

Hitch
I everything (metadata and covers ) is copy and paste-able from the content server page for the book. Use the Show Details link on the titles right (Seems to look similar to the 'details' frame in Calibre main)
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