Calibre Web Automated

Automated Calibre Web deployment that watches an ingest directory and keeps a self-hosted Calibre library up to date. This setup uses a CephFS-backed calibre-library PVC so other automation jobs (like calibre-web-automated-downloader or OpenBooks) can exchange files through the same shared volume.

Notes

  • Persists both the application config and the Calibre library onto Ceph storage. The config (calibre-web-automated-config ) is RWO, while the shared library volume uses RWX so additional apps can drop downloads into /cwa-book-ingest.
  • Review the source README - substantial configuration is done manually in-app rather than via deployment configuration.

OIDC Integration

Shelfmark OIDC is configured in the app UI.

  1. Create an OIDC client in your IdP with callback URL: https://calibre.${SECRET_DOMAIN}/api/auth/oidc/callback
  2. Open Calibre: Basic Configuration -> Feature Configuration -> Login Type -> OIDC
  3. Set:
    • Discovery URL: https://auth.${SECRET_DOMAIN}/.well-known/openid-configuration
    • Client ID: your OIDC client id
    • Client Secret: your OIDC client secret
    • Scopes: openid email profile
  4. Keep a local admin account available for recovery/fallback login.

Troubleshooting

“Permission denied” when deleting books

Symptom: deleting a book in the web UI fails silently (the book gets an “archive bit” set / hidden instead of removed) and the pod logs show:

ERROR {cps.helper} Deleting book <id> failed: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/calibre-library/.../<file>.epub'

Cause: inside the pod the two s6 services run as different UIDs:

  • the web app (cps.py, which handles the delete button) runs as uid 1000 with no capabilities
  • the cwa-ingest-service (which imports books) runs as root

So freshly-ingested files are created root:1000 with no group-write, and the uid-1000 web process cannot delete them.

Fix (both parts):

  1. Durable: UMASK: "002" is set in the HelmRelease env so the root ingest service creates group-writable files (0664/0775). Combined with the setgid bit that library dirs already carry (group stays 1000), the uid-1000 web app can then manage them. This only affects future imports.

  2. One-time repair of books imported before the fix:

    direnv exec . kubectl exec -n default <cwa-pod> -c app -- \
  chmod -R g+w /calibre-library

Source: kubernetes/apps/default/calibre-web-automated/README.md