I’ve been trying out Kavita as an ebook software, and I really like it so far, with one exception. Accounts are all local to the app, and there is no ability handle user accounts through their site, similar to how Plex does it. This means that every time I screw up and have to set up again over the years, my users will have to get new invites and make new accounts. When I mess up Plex and have to reinstall, I can just add new permissions for the users already linked to my account, which makes it easy to transition everyone to a new server with minimal impact to my viewers.
Before I fully commit to Kavita, is there any program out there for ebooks that has accounts managed through a central server rather than my local one?
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I use Calibre-Web and external auth. The auth headers are added by Authelia + Nginx which sit in front of it.
Not exactly turn-key, but since I was already using Authelia, it was simple enough to switch from local accounts to external.
Similarly I use COPS (php calibre front-end)… But with no users or auth. If you can guess the URL you are in! Exciting.
This seems like a much more maintained fork. Though Calibre has a builtin OPDS server these days.
Thanks for the link. Yeah, my server is old. COPS is old, but still works great for me. .
Calibre has built in server, but while running server (last I checked) it locks the db so you can’t do much with the Gui, can’t add books etc. Also I’m already running a a web server with php so it’s more efficient just to slap the COPS web app there rather than run yet another server.
Any good resources you can point me to for that?
I use the version packaged by linuxserver.io:
https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-calibre-web/
Unfortunately, that’s about as good of docs as I’ve been able to find for it.
To configure external auth, go to its web interface at
/admin/config
and then expand “Feature Configuration”There’s a checkbox for “Enable reverse proxy authentication” and below that a field to specify the header name that will contain the email address of the authenticated user. In my case, it’s REMOTE_EMAIL.
That header will vary depending on what you have setup for authentication, but it needs to provide an email address that determines the user.
My version is a little old, but from skimming the current docs, it may support OAUTH now.