Caliber is great software for managing your eBook collection. Apart from being a desktop application, do you know that you can also install it as a server so that you can store your books in a central location and access them from various devices? Here we show you how to install the Caliber Content Server on a Raspberry Pi.
Note: we used a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running Raspbian 10 (Buster) for this article. However, this method should work with most operating systems compatible with the Raspberry Pi.
To get started, run the command below to install Caliber.
sudo apt install calibre
With that out of the way, go to your apps and open Calibre. If this is your first time running Caliber on your device, you will need to go through an initial setup process where you will need to choose the location of your Caliber library and eBook devices. It's pretty straightforward, so we won't focus too much on that here.
Once the setup process is complete, simply select “Connect/Share” from Calibre's menu.
Once the content server has started, you can now access your content from devices on your home network. To access your content library on your internal/home library, you will need to know the internal IP address of your Raspberry Pi.
You can easily find it by selecting “Connect/Share” again in your menu. You will see the internal address of your Raspberry Pi displayed. Simply type it into the web browser of any device connected to your home network to access your content server. Don't forget to add your port number. The general format for doing this is:
IPAdress:8080
You will need to enter the IP address followed by the port number, which is displayed in the same box as the IP address when you select "Connect/Share".
If you want to access your content server from outside your home network, you need to make sure the port you use with Caliber is forwarded by your router. Additionally, you will need to find the external IP address of your Raspberry Pi. You can easily do this by going to https://whatismyipaddress.com. When you know the external IP address, you can access your content server from anywhere while connected to any network by entering the following:
externalipaddress:8080
By following the method above, you can easily set up a Caliber content server on your Raspberry Pi. Next, you will need to populate your eBook library, which you can do with these Amazon Kindle Unlimited alternatives.
