this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Is anyone selfhosting kavita? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/selfhosted
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm giving it a try after failing to set something simple for a book collection (mostly epub). Interested in knowing other people take on this tool.

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[–] ielisa 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Its almost great, but the shortcomings / awful design decisions are deal breakers for me.

It's required folder structure is not compatible with calibre's required folder structure. Kavita will drop books on the floor while importing a series with multiple authors from your calibre library. They dont see this as an issue and claim there is other software to edit epub metadata (there isnt, really). Editing metadata on Kavita itself wont be reflected into your epubs when you send them to a device.

By default Kavita bounces all emails through the project owners gmail account & web server. This is... an insane decison and I have no clue how they think its a good idea. You can self host their email server yourself, but its yet another thing to setup and run.

Calibre-web is ok, but the owner is MIA for ages as far as i can tell. One person does seem to have commit access that is somewhat active, but good PRs have been open languishing for months and month at this point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think this comment summarizes the situation for me. I didn't know about calibre-web development being stopped, but the specific folder structure is a deal breaker for me. I think I'll stick to calibre-web for the time being.

Thank you and all the other people who commented in the thread :)

[–] Im_old 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep, hosted via docker, for epub, mobi and pdf. Works great with the librera reader as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Have you tried calibre-web? Kavita one seems to be easier to run

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'll say that I've run both Kavita and Calibre+Calibre-Web. I've stuck with running Calibreand Calibre Web together. Kavita was great but since I read on kindle and Kavita-email never worked for me I went back to Calibre. I also prefer calibre since it lets me convert files and change the cover images.

Personally I had more issues getting kavita to work the way I wanted than I did with calibre.

[–] Im_old 2 points 1 year ago

I don't use ebook readers, just a tablet or my phone, so it was better for my use case.

[–] sv1sjp 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have used both, personally I prefer kavita as it runs faster.

However kavita needs to create user accounts as well as it is auto categorizing books and comics which personally I hate, especially for my cybersecurity books.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yep, I love it. I use it for comics, manga, and epubs. It also connects to Tachiyomi and FBReader so I can read stuff on my tablet through the apps I prefer (though I've heard the built-in reader is good). The dev, Joe, is great too.

[–] harsh3466 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use it for my comics, but I didn’t care for the file/folder structure it required for books, so I’m using audiobookshelf for my ebooks as well as my audiobooks.

[–] skoberlink 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does it require a particular folder structure? That might explain why I have trouble finding books sometimes. Kavita knows about them but search can't always find them.

[–] harsh3466 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Both Kavita and Audiobookshelf require a particular folder structure. Since Kavita is comics first, the folder structure for ebooks isn’t quite as intuitive, and I didn’t care for it.

I had Audiobookshelf up and running well before I spun up Kavita, so I was already used to that folder structure, and since it’s designed around books anyway, to me it makes more sense.

Regardless, as long as you use the proper folder structure for the service you land on, you should be good to go.

The other reason I went with Audiobookshelf is that to me, it made much more sense to have all of my audiobooks and ebooks under the same service. (Albeit in different libraries)

[–] skoberlink 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh! I didn't know audiobookshelf could do ebooks. It doesn't look like it has an OPDS server which is my primary use case.

[–] harsh3466 1 points 1 year ago

Audiobookshelf doesn’t support OPDS, and if that’s your use case, you’re probably better off with Kavita.

I’m okay with it because I can fire up the web browser on my pocketbook ereader and download the books. It’s clunky but it works well enough for me.

I haven’t implemented it yet, but audiobookshelf does support sending ebooks to devices via email. I just haven’t bothered to get a mail server up and running for it.

[–] keyez 1 points 1 year ago

I use kavita and tried audiobookshelf a bit after and all kavita requires is a specific folder of "Last, First" for authors and can toss any jpgs or epubs in those folders and that's how I have mine structured. I didn't have any structure setup before so adopting this one made sense to me.

[–] Hule 3 points 1 year ago

I use it on my laptop and android devices. I read magazines with it, so pdf. ^I'm old, okay?

It works great, but I haven't tried a single epub..

[–] clavismil 2 points 1 year ago

Yes I use it a lot to read manga and some books. Works perfectly. On Android you can connect with CDisplayEX.

[–] keyez 2 points 1 year ago

I selfhost kavita for about 30 ebooks and use KavitaEmail to send epubs to my kindle. I also tried out audiobookshelf only for podcasts and wasn't quite up to my current workflow that antennapod running only on my phone exceeds at. I also recently saw audiobookshelf can host epubs and send them via SMTP via one container so once the android app for the latter comes out of beta and has better local file and androidauto support I may give that a shot again.