project-nomad/install/calibre-empty-library/README.md

Empty Calibre library (Calibre-Web seed)

metadata.db is an empty Calibre library database, generated once with calibredb --with-library <dir> list (calibre 9.9).

Calibre-Web cannot create a library from scratch. On a fresh NOMAD it would dead-end at the "Database Configuration" page asking for an existing Calibre database. To avoid that, the Calibre-Web pre-install action seeds this file into storage/books (only when no metadata.db is already there) and hands ownership to the container's user, so the user just points Calibre-Web at /books once and starts adding books.

This file is bundled into the admin image via the Dockerfile and copied at install time by DockerService._runPreinstallActions__CalibreWeb(). To regenerate it:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD/lib:/books" --entrypoint bash lscr.io/linuxserver/calibre:latest \
  -c "calibredb --with-library /books list"
# then copy lib/metadata.db here