helm-charts/calibre-web-automated/templates/NOTES.txt

{{- $replicas := include "calibre-web-automated.replicas" (dict "scaleDown" .Values.scaleDown "replicas" .Values.cwa.replicas) -}}
{{- $startup := fromYaml (include "calibre-web-automated.startupProbe" .Values.cwa.startupProbe) -}}
{{- $sfs := printf "%s-%s-sfs" .Release.Name .Chart.Name -}}
{{- $pod := printf "%s-0" $sfs -}}
Calibre-Web Automated {{ .Chart.AppVersion }} — release {{ .Release.Name }} in namespace {{ .Release.Namespace }}.

{{- if .Values.ingress.enabled }}

ACCESS
  https://{{ .Values.ingress.domain }}

  The certificate is requested by cert-manager through the "{{ .Values.ingress.clusterIssuer }}"
  cluster issuer. Until it has been issued the browser shows a warning; follow it with

    kubectl -n {{ .Release.Namespace }} get certificate tls-{{ .Release.Name }}-{{ .Chart.Name }}-ingress

  Uploads are capped at {{ .Values.cwa.maxUploadFileSize }} by the Ingress, not by the application: the
  chart renders that value into nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size and
  nginx.org/client-max-body-size. A bigger book is rejected with 413 by the
  controller before CWA ever sees it, so nothing about it reaches the app log.
  Both annotations are understood by the nginx-family controllers only, and this
  release uses ingressClassName "{{ .Values.ingress.className }}".
{{- else }}

ACCESS — NO INGRESS
  ingress.enabled is false, so this release has no Ingress and no certificate.
  Neither ingress.domain nor ingress.clusterIssuer is needed: this chart reads
  ingress.domain in the Ingress template and nowhere else. The app is reachable
  inside the cluster as {{ .Release.Name }}-{{ .Chart.Name }}-service:80. To open it locally:

    kubectl -n {{ .Release.Namespace }} port-forward svc/{{ .Release.Name }}-{{ .Chart.Name }}-service 8083:80

  Then browse to http://localhost:8083. cwa.maxUploadFileSize ({{ .Values.cwa.maxUploadFileSize }}) does
  nothing in this mode — it exists only as an Ingress annotation, so an upload
  through the port-forward is limited by the volume and by nothing else.
{{- end }}
{{ if eq $replicas "0" }}
SCALED TO ZERO
  {{ if .Values.scaleDown }}scaleDown: true{{ else }}cwa.replicas: 0{{ end }} — the StatefulSet runs with replicas: 0, so nothing
  answers until you set it back and upgrade again. Both PVCs, the Secret and the
  Service{{ if .Values.ingress.enabled }} and Ingress stay in place, so no data is lost and the certificate
  is not re-issued.{{ else }} stay in place, so no data is lost.{{ end }}
{{ end }}
FIRST LOGIN — THE DEFAULT PASSWORD IS PUBLIC
  Username "admin", password "admin123". Those are the upstream defaults, they
  stand in CWA's README, and this chart does not change them — the 1Password item
  below carries no admin credentials. Until you change it under Admin -> Users,
  everyone who reaches the address above is one guess away from being
  administrator.

THE FIRST START BUILDS A LIBRARY, AND THE STARTUP PROBE IS TIMING IT
  Against an empty volume CWA notices that there is no Calibre library under
  /calibre-library and creates one itself, while the s6 init fixes ownership of
  /config. That first boot takes minutes where every later one takes seconds.

  The startup probe grants it {{ $startup.periodSeconds }}s x {{ $startup.failureThreshold }} failures = {{ mul $startup.periodSeconds $startup.failureThreshold }}s. On a slow volume
  the container is killed and restarted before it is finished, which presents as
  CrashLoopBackOff and is really a budget that is too small: raise
  cwa.startupProbe.failureThreshold, and watch the boot instead of guessing.

    kubectl -n {{ .Release.Namespace }} logs {{ $pod }} -f

SECRETS — THE FIELDS THE 1PASSWORD ITEM MUST CARRY
  {{ if .Values.secrets.cwaSecretRef }}{{ .Values.secrets.cwaSecretRef }}{{ else }}(secrets.cwaSecretRef is unset — see below){{ end }}
    → Secret {{ .Release.Name }}-{{ .Chart.Name }}-secret
      hardcover-api-token   becomes the HARDCOVER_TOKEN environment variable
      calibre-plugins       mounted as /config/.config/calibre/customize.py.json,
                            Calibre's plugin registry; "{}" is a valid empty value

  These field names are decided by this chart and appear nowhere in 1Password, so
  they are exactly what you would otherwise go and read in the templates. Both
  are required even if you never use Hardcover: the OnePasswordItem is created
  unconditionally, and so are the environment reference and the volume. A missing
  hardcover-api-token parks the pod in CreateContainerConfigError; a missing
  calibre-plugins fails the mount instead ("couldn't find key calibre-plugins"),
  and the container is never created at all.
{{- if not .Values.secrets.cwaSecretRef }}

  secrets.cwaSecretRef IS UNSET. The OnePasswordItem has been created with an
  empty itemPath, the operator has nothing to resolve, and the Secret above will
  never appear — the pod cannot start. Set it to the item's op:// path and
  upgrade.
{{- end }}

CHANGING THE ITEM'S CONTENT RESTARTS NOTHING
  Helm never sees what is inside a OnePasswordItem, so it cannot hash it into the
  pod template: after you edit the item, "helm upgrade" finds no change and the
  running pod keeps the old values. Pointing secrets.cwaSecretRef at a DIFFERENT
  item does not help either — the Secret's name is built from the release and
  chart name, so the pod spec stays byte-identical. Roll it by hand:

    kubectl -n {{ .Release.Namespace }} rollout restart statefulset/{{ $sfs }}

  For the plugin file that is the only way: it is mounted with subPath, and a
  subPath mount is never refreshed by the kubelet, not even when the Secret
  itself has been updated. HARDCOVER_TOKEN is an environment variable and is
  likewise read once, at start.

THE INGEST FOLDER DELETES WHAT YOU PUT INTO IT
  Books copied into /cwa-book-ingest are imported, converted, and then removed.
  Upstream is blunt about it: "All files within this folder will be DELETED after
  being processed." It is a drop box, never a second copy of the library — put
  nothing there that does not exist somewhere else.

  Downloading straight into it is unsupported for the same reason it sounds
  convenient: a half-written file gets picked up, which upstream warns "can cause
  duplicate imports and potentially a corrupt database". Copy finished files in.

  The folder is the ReadWriteMany claim {{ .Chart.Name }}-{{ .Release.Name }}-cwa-consume-pvc,
  and its size is fixed at 1Gi inside the chart — there is no value for it. An
  import batch larger than that fills the volume, and raising it means changing
  the chart, not the values file.

EVERYTHING ELSE SHARES ONE CLAIM
  {{ .Chart.Name }}-{{ .Release.Name }}-cwa-pvc ({{ .Values.cwa.storage }} on {{ if .Values.cwa.storageClass }}storage class "{{ .Values.cwa.storageClass }}"{{ else }}the cluster's default storage class{{ end }})
  is mounted three times by subPath: config/ holds the application state,
  calibre-library/ the books and metadata.db, calibre-plugins/ the Calibre
  plugins. A growing library and the application's own database therefore draw on
  one quota, and a full volume does not merely stop imports — it takes the app
  down. That claim is also the entire backup: metadata.db without the book files
  is an index of nothing.

THIS RELEASE IS SINGLE-INSTANCE BY CONSTRUCTION
  The StatefulSet mounts both claims by fixed name instead of using
  volumeClaimTemplates, so every replica would mount the same volumes — and the
  library claim is ReadWriteOnce. A second pod stays Pending unless it happens to
  land on the node holding the volume, and where it does start, two CWA processes
  write one SQLite metadata.db. Raising cwa.replicas above 1 buys nothing.

THE HARDENING HERE IS DELIBERATELY NOT THE REPO STANDARD
  The image boots through the s6 init as root and only then drops the application
  to PUID/PGID 1000. Hence no runAsNonRoot/runAsUser, a writable root filesystem,
  and a capabilities.add that is not empty. Two of those look like oversights:

    readOnlyRootFilesystem: true switches the image's PUID/PGID remapping off.
    The application then runs as the built-in uid 911 and no longer has access to
    what uid 1000 wrote, so an existing library goes quietly unreadable.

    Without KILL the root supervisor cannot signal its own uid-1000 services. The
    pod stops shutting down cleanly and is SIGKILLed when the grace period ends.

  PUID and PGID are pinned to 1000 in the template, not in the values, and the
  pod's fsGroup default of 1000 is what matches them. Changing
  securityContext.pod.fsGroup on its own takes write access away from the app.

WHAT A READY POD DOES NOT PROVE
  All three probes GET "/", and CWA answers that with its login page no matter
  what else is wrong. Ready therefore says the web server is up — not that the
  library was found, not that one import has ever succeeded, and not that the
  Hardcover token is accepted. Those show in the log, and only there.

TIME, AND THE ENVIRONMENT THE CHART ALREADY OCCUPIES
  TZ is "{{ .Values.cwa.timezone }}", which decides the log timestamps and when CWA's scheduled
  tasks run. Besides TZ the chart sets PUID, PGID, HARDCOVER_TOKEN,
  CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIR and NETWORK_SHARE_MODE itself, and anything in cwa.env is
  appended after those.
{{- if .Values.cwa.env }}
  There {{ if eq (len .Values.cwa.env) 1 }}is 1 such entry{{ else }}are {{ len .Values.cwa.env }} such entries{{ end }} in this release, and the chart does not check
  whether one of them repeats a name it has already used — nor does Kubernetes
  reject the repetition.
{{- end }}

  NETWORK_SHARE_MODE is pinned to "false", which leaves SQLite write-ahead
  logging switched on. Upstream's instruction for the other case is explicit —
  "If you are deploying on a network share, set the following environment
  variable to disable WAL: NETWORK_SHARE_MODE=true" — so a library claim backed
  by NFS or SMB, which is what cwa.storageClass decides, runs into exactly the
  locking problems that setting exists to avoid.