I couldn’t get Audiobookshelf to play nice with my networked drive; Apparently Docker just refuses to use networked drives as mapped locations. Since all of my audiobooks are stored on my NAS, it was a non-starter for me.
Prologue is a nice alternative though; It integrates with Plex to stream audiobooks. Plex doesn’t have native audiobook support, but Prologue simply uses Plex to actually access the files. Then it can read the chapter and metadata directly from the files. And since Plex’s remote access is fairly easy, it means Prologue’s remote access is fairly easy too.
The big downside is that you’re tied to Plex instead of Jellyfin. I already had a lifetime PlexPass license, so it’s not a problem for me to just spin up a Plex server with an “Audiobooks” library.
Simply wanted to leave the comment for anyone else who may be in the same boat I was in a few weeks ago with Audiobookshelf.
I did. I have it mapped as a letter drive on my server. The server can access it just fine via the file browser. And the docker container still refuses to read from/write to it. The container boots up just fine on the surface, but the audiobooks volume appears empty when I check it (there are dozens in the folder) because the container refuses to actually read anything from the NAS. So I tried using the import option that Audiobookshelf has built in. It imported them just fine on the surface, but they all vanished as soon as the server was rebooted; Nothing was actually saved, because it is refusing to actually write to the NAS.
Testing with the local C drive, it worked flawlessly. No issues. I eventually stumbled across a forum post complaining about the same thing, and the responses were basically “yeah you can’t do that, Docker doesn’t support it unless the image itself has nfs/smb coded in. And most don’t, because it’s considered bloat and images are meant to be optimized.”
But since my server only has a 1TB drive for the OS, and everything else is done on the NAS, I can’t commit to storing all of my media on the server directly. So Audiobookshelf was dead in the water for me.
Sounds like a permissions issue, honestly. If the NFS share is mapped to a drive letter (Windows server I assume?), then Docker should see it in the filesystem like any other local drive. At least that’s how I understand it… I’ve never used Docker on Windows.
Jellyfin is awesome, I also use it to serve my music and audio books. It’s a bit more quirky than plex but I like that it’s not tied to some company server in any way.
Yes, I have it mapped as a letter drive on my server, which is what I pointed Docker at. My buddy was having the same issue with his server, for a different Docker container. After some digging, we both stumbled across a post on the docker forums that basically said networked drives don’t work with Docker, even when properly mapped. The container simply refuses to use them for volumes. They’ll look like they’re working, and the container will boot just fine. But nothing is actually read from/written to the NAS, and data isn’t persistent when the container is restarted. And that’s exactly what we were experiencing; The container would boot, but wasn’t usable because it couldn’t actually read/write anything.
Apparently for it to work properly, the container itself needs to contain nfs/smb libraries… And most don’t, because it’s considered bloat.
I couldn’t get Audiobookshelf to play nice with my networked drive; Apparently Docker just refuses to use networked drives as mapped locations. Since all of my audiobooks are stored on my NAS, it was a non-starter for me.
Prologue is a nice alternative though; It integrates with Plex to stream audiobooks. Plex doesn’t have native audiobook support, but Prologue simply uses Plex to actually access the files. Then it can read the chapter and metadata directly from the files. And since Plex’s remote access is fairly easy, it means Prologue’s remote access is fairly easy too.
The big downside is that you’re tied to Plex instead of Jellyfin. I already had a lifetime PlexPass license, so it’s not a problem for me to just spin up a Plex server with an “Audiobooks” library.
Simply wanted to leave the comment for anyone else who may be in the same boat I was in a few weeks ago with Audiobookshelf.
Mount the NAS share to whatever machine is hosting the Docker instance, then point your docker containers at that mount point.
I did. I have it mapped as a letter drive on my server. The server can access it just fine via the file browser. And the docker container still refuses to read from/write to it. The container boots up just fine on the surface, but the audiobooks volume appears empty when I check it (there are dozens in the folder) because the container refuses to actually read anything from the NAS. So I tried using the import option that Audiobookshelf has built in. It imported them just fine on the surface, but they all vanished as soon as the server was rebooted; Nothing was actually saved, because it is refusing to actually write to the NAS.
Testing with the local C drive, it worked flawlessly. No issues. I eventually stumbled across a forum post complaining about the same thing, and the responses were basically “yeah you can’t do that, Docker doesn’t support it unless the image itself has nfs/smb coded in. And most don’t, because it’s considered bloat and images are meant to be optimized.”
But since my server only has a 1TB drive for the OS, and everything else is done on the NAS, I can’t commit to storing all of my media on the server directly. So Audiobookshelf was dead in the water for me.
Sounds like a permissions issue, honestly. If the NFS share is mapped to a drive letter (Windows server I assume?), then Docker should see it in the filesystem like any other local drive. At least that’s how I understand it… I’ve never used Docker on Windows.
Absolutely agreed on permission issue.
Sounds exactly like my issue.
I wasnt aware Linux accesses NFS shares with the authenticated user.
Linuxserver.io containers have a container user called ‘abc’ mapped via environment variables to the host.
Once I figured that out it was pretty easy.
Also had issues with mapped NFS shares in Docker.
In the end I just mounted it to my host
It is mapped to my host as a letter drive.
Jellyfin is awesome, I also use it to serve my music and audio books. It’s a bit more quirky than plex but I like that it’s not tied to some company server in any way.
Have you tried properly mounting the network drive? Another option would be to just install audiobookshelf on the NAS.
Yes, I have it mapped as a letter drive on my server, which is what I pointed Docker at. My buddy was having the same issue with his server, for a different Docker container. After some digging, we both stumbled across a post on the docker forums that basically said networked drives don’t work with Docker, even when properly mapped. The container simply refuses to use them for volumes. They’ll look like they’re working, and the container will boot just fine. But nothing is actually read from/written to the NAS, and data isn’t persistent when the container is restarted. And that’s exactly what we were experiencing; The container would boot, but wasn’t usable because it couldn’t actually read/write anything.
Apparently for it to work properly, the container itself needs to contain nfs/smb libraries… And most don’t, because it’s considered bloat.