arthurrump / syncthing.koplugin

Run Syncthing from within KOReader

Syncthing KOReader Plugin

Run Syncthing from within KOReader. This plugin adds a menu item to start and stop the Syncthing service in the Network section of the KOReader menu.

Tested on Kobo Sage. It probably works on other devices if the dependencies (mainly start-stop-daemon, ifconfig) are available, but Kindle likely needs some firewall rules.

Installation

1. Copy this repository (at least _meta.lua and main.lua) into the plugins/syncthing.koplugin directory of your KOReader installation.
2. Download a Syncthing binary appropriate for your device from the Syncthing website (most likely ARM (32-bit) for many e-readers). Extract the archive and copy the syncthing binary to the plugins/syncthing.koplugin directory.

Done! Restart KOReader and you should find the Syncthing option in the Network section under the gear icon in the top menu. After starting Syncthing, you can use the web GUI to configure it (see the next section).

Configuration

By default, the Syncthing GUI is only available on the localhost through https://localhost:8384. To access the GUI from a different device, there are two options.

1. (Preferred) Use SSH port forwarding to connect through SSH. Start the SSH Server in KOReader and connect using this command:

   ssh -L18384:127.0.0.1:8384 root@<your device ip>

   This forwards your local port 18384 to the e-readers port 8384 on localhost where Syncthing is listening. As long as the SSH session is open, you can access the GUI through https://localhost:18384.

2. Update the gui > address element in settings/syncthing/config.xml to have Syncthing listen on 0.0.0.0:8384:

       <gui enabled="true">
           <address>0.0.0.0:8384</address>
       </gui>

   This will make the Syncthing GUI available to all devices on the network, so make sure you set a username and strong password in the GUI!

The Syncthing configuration files, log files and other data are all stored in settings/syncthing in the KOReader directory.

Troubleshooting

• The Syncthing menu item does not appear after installation.

  First, restart KOReader. If that doesn't help, check if you correctly installed the Syncthing binary. The syncthing.koplugin directory should contain (at least) three files: _meta.lua, main.lua and syncthing. Finally, it may be the case that your device does not have the start-stop-daemon command available, which we use to run Syncthing as a background process.

• Syncthing stops after a moment: the checkbox uncheks itself after reopening the menu.

  This means that Syncthing is unable to start up. Have a look at the Syncthing log files at settings/syncthing/syncthing.log to find out why Syncthing is unable to start.

• Syncthing is unable to connect to discovery servers.

  Your device may be missing the appropriate CA certificates. Copy the /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt from any recent Linux installation to the same location on your device. (Source, works on Kobo.)

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This code is primarily based on SSH.koplugin, available under the AGPL-3.0 license.