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Quick start

git clone <your-repo> longbox && cd longbox

Edit docker-compose.yml and change /srv/comics to wherever your collection lives, then:

docker compose up -d

Open http://<your-server>:8000. The first person to register becomes the administrator and adopts anything already in the library.

The comics mount is read-only — Longbox never writes to your collection. Only ./data (database, covers, uploads) is writable, and that is the directory to back up.

Bare metal with systemd

git clone <your-repo> longbox && cd longbox
sudo ./deploy/install.sh

That installs Python and unar, creates a longbox service user, builds a virtualenv in /opt/longbox, puts data in /var/lib/longbox, and enables the service.

Then set LONGBOX_BROWSE_ROOTS in /etc/longbox.env to point at your comics, and systemctl restart longbox. Put every host-specific setting in that file rather than in the systemd unit: the unit is replaced on each upgrade, the env file never is, and it is loaded last so its values win.

The installer also puts longbox-cli on the path, which is how to run the administration commands on this kind of install — see the command line.

Running it directly (development)

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env      # optional
python run.py