Calibre trying to fetching news when I'm not online

[PaulSmi]

I work on a laptop and I'm often not connected to the Internet.

Each morning Calibre goes on and fetches my news. This works great when I'm connected, but if I don't have an Internet connection I just get a lot of error messages and things that look as though they've downloaded, but then when I view them there is obviously no content.

The problem would be easily fixed if I could just tell Calibre NOT to fetch content when there is no active connection to the Internet.

How do I do this?

Hope someone cane help as it is soooooo frustrating.

[kovidgoyal]

calibre currently can't detect the presence or absence of a network connection. I would suggest you just quit calibre after you have it fetch news in the morning.

[PaulSmi]

I liked to have Calibre open ALL the time as I have it do lots of things through the day. And if I quit, I'd worry about forgetting to reload it.

I'm surprised that for an app that has so many AMAZING features and is such a technical work of art it can't do something as basic as just checking there's an Internet connection before it starts trying to fetch news. I thought that would have been a real simple test. Heck, even if it just pinged a server to check before getting going, that would work wouldn't it.

Please, please, please add it in as soon as you can is it is soooo frustrating if you're on a laptop that's not always connected.

I've donated before, but I'll gladly donate again if you can get this one thing in :-)

[kovidgoyal]

Open a ticket requesting the feature, so I don't forget. I guess I am just not used to the concept of ever being disconnected from the internet

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by PaulSmi

...checking there's an Internet connection before it starts trying to fetch news. ...
Please, please, please add it in as soon as you can is it is soooo frustrating if you're on a laptop that's not always connected..

Why not just turn off the automatic fetch, and move it into a batch file that runs in the Windows scheduler (or cron, etc.). Here's a quickie for Windows that will detect internet connectivity:

@echo off
ECHO Checking connection, please wait...
PING -n 1 www.google.com|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :SUCCESS
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :TRYAGAIN

:TRYAGAIN
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO Let me try a bit more, please wait...
@echo off
PING -n 3 www.google.com|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :SUCCESS2
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :TRYIP

:TRYIP
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO Checking DNS...
ECHO Lets try by IP address...
@echo off
ping -n 1 216.239.37.99|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :SUCCESSDNS
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :TRYROUTER

:TRYROUTER
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO Lets try pinging the router....
ping -n 2 192.168.1.1|find "Reply from " >NUL
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :ROUTERSUCCESS
IF     ERRORLEVEL 1 goto :NETDOWN

:ROUTERSUCCESS
ECHO It appears that you can reach the router, but internet is unreachable.
goto :FAILURE

:NETDOWN
ECHO FAILURE!
ECHO It appears that you having network issues, the router cannot be reached.
goto :FAILURE

:SUCCESSDNS
ECHO It appears that you are having DNS issues.
goto :FAILURE

:SUCCESS
ECHO You have an active Internet connection
pause
goto END

:SUCCESS2
ECHO You have an active internet connection but some packet loss was detected.
pause
goto :END

:FAILURE
ECHO You do not have an active Internet connection
pause
goto :END

[kovidgoyal]

Actually thinking about this some more, I don't think it's a very good idea. It would mean that calibre would be pinging a server (say google.com) every few seconds. Since calibre is now used by almost a million users, that will very quickly add up to some significant network traffic.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Actually thinking about this some more, I don't think it's a very good idea. It would mean that calibre would be pinging a server (say google.com) every few seconds. Since calibre is now used by almost a million users, that will very quickly add up to some significant network traffic.

You're not commenting on my batch file idea are you? That would just ping at the start, then go to success, and download the recipes. The other debug/error checking in that batch file isn't really necessary.

[kovidgoyal]

No, I was talking about implementing a ping based connectivity check in the calibre new scheduler.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

No, I was talking about implementing a ping based connectivity check in the calibre new scheduler.

Maybe you can place an optional check, where the default is not to check. But if someone is in the position of the OP then they could turn on the ping check prior to fetching news.

Personally I would never turn this option on.

[kovidgoyal]

No it's way too open to abuse. I guess at least for windows and linux I can check for an active network connection which should take care of the OPs problem without generating any network traffic.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I guess at least for windows and linux I can check for an active network connection which should take care of the OPs problem without generating any network traffic.

Interfacing with 3 different OS's must drive you crazy.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Interfacing with 3 different OS's must drive you crazy.

Yeah, fortunately, most of if is automatic when you use a "platform neutral" language like python.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yeah, fortunately, most of if is automatic when you use a "platform neutral" language like python.

Yes, but I was thinking of things like monitoring network alive status, or watching a directory to automatically add books that appear there. I've been trying to come up with some code for merging records, and I keep running into little OS dependent bits you've added, like one that swaps '\' and '/' based on OS dependency.

[kovidgoyal]

Well yes, if I could go back in time, the one thing I would do is dispose of whoever first invented DOS, then most of the world wouldn't be using an operating system designed with no knowledge of networking in the Internet age.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Well yes, if I could go back in time, the one thing I would do is dispose of whoever first invented DOS, then most of the world wouldn't be using an operating system designed with no knowledge of networking in the Internet age.

But "Nobody will need more than 640K of memory"

NETBUI was an add-on for MS-DOS 2.x(?)
The network cards cost 100's of dollars (PC, PC-XT) and were BNC or AUI (to a transceiver)