Getting non-ePub PRS-500 to work on Ubuntu 11

Chapu · 05-29-2011, 03:53 PM

Hello, everybody! I've been doing quite a bit of reading in this forum lately, but this is my first message.
Here's the deal. I'm running a dual-boot operation on my computer. I have Windows XP SP3 on one partition, and Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal on the other one. Recently, I've been favouring Ubuntu more and more over XP. If it weren't for a couple programs I still can't get working like I want'em to, I would've swtiched to Linux for good a long time ago.
Calibre is just one of those programs.
I have a non-ePub Sony PRS-500. As I live in Argentina and this device was never officially marketed here, I never had the chance to send it over to Sony for an ePub upgrade, and now it's too late for that anyway. So, until I buy a newer device, I'm stuck with good old 500 (I'm not actually complaining, mind you, as I find this obsolete piece of hardware more than fitting to my needs).
The problem is, of course, loading books to it. I have Calibre 0.6.52 installed on Windows XP, and I've never experienced a problem with it. But on Linux, it's a whole other story. Since the newer versions of Calibre don't support non-ePub 500's anymore, I have to stick with an older one. But I can't seem to get any of those to work on Ubuntu 11! No, I correct myself: I can't even get them to compile on Ubuntu.
As I see it, if I want to use my old PRS-500 with Calibre under Linux, I have one of the following options:
- I somehow make newer versions of Calibre, which are the ones I can install flawlessly, recognize the device (not likely, I think).
- I manage to make an older version of Calibre install smoothly.
- or I get a Windows version of Calibre working with Wine under Linux (no luck so far with this option either)
I thoroughly reject the notion of setting up a Virtual Machine with Windows so I can use Calibre. It just sounds ludicrous to me, to have to go to that extent of trouble. So I'm asking for your help here, guys.
I'm open to suggestions of possible options I haven't thought about. Also, I'd like to hear from you which version of Calibre you'd recommend for my PRS-500. If it where for me, I'd like the program to support the device again, but I'm not about to start complaining or criticizing Kovid's work here (it's a wonderful program, and I love it). Sooo... Would anybody here be so kind as to help me install an older version of Calibre on Ubuntu 11? I'll be waiting for your responses to start posting error outputs or whatever you need.
Thank you all very much in advance! And please excuse my poor english, my lengthy message, and my convoluted prose

kovidgoyal · 05-29-2011, 04:17 PM

Use one of the versions before 0.6.29 from here http://sourceforge.net/projects/calibre/files/

just untar the tarball and run it. Hopefully it will work, but, IIRC you might have to do some monkeying around with udev to give your user account the correct permissions on the sony device nodes. Or run calibre as root.

user_none · 05-29-2011, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chapu

please excuse my poor english, my lengthy message, and my convoluted prose

You're English is fine. Until you said something I didn't know it wasn't your native language.

A long message with all of the necessary information is better than a short message that doesn't say anything useful.

Next time can you use a blank line instead of an indent between paragraphs. The indent doesn't come though making what you wrote look like one big blob of text. It's not that you did anything wrong it's just the forum software (most web based communication methods in general) strip the paragraph indents when displaying.

Chapu · 05-29-2011, 09:39 PM

Thank both of you guys very much for such a fast answer!

Pleasantries first, thank you user_none for your kind remarks and helpful advice. As you may have noticed, I'm using blank lines to separate paragraphs now

I tried to make my message as explanatory as I could, glad to hear it didn't bother you.

And now for the really icky part. Following Kovid's advice I downloaded Calibre 0.6.28 (the 686 tarball, which corresponds with my system architecture). When I run it, either with or without sudo, the program starts, but it displays an error window saying "ERROR: ERROR: Unhandled exception" in it's title and "KeyError:'ondevice'" in the window itself. Quite a nasty one, I must say, as no matter how many times I close the error window, it just pops open again. The only way I found to actually stop and close the program is to kill -9 it.

Here's the console output:

Spoiler:

So... Any thoughts? I know my way around Linux and OS's in general, and besides that I'm a junior programmer, so make it techie if you have to. I'm just intrigued to find out what's wrong and to fix it with your help so I can finally enjoy Calibre on my Ubuntu

user_none · 05-29-2011, 09:41 PM

Library versions are not backwards compatible. You need to make a new library with the 0.6 version and import your book into it. Then never open that library with a later version of calibre otherwise the library will be updated to a newer version.

Chapu · 05-29-2011, 11:54 PM

Interesting! I tried deleting the folder where the Calibre library was stored, and then firing up the program again. The end result was the same, although it did seem to do something different in the output ("Upgrading database"). Here it goes.

Spoiler:

Is there anything else I should do to get rid of the old library, or is this problem something else altogether?

chaley · 05-30-2011, 04:52 AM

You also must get rid of the configuration directory. It is somewhere in home directory and contains files like gui.py, global.py, and tweaks.py.

The problem is that calibre is using info in the config files to access columns in the database that aren't there.

Chapu · 05-30-2011, 04:21 PM

That did the trick! I deleted the .config/calibre folder and when I runned the program again, it prompted the setup wizard. Afterwards, everything went smooth as silk.

I guess my original message was unnecessarily lengthy after all. Oh well, I welcome any chance to polish my english a little bit more anyway

Thanks a lot, guys. To all of you. Now I can move on and finally dump Windows for good. Keep up the good work!

shiney19 · 05-30-2011, 05:13 PM

Hi

Can someone help me please.

I also have a non-ePub Sony PRS-500. As I live in the UK and this device was never officially marketed here, I could not afford to send it over to Sony for the ePub upgrade - I am trying to convert from the newer formats to lrf format. I'm not bothered about transferring the lrf formatted boosk to my reader via Calibre as I tend to copy the book onto a sd card but when I try to convert to LRF the program freezes. If I uninstall and reinstall calibre it works for a few goes and then crashes again. Has anyone got any advice please - or can someone tell me what the most stable version of Calibre was and how I can obtain it please - I do use the metadata function to get an original cover.

Advice in simple terms would be appreciated please as a lot of you guys on this site are a bit too technical for me.

Thanks

05-29-2011, 03:53 PM	#1
Chapu Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2011 Device: non-EPUB Sony PRS-500	Getting non-ePub PRS-500 to work on Ubuntu 11 Hello, everybody! I've been doing quite a bit of reading in this forum lately, but this is my first message. Here's the deal. I'm running a dual-boot operation on my computer. I have Windows XP SP3 on one partition, and Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal on the other one. Recently, I've been favouring Ubuntu more and more over XP. If it weren't for a couple programs I still can't get working like I want'em to, I would've swtiched to Linux for good a long time ago. Calibre is just one of those programs. I have a non-ePub Sony PRS-500. As I live in Argentina and this device was never officially marketed here, I never had the chance to send it over to Sony for an ePub upgrade, and now it's too late for that anyway. So, until I buy a newer device, I'm stuck with good old 500 (I'm not actually complaining, mind you, as I find this obsolete piece of hardware more than fitting to my needs). The problem is, of course, loading books to it. I have Calibre 0.6.52 installed on Windows XP, and I've never experienced a problem with it. But on Linux, it's a whole other story. Since the newer versions of Calibre don't support non-ePub 500's anymore, I have to stick with an older one. But I can't seem to get any of those to work on Ubuntu 11! No, I correct myself: I can't even get them to compile on Ubuntu. As I see it, if I want to use my old PRS-500 with Calibre under Linux, I have one of the following options: - I somehow make newer versions of Calibre, which are the ones I can install flawlessly, recognize the device (not likely, I think). - I manage to make an older version of Calibre install smoothly. - or I get a Windows version of Calibre working with Wine under Linux (no luck so far with this option either) I thoroughly reject the notion of setting up a Virtual Machine with Windows so I can use Calibre. It just sounds ludicrous to me, to have to go to that extent of trouble. So I'm asking for your help here, guys. I'm open to suggestions of possible options I haven't thought about. Also, I'd like to hear from you which version of Calibre you'd recommend for my PRS-500. If it where for me, I'd like the program to support the device again, but I'm not about to start complaining or criticizing Kovid's work here (it's a wonderful program, and I love it). Sooo... Would anybody here be so kind as to help me install an older version of Calibre on Ubuntu 11? I'll be waiting for your responses to start posting error outputs or whatever you need. Thank you all very much in advance! And please excuse my poor english, my lengthy message, and my convoluted prose

05-29-2011, 09:39 PM	#4
Chapu Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2011 Device: non-EPUB Sony PRS-500	Thank both of you guys very much for such a fast answer! Pleasantries first, thank you user_none for your kind remarks and helpful advice. As you may have noticed, I'm using blank lines to separate paragraphs now I tried to make my message as explanatory as I could, glad to hear it didn't bother you. And now for the really icky part. Following Kovid's advice I downloaded Calibre 0.6.28 (the 686 tarball, which corresponds with my system architecture). When I run it, either with or without sudo, the program starts, but it displays an error window saying "ERROR: ERROR: Unhandled exception" in it's title and "KeyError:'ondevice'" in the window itself. Quite a nasty one, I must say, as no matter how many times I close the error window, it just pops open again. The only way I found to actually stop and close the program is to kill -9 it. Here's the console output: Spoiler: chapu@chapux:~/Downloads/calibre-0.6.28-i686$ sudo ./calibre Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' link hasn't been detected! link hasn't been detected! Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 595, in data KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 595, in data KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 595, in data KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 595, in data KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 595, in data KeyError: 'ondevice' QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active So... Any thoughts? I know my way around Linux and OS's in general, and besides that I'm a junior programmer, so make it techie if you have to. I'm just intrigued to find out what's wrong and to fix it with your help so I can finally enjoy Calibre on my Ubuntu

05-29-2011, 11:54 PM	#6
Chapu Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2011 Device: non-EPUB Sony PRS-500	Interesting! I tried deleting the folder where the Calibre library was stored, and then firing up the program again. The end result was the same, although it did seem to do something different in the output ("Upgrading database"). Here it goes. Spoiler: chapu@chapux:~/Downloads/calibre-0.6.28-i686$ sudo ./calibre [sudo] password for chapu: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' link hasn't been detected! link hasn't been detected! Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' Upgrading database to version 2... Upgrading database to version 3... Upgrading database to version 4... Upgrading database to version 5... Upgrading database to version 6... Upgrading database to version 7... Upgrading database to version 8... Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/kovid/build/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/library.py", line 608, in headerData KeyError: 'ondevice' QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active QPaintEngine::setSystemRect: Should not be changed while engine is active Is there anything else I should do to get rid of the old library, or is this problem something else altogether?

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05-29-2011, 04:17 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,857 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Use one of the versions before 0.6.29 from here http://sourceforge.net/projects/calibre/files/ just untar the tarball and run it. Hopefully it will work, but, IIRC you might have to do some monkeying around with udev to give your user account the correct permissions on the sony device nodes. Or run calibre as root.

05-29-2011, 09:41 PM	#5
user_none Sigil & calibre developer Posts: 2,488 Karma: 1063785 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Florida, USA Device: Nook STR	Library versions are not backwards compatible. You need to make a new library with the 0.6 version and import your book into it. Then never open that library with a later version of calibre otherwise the library will be updated to a newer version.

05-30-2011, 04:52 AM	#7
chaley Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,741 Karma: 6997045 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Notts, England Device: Kobo Libra 2	You also must get rid of the configuration directory. It is somewhere in home directory and contains files like gui.py, global.py, and tweaks.py. The problem is that calibre is using info in the config files to access columns in the database that aren't there.

05-30-2011, 04:21 PM	#8
Chapu Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2011 Device: non-EPUB Sony PRS-500	That did the trick! I deleted the .config/calibre folder and when I runned the program again, it prompted the setup wizard. Afterwards, everything went smooth as silk. I guess my original message was unnecessarily lengthy after all. Oh well, I welcome any chance to polish my english a little bit more anyway Thanks a lot, guys. To all of you. Now I can move on and finally dump Windows for good. Keep up the good work!

05-30-2011, 05:13 PM	#9
shiney19 Member Posts: 10 Karma: 10 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Blackburn, England Device: Sony PRS-500	Hi Can someone help me please. I also have a non-ePub Sony PRS-500. As I live in the UK and this device was never officially marketed here, I could not afford to send it over to Sony for the ePub upgrade - I am trying to convert from the newer formats to lrf format. I'm not bothered about transferring the lrf formatted boosk to my reader via Calibre as I tend to copy the book onto a sd card but when I try to convert to LRF the program freezes. If I uninstall and reinstall calibre it works for a few goes and then crashes again. Has anyone got any advice please - or can someone tell me what the most stable version of Calibre was and how I can obtain it please - I do use the metadata function to get an original cover. Advice in simple terms would be appreciated please as a lot of you guys on this site are a bit too technical for me. Thanks

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