Calibre won't import any books!

[sapereaudo]

I have been using Calibre for about a month, and after a reinstall of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) I reinstalled Calibre and now it won't let me add any books at all, I even tried some that I know worked previously and they dont' work.
I get this error message:
WARNING: Failed to read metadata: Failed to read metadata from the following:

Home Networking Bible, 2nd Edition.pdf
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/gui2/add.py", line 83, in run
title = self.add(id, opf, cover, name)
File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/gui2/add.py", line 128, in add
id = self.db.create_book_entry(mi, cover=cover, add_duplicates=False)
File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/library/database2.py", line 1371, in create_book_entry
(title, series_index, aus))
File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 170, in run
raise DatabaseException(*res)
DatabaseException: no such function: uuid4
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 141, in run
ok, res = True, func(*args, **kwargs)
OperationalError: no such function: uuid4

My calibre installed version is 0.6.13. The Calibre website says that 0.6.37 is the latest version, however there are no download links for linux, and my 0.6.13 is the version in the Karmic Koala repositories.
I've looked at other similar posts, and this is different in that I always get this error, no matter what. Also, as there are no links to download previous versions (or newer ones) I can't do that... nor can I find an apt line anywhere for a calibre specific repository.
Anyone have any ideas/suggestions on how to fix this issue?

[kovidgoyal]

You've got two versions of calibre installed on your system and they are interfering. Uninstall any calibre entries from add/remove programs and the delete the directories C:\Program Files\calibre C:\Program Files\calibre2

Then re-install the latest version.

[sapereaudo]

Thank you for your help. I didn't expect the creator of calibre himself to respond so swiftly! BTW, awesome program; the several days I had to live without it were chaos!

My solution, though similar to your suggestion was in fact different, so I'll post it in case anyone has similar problems. I think the problem was the Ubuntu package manager, but I'm not certain.

I run linux, not windows, so the directories and methods are of course different.
I uninstalled it, as you said, and then did a search for files with "calibre" in the name. It showed up (after "complete removal" with synaptic) in several places including /etc/bash_completion.d and /usr/bin as well as the directories that show in the error message in my first post. I ran "sudo nautilus" in terminal and navigated to each file, and deleted it. To be safe I then emptied my trash and restarted.
I reinstalled through synaptic. Same problem.
Again, I uninstalled exactly as above but reinstalled via the scary little "ubuntu software center" in my application menu. Same problem again.
I uninstalled yet again as above, but this time I reinstalled it via the terminal command:
sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer').read(); main()"
that i found at under "unsupported distributions". It asked me where to install it, so I input "/usr" and it installed without a problem. It now works perfectly!
It may be important to note that Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) will install version 0.6.13 if you use synaptic or the "sudo apt-get install" command, but when I installed using the former shell command mentioned above it installed version 0.6.38
Perhaps Synaptic package manager in Ubuntu is not handling the install right, and obviously the .deb version in their repository is outdated. I'm not a programmer or dev so I don't completely understand, but hopefully this info will help someone.

Thanks again for such a great free program! It's really better than the proprietary Sony version (that won't run on linux anyway).

[tulsa]

I'm pretty sure I have this same issue, but I cannot seem to figure it out.
Using latest Ubuntu.

Here's what happens after I utilize the install script on the download page...


myusername:~$ sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer').read(); main()"
Enter the installation directory for calibre [/opt]:
Will download and install calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2
Downloading calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2
100% [================================================== ================================================== ============================]
Checking downloaded file integrity...

bzip2: I/O or other error, bailing out. Possible reason follows.
bzip2: Broken pipe
Input file = (stdin), output file = (stdout)
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
Failed to download, retrying in 30 seconds...
Will download and install calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2
Downloading calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2
100% [================================================== ================================================== ============================]
Checking downloaded file integrity...

bzip2: I/O or other error, bailing out. Possible reason follows.
bzip2: Broken pipe
Input file = (stdin), output file = (stdout)
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
Failed to download, aborting


????
help!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tulsa

Will download and install calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2
Downloading calibre-.6.45-686.tar.bz2
100% [================================================== ================================================== ============================]
Checking downloaded file integrity...

bzip2: I/O or other error, bailing out. Possible reason follows.
bzip2: Broken pipe
Input file = (stdin), output file = (stdout)
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
Failed to download, aborting


????
help!

Same Ubuntu 9.10 i386 32bit using default dir (/opt)

[tulsa]

I managed to completely remove the binary install and reverted to the Ubuntu repository version thru synaptic.
I had to delete my metadata file to get anything to work, which means I have to reimport everything, but at least it's going again.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tulsa

I managed to completely remove the binary install and reverted to the Ubuntu repository version thru synaptic.
I had to delete my metadata file to get anything to work, which means I have to reimport everything, but at least it's going again.

Interesting.

The failure left my original 6.44 intact.

[rwhe]

Yet another user having the same problem while trying to upgrade. I have verified the problem using two different Internet providers.

I suspect it's a simple case of a corrupt archive (calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2).

Maybe we should start a new thread about this problem, because it seems this one is not getting any attention.

***

rwhe@holiday:~:503> sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer').read(); main()"
Enter the installation directory for calibre [/opt]:
Will download and install calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2
Downloading calibre-0.6.45-i686.tar.bz2
100% [================================================== ===============================]
Checking downloaded file integrity...
tar: Record size = 16 blocks

bzip2: I/O or other error, bailing out. Possible reason follows.
bzip2: Broken pipe
Input file = (stdin), output file = (stdout)
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
Failed to download, retrying in 30 seconds...
^CTraceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
File "<string>", line 221, in main
File "<string>", line 191, in download_and_extract
KeyboardInterrupt
rwhe@holiday:~:504> sudo apt-get remove calibre
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package calibre is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
rwhe@holiday:~:505>

[kovidgoyal]

@rwhe: Do you by any chance have a 64bit machine?

[pholy]

I'm running 32-bit Karmic Koala, and I'm having all the same problems. 0.6.13 won't add books:

File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 170, in run
raise DatabaseException(*res)
calibre.library.sqlite.DatabaseException: no such function: uuid4
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/calibre/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 141, in run
ok, res = True, func(*args, **kwargs)
OperationalError: no such function: uuid4

And I can't download the newest version because of the broken pipe problem...

I hope you can solve this soon... But sleep is important too

[theducks]

Originally Posted by pholy

I'm running 32-bit Karmic Koala, and I'm having all the same problems. 0.6.13 won't add books:

And I can't download the newest version because of the broken pipe problem...

I hope you can solve this soon... But sleep is important too

Pick up the bz2
here http://sourceforge.net/projects/calibre/files/
That way worked for me.