Tweak ePub Error on Fedora 15

[apastuszak]

Whenever I try to rebuild an ePub after tweaking it on Fedora 15, I get the following error:

calibre, version 0.8.4
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>error</b>:ushort format requires 0 <= number <= USHRT_MAX

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/dialogs/tweak_epub.py", line 114, in rebuild
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/dialogs/tweak_epub.py", line 86, in do_rebuild
File "zipfile.py", line 1071, in write
File "zipfile.py", line 348, in FileHeader
error: ushort format requires 0 <= number <= USHRT_MAX

Any ideas?

[kiwidude]

This error is discussed in the Modify ePub thread in the dev forums. It has already been fixed for the next Calibre release. It is caused by a change in Calibre 0.8.4 to use the timestamps from the zip file for files when exploding, rather than the system date/time. What this means is that in rare but nonethless existing circumstances, files that have no timestamp in the zip file will blow up when trying to zip them back up again.

The example ePub I found had this situation on the MimeType file. When you look at it in the file explorer, it shows no date present on the file when you look at it on the exploded ePub.

The workaround assuming you do not want to wait or run from source is to "touch" the files that have no timestamp when they are exploded. So look for any file(s) that have no timestamp in the exploded directly, and do an edit on them to cause them to now have a modified date. Obviously if it is a file like mimetype be sure to keep the content the same, either use an os touch command or just save from an editor on it.

[apastuszak]

Thanks for the info. I went and filed a bug on the topic.